The deaths of Richard Everitt and Stephen Lawrence: compare and contrast

Note: I am writing a detailed piece on the convictions in the Lawrence case. There is some rather interesting comments in the Macpherson report about the forensic examination of garments etc see http://www.chronicleworld.org/archive/lawrence/sli-25.htm. RH

The deaths of Richard Everitt and Stephen Lawrence:
compare and contrast
Robert Henderson

The Death of Richard Everitt (see below) is an article I wrote in 1994. Compare and contrast the elite response to his death and that of Stephen Lawrence.

Richard was knifed to death by an Asian gang approximately 300 yards from my front door. The gang was large, perhaps as many as 15 members. The gang was known as the Drummond Street Posse and had gone out that night specifically looking for a “white boy” to attack because they felt they had been “wronged” by a white boy (http://www.mamaa.org/infalre.html).

The gang were arrested the same night for a separate incident and blood was found on 19-year-old Badrul Miah. This turned out to be a match for that of Richard. Miah, later boasted that he had “stabbed up some white boy”. http://www.mirror.co.uk/life-style/kids-and-family/2008/10/13/exclusive-i-can-t-forgive-my-son-s-knife-crime-killer-115875-20799700/

After nine months the police had arrested 11 people in connection with the murder. The 11 dropped to six and after a committal hearing the number fell to 3. Eventually only two came to trial, Badrul Miah and Showkat Akbar. Akbar was found guilty of violent disorder and sentenced to three years, of which he served 18 months. Miah was sentenced to life but let out on licence after 11 years despite the trial judge describing it as an unprovoked racist attack (see Mirror link above).

The parents of Richard suffered beyond the loss of their child: “After the trial Mandy and Norman tried to move on but were the victims of threats and racial abuse. They had to leave the home where they raised their children and move out of London to Essex.” (http://www.mamaa.org/infalre.html)

Those are the bare facts of the Everitt murder. Compare the elite response to his murder with their response to that of Stephen Lawrence:

1. Only one person was convicted of the murder even though all were guilty of joint enterprise.
2. There has been no media campaign to bring the others to justice.
3. There has been no public inquiry into Richard’s murder.
4. The one person was convicted of Richard’s murder was released after 11 years without any media or political uproar.
5. There has been no concerted media campaign stretching over nearly two decades to bring the others in the gang to justice.
6. Unlike the Lawrence case where the Daily Mail accused the five suspects of murder in 1997 (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/frontpage/lawrence.html) , no representative of the national press or broadcasters called any other member of the gang which murdered Richard a murderer.
7. The gang members who attacked Richard were older than those accused of attacking Stephen Lawrence.
8. Unlike the Lawrence murder, British politicians from the word go not only refused to adopt the tone of moral outrage which they routinely do when the death of Stephen Lawrence is discussed, but actively tried to play down the racist aspect. Considerable pressure was put on Richard’s parents at the time to go along with the usual Maoist pc line that they were not racist and so on. The local MP, Frank Dobson, was most notable for his silence.

It is often said these days that the grip political correctness has on British society is much worse than it was. It is true that the absurdities get ever greater as the politically correct compete to be the purest ideologue, but as the Everitt case shows in really important matters such as the administration of justice it was already solidly entrenched two decades ago.