No justice, no peace

Calling for a new civil rights movement, Suresh Grover, co-ordinator of the Stephen Lawrence Campaign, urges Labour Party activists to see their struggles in a wider context.

Over the last 20 years we have been badly wounded - both in the labour movement and in our communities. We have been badly wounded and we have to recover from it, and I think that we now have two opportunities to begin that recovery. The first is a consequence of the Stephen Lawrence campaign, and the second arises because of the assembly in London, and devolution in Scotland and Wales. If we can begin to unite these two we will create a force in this country that finally shifts the mainstream agenda away from the Thatcherite consensus.

I know I say this in a dramatic fashion but I think it is absolutely clear. I am not a member of the Labour Party but I can tell you I will give not only my support but I will make every effort to galvanise the leaderships of the current anti-racism campaigns behind Ken Livingstone's campaign for Mayor, even if the Labour leadership bars him from standing. Black people will mobilise for Ken, not least because of their memory of the great injustice done to the GLC.

That is where the issue of racism comes in. When I look back at the last 20 years of the struggle against racism in this country - from the murder of Blair Peach by Metropolitan Police officers to the killing of Stephen Lawrence, not to mention the thousands of families who have suffered so-called "low level" racial harassment (at The Monitoring Group we are currently dealing with more than 300 cases in West London alone) - and the responses from the Labour Party and local authorities, I remember the words of Martin Luther King as he was marching against American apartheid in Selma, Alabama. King insisted that "peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice."

That's where the issues of democracy in the Labour Party and resistance to racism can be welded together to develop some momentum within our communities - whether we are members of the Labour Party or not.

In 1993 Doreen and Neville Lawrence went to the Notting Hill Carnival to garner support for their campaign, but were able to secure only three signatures on their petition. Five years later they have mobilised such massive support, both within and beyond the black communities, that the Government has been compelled to set up an inquiry and the media has been compelled to report the truth about Stephen's death.

They were able to turn the tables for a number of reasons. First, because of their own integrity and determination they were able to give a human face to the horrific statistics of racist violence in this country (330,000 attacks over the last year, a dramatic increase compared to 1990). Second, the magnificence of the legal team, which was heavily criticised by some on the black left who claimed outrageously that "Mike Mansfield was only interested in lining his pockets". The legal team developed an innovative challenge to the criminal justice system, pursuing the unprecedented private prosecution, the first ever for a racist murder, and securing the judgement from the inquest jury which said that Stephen's murder was motivated by racism.

In the end Jack Straw agreed to hold the inquiry because he was under tremendous pressure from the family, the community, the public. Within the labour movement, we had support from a handful of left MPs, like John McDonnell, and enormous goodwill from the trade union rank and file, but initially nobody in the trade union hierarchy would touch the case.

We've seen the problem again with the Hillingdon strikers, who were strongly supported in the community and by rank and file trade unionists, but who were let down by UNISON, which even deprived the workers of strike pay. But the important point is that in the end, trade unionists in Hillingdon stuck it out and won their battle. If we are to develop an effective movement for a society that is equal and just, we must draw on the lessons of Hillingdon and the Lawrences.

In Southall, we have a Member of Parliament whose only contribution has been presenting a motion on euthanasia - when we have 40% unemployment among young Asians in our locality . The joke in Southall is that Piara Khabra confused "euthanasia" with "youth and Asians".

When has he spoken in Parliament on racism? Never. To whom is he accountable? Certainly not to anyone in Southall. For us, New Labour's lack of democracy is not merely an internal party question. It's about our basic rights to political representation and participation.

I'm sorry that New Labour is pushing Trevor Philips as a token black alternative to Ken Livingstone. But it won't work. We in the black community are not idiots. We are people who have fought for 25 years for our right to live here as equals and we will not throw away all that experience just to support a television celebrity.

Yes, our democratic institutions and our communities have been wounded, and we will be wounded again. But our future lies in trying to develop a movement of unity, a movement which links Labour, trade union and progressive people with the anti-racist campaigns led by the families who have suffered. The Lawrences have shown what can be achieved if we unite, if we are brave and bold, if we articulate a vision of equality and justice and are uncompromising in pursuing it.

That is most likely to happen not by starting a different political party, as Arthur Scargill did, but by coalescing into a broad civil rights movement. That is how we will bring young people to the fore. It is not true that youth today are apolitical and apathetic; they are highly political but they find no space for themselves in any of the existing political structures.

Unity in action around a vision of democracy, justice and equality is the key to rejuvenating both the labour movement and the black communities. The campaign for the Mayor of London provides one vital opportunity to articulate that vision and forge that unity. We can't fight racism unless we do that and if we can do that we are on our way towards better things.

This is an edited version of a speech given by Suresh Grover at the LLB AGM held in London on 14th November.

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