The waiting

Four months after this newspaper brought the mysterious deaths of two black men in Telford to public attention, the families of Jason and Errol McGowan are still waiting for answers. They thought they might find some when the police and supporters of their campaign for justice met to discuss the investigation. What they found was the disturbing face of race relations in new-town Britain

In a small, tired-looking community centre on the outskirts of Telford, a tall, middle-aged black man is crying, tears rolling down his cheeks as he pleads to be told why he has been treated like a second-class citizen all his life. Less than 15 feet from him sits a bewildered police inspector, his complexion as white as his shirt, wearing a mixed expression of embarrassment and sheer surprise.

This is the face of race relations in the Shropshire town four months after the second member of a black family was found dead in suspicious circumstances. Errol McGowan, aged 32, who had been the object of a racist hate campaign, was found hanging from a kitchen door in a friend's home in July last year; his nephew, Jason, 20, who had been investigating Errol's death, died suspended from his own belt on street railings on New Year's Day.

At first, the police labelled the deaths as suicides. Subseqently, however, their investigations were found to have been less than thorough - even though Errol McGowan, a part-time doorman, had been to the police at least three times to report racist threats on his life. So it was that Telford, a new town with a less than 4 per cent ethnic-minority population, found itself - reluctantly, sometimes angrily - at the centre of racial politics in Britain today.

It seems an unlikely place to take on such a role. Although labelled a new town, Telford is, in fact a collection of ancient settlements that are drawn under one name by a city centre comprising shopping malls, conference centres and business hotels. It is surrounded by some of the most beautiful countryside in England and contains some of its friendliest people. When it comes to race, however, its attitudes would appear to lag behind more cosmopolitan areas.

"What's all the fuss? They were only a pair of niggers," was the reply from one ordinary looking man when the subject was raised in a pub in Wellington, the area where both the dead men lived. And the laughter that greeted his comment suggested that he was not alone in his views.

But some locally born members of the ethnic community have a strange attitude to racism, too, in that they take it for granted. Several Asian and black people who were asked by The Independent whether they had ever suffered racial abuse replied "no". When asked whether they had been called abusive names based on the colour of their skin, they replied: "Oh, yeah. Does that count?"

It was perhaps not surprising, then, that the initial suggestion that the McGowans might have been the victims of racial attack was treated with derision. And it was only after a concerted campaign by The Independent that West Mercia police agreed to launch a fresh inquiry with the help of Scotland Yard's Racial and Violent Crime Task Force, the unit that has made so much progress in the Stephen Lawrence investigation.

Three months on, the McGowan inquiry has taken on enormous significance. Its success or failure will determine the way policing in the area is viewed by ethnic minorities. At the moment, policing by consent is not feasible; the black community simply does not trust the police.

At the community centre meeting last week, about 40 people gathered to support the McGowans' campaign to find out what happened to Errol and Jason. Also invited was Inspector Kevin Burke, the man in charge of uniformed policing in the area. He came armed with plenty of figures, and stretched the patience of his audience with descriptions of police procedure. But then the dam broke. He was told of instance after instance of black people being harrassed by white officers, and of the feeling that no action was taken when they reported crimes.

The middle-aged man who had burst into tears at last week's meeting with the police told how his son had allegedly been framed for mugging a woman. Another of the McGowan family, Leroy, who has avoided trouble all his life, told of being wrongly arrested by the police and asking to make a phone call. "You watch too much television," said the arresting officer. Inspector Burke declared himself "shell-shocked" after another man spoke, sobbing, of the poor treatment that was meted out by police to him and his son, a former soldier. It was painfully clear the well-meaning inspector had no idea of the depth of feeling of the ethnic minority community on his patch.

The task of turning that round now lies with Detective Superintendent Mel Shore. Det Supt Shore, a 51-year-old veteran of several high-profile murder cases, is leading the new investigation into the deaths. With a team of 46 detectives and six support staff, his brief is to treat the incidents as "foul play", even though there is, as yet, no assumption that Errol and Jason McGowan were murdered or driven to suicide. Moving slowly but meticulously, the team has spoken to 1,684 people, followed 1,600 lines of inquiry and taken 600 statements. On the night of his death, Jason had been celebrating at his local pub, the Elephant and Castle. Officers established that 238 people were present that night - and have tracked down and interviewed all but 13 of them.

In the incident room, 10ft-long charts plot every minute of Jason's last evening, registering a person here, a vehicle there. Dozens of photographs from security cameras line the walls. Two investigations have failed to satisfy police critics, and Det Supt Shore knows his must stand up to scrutiny.

"Part of our responsibility is in rebuilding confidence in the community, so we are determined to investigate all aspects of racial crime thoroughly," he says. "We are determined to leave no stone unturned to establish what really happened to Errol and Jason. That is the best way I know of winning back the trust of the community."

It is understood officers have still not decided whether the deaths were murder or suicide, but claims that investigations are focusing on the possibility that Errol - a former doorman - may have been innocently caught up in a drug war were denied by one officer. "Like everywhere, there are drugs in Telford, but not enough for anyone to get rich on, and certainly not enough to start a turf war," he says. "But he was a bouncer, so it was something we looked at."

Like many such cases where police are criticised, rumours - sometimes deliberate misinformation - seeped out. The McGowans, a close, dignified family, have had to contend with sniggers, with disbelief, and with downright racism. When The Independent first highlighted their plight, there was outrage from the right-wing tabloid press, which set about searching for dirt on the dead men. The alleged "drug war" was one such rumour. So too was a claim that Jason's wife, Sinead, had been caught on the Elephant and Castle's security camera kissing another man before Jason disappeared.

"Of course she was," said one detective. "It was New Year's Eve! Everyone was kissing everyone else. Believe me; there was no more in that kiss than in any other that night."

Another rumour suggested that Errol was seeing another woman and there may have been a jealous husband on the scene. In part, that was true; he had had a mistress but she has confirmed to the police and family that he ended the affair more than three months before he died and proposed to his long-standing girlfriend, Sharon Buttery, in the intervening period.

In spite of their success in having inquiries into the deaths reopened, the McGowan family remains wary of the investigation. Confidence was eroded when it appeared police took away possible evidence - two doors - from the house in which Errol was found purely because a television programme suggested such action.

Witnesses said they heard banging from the house the day Errol died, and two men were seen on the driveway, but neither the door on which he was found hanging, nor a bedroom door, was removed until Paul Millen, a former police forensic scientist, suggested on Channel 4's Dispatches they could yield clues. Officers said they had planned for weeks to take away the doors and that the timing was a co-incidence.

The attention to detail of the new investigation - and hence its slow pace - frustrates the family. Clifton McGowan, Errol's brother and Jason's uncle, is a thoughtful and softly spoken man. Yet the shortcomings of previous inquiries provoke anger when he is reminded how his brother's pleas for help from police were ignored.

"We don't really know what they're up to," he said. "Are they trying to find some murderers, or are they simply working towards a future inquest when they can try to get a verdict of suicide? We simply feel no different from the way we did at the beginning."

At the moment, the evidence that the men killed themselves looks thin. Both were fairly happy men - Jason seemed extremely happy and optimistic. Neither left a suicide note or gave any hint of clinical depression. (Errol was concerned over the threats he had received, but not, according to his family, suicidal.)

However, evidence that they were murdered is also thin. There were no marks of a struggle on the body of either man. And, in spite of the suggestion that there is a group of racist white men in the area, such attacks are usually blatant, intended as messages to frighten the ethnic community.

The evidence available would appear to rule nothing in and nothing out. It is not much to go on, but until progress is made, the new - and apparently genuine - anxiety of the police to win back the community's trust will count for nothing.