FOCUS: POLICE RACISM: Here comes the white backlash

The report into Stephen Lawrence's death brought few changes. Now even these are under covert attack from disgruntled officers

The funeral at Hanworth crematorium in west London last week was for a young Metropolitan Police constable, Kulwant Sidhu, who had died falling off a roof while chasing burglary suspects. Among the group of white, black and fellow Asian colleagues there, the talk moved to law and race. The mood was one of pessimism and foreboding.

More than eight months after Sir William Macpherson published his damning critique of institutional racism and recommended sweeping reforms of the police following the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence, all the old tensions, accusations and recriminations have been creeping back into the Metropolitan force.

There is now a tacit admission from all parties concerned that the Macpherson report has not proved to be the catalyst some had hoped for. Attacks on ethnic minorities have actually increased - Scotland Yard's own figures show a rise of 11 per cent - while at the same time young blacks are still far more likely to be stopped on the streets by the police.

The Metropolitan Police's own lay advisory group has suspended work on policy because they say the police hierarchy was not taking the problem of race seriously; a report due out in December, compiled by Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, is due to present yet more trenchant criticism of the force's handling of murder inquiries and its attitude to race.

The Macpherson report made 70 key recommendations aimed at wiping out racism in the police, tightening up on investigations and changing the law to enable suspects to be tried on the same charges twice. It urged an immediate review of racism-awareness training throughout the police service, recommended that racism be made a sackable offence in the police force, that investigations into complaints be carried out independently, and that legislation be passed making it a crime to express racist language or behaviour in private.

The Home Office says the proposals are being looked at and worked on, but few have been implemented so far. Many black activists, however, say this is just paying lip-service, and they fear that much of Sir William's report may find itself on the same dusty shelf where the bulk of the Scarman report, commissioned after the riots of the early 1980s, ended up.

To add to this combustible mixture there is now a growing backlash among some white officers against what they see as subjugation by the forces of multiculturalism. One manifestation of this attitude is what is becoming known in police canteen vernacular as "pushback" - disgruntled white officers inundating the community safety units, dealing with racial crimes, with spurious cases that tie up sparse resources.

A sergeant with 19 years' experience explained: "Someone of Italian extraction gets into a shoving match with someone of Anglo-Saxon extraction, a matter which can be dealt with quite simply. Instead, the officers involved push it on to the community safety unit, clogging them up even more. The result is twofold: the units can't cope and can then be labelled inefficient, and when they ask for more resources, complaints can be made that valuable resources are taken up on pursuing spurious so-called racial crimes."

Mike Bennett, the combative, recently retired chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, with strong links to grass-roots white opinion, said: "There is now a distinct sense of anger among many serving officers. They feel there has been a total sell-out to political correctness, that any time the label `racist' can be hurled at them - a terrible thing to be called and difficult to disprove. Macpherson has done what I always feared it would - worsen the situation."

Detective Inspector David Michael, one of Scotland Yard's most senior black officers, received racist hate mail a week after being elected chairman of the Black Police Association (BPA). Those investigating the matter have little doubt this was orchestrated by fellow officers.

DI Michael, who has spent 27 years with the Yard, said: "You cannot have police behave in a non-racist way towards the general public when they cannot behave in a non-racist way towards their own ethnic minority fellow officers.

"There are people in the job who are determined to resist the recommendations of Macpherson and resist multiculturalism. They obstruct and they frustrate, and they believe they can see off reform.

"I see no huge change for the better at all. We have black and Asian officers come to us with complaints of quite overt discrimination. They talk about recruiting from ethnic minorities, but we are losing highly experienced ethnic minority officers who are already there because of the treatment they are getting."

There is the case of Andrea French, a constable with 11 years' experience in Lambeth, south London, an area meant to be a showcase for community policing, who is suing the Met for racism; there is PC Leslie Bowie, with 16 years' experience, until recently based in west London, claiming the same; there is Vahni Gowing, from Edmonton, north London, who received an out-of-court settlement from the Met for racist bullying ... DI Michael reels off names.

Some ethnic minority officers locked in dispute with the force claim they have been obstructed from getting the help of the BPA, an organisation that has had the public backing of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon. Sergeant Gurpal Virdi, of Asian origin, has been on enforced leave for 19 months after being arrested for allegedly sending racist hate mail. He vehemently denies the charge and maintains that it was brought after he complained about the conduct of an investigation into the stabbing of two students, one Indian, the other Iraqi, by a gang of white youths. His wife, Sathat, said: "We wanted to get the BPA involved in Gurpal's case, but we found the CIB [Complaints Investigations Bureau, which is investigating Sgt Virdi] was making it very difficult for us to do so.

"They have postponed the hearing until next February. This has been a very traumatic experience for us, we feel deeply disillusioned and angry."

Sgt Virdi has been attending the inquest into the death of Ricky Reel, a young Asian man whose body was found in the Thames. His family maintain he was the victim of a racist attack and, in an echo of the Lawrence case, the police have been accused of neglecting the investigation. Mrs Virdi continued: "My husband is showing solidarity with Ricky's family. He has seen the police attitude to racial attacks at first hand. It does not fill one with confidence."

This lack of confidence is now such that many black and Asian activists believe the police cannot be left to implement the Macpherson recommendations by themselves, and that outside supervision is imperative.

Lee Jasper, director of the racial equality pressure group the 1990 Trust and an adviser on race to Jack Straw, talks about a fundamental lack of confidence in the police. The trust has set up a fundraising scheme through the internet to help victims of racial attacks and abuse. It is buying out the home and business of a mixed-race couple, Mal Hussain and Linda Livingstone, who have suffered years of violence on a council estate in Lancaster.

"The police failed to protect Mal and Linda and there are many, many incidents like that," Mr Jasper said. "I am afraid Macpherson can only be implemented with outside guidance. There are forces of inertia within the police. They range from a culture of denial to destabilisation like `pushback'. There are officers from junior to middle rank who reject Macpherson outright. It is not a question of `physician, heal thyself'. The police will not heal themselves."

DI Michael is of the same opinion: "There will be a lot of opposition to this, but there really must be some form of outside supervision. Otherwise we are going to lose a great opportunity for change."