Author: Brendan Montague
Publication: The Sunday Times
Date: November 12, 2006
URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2449490,00.html
Introduction: Last week's horrifying trial
of three Asians is part of a worrying trend
No one who saw Angela Donald giving her dignified
statement that "justice had been done" outside the High Court in
Edinburgh as the racist murderers of her 15-year-old son were jailed last
week could feel anything but sympathy. For Margaret Massey there was more,
though - a sense of fellow-feeling and anger.
Kriss Donald was snatched off the street by
an Asian gang and subjected to a terrible ordeal: beaten, stabbed, doused
in petrol and set ablaze. Massey's son Lee, a rugby player, was also the subject
of a racially motivated attack when he was set upon by a gang of Iraqi asylum
seekers "out looking for someone" to hurt.
He and two friends were stabbed in a car park
in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in October 2003. Lee was then thrown into the
air and suffered devastating brain injuries when one of the gang used a car
to run him down. Three years later he has not fully recovered.
Massey still feels aggrieved that - in her
view - the police inquiry was hindered by political correctness because officers
feared that reporting that a white man had been so brutally attacked by asylum
seekers would further fuel racial tensions following several such brawls in
the area.
"The police didn't charge 13 members
of the gang even though I believe there was some evidence," she says.
"If our Lee had run over one of the Iraqis
he would have been arrested right away and sent to prison for the rest of
his life. The police are nervous when white people are attacked. In this area
this is happening more and more often."
The killing of Stephen Lawrence 13 years ago
sparked off an orgy of soul-searching throughout liberal Britain.
But we have never quite acknowledged that
violence comes from both sides. Gavin Hopley, 19, was kicked to death by up
to eight Asian men in Oldham in February 2002. Six men were convicted of violent
disorder and theft offences but no one has been convicted of his murder.
An Asian gang was also responsible for the
violent killing of 17-year-old Ross Parker, who was savagely stabbed with
hunting knives during an attack in Peterborough in 2001. David Lees, 23, was
run over and killed during a fight between whites and a gang of Asians in
Prestwich, Manchester, only last month.
There has been numerous inquiries and new
legislation since the Lawrence case and almost everyone concerned with race
relations will confirm that policing in cases involving race has improved
immeasurably since that tragic event.
However, the debate about the white victims
of racist attacks seems to have progressed no further in the past 10 years
- because of fears of "political correctness" and the threat of
the far right making political capital out of personal tragedy.
Sir Ian Blair, Britain's most senior police
officer, even attacked the press as "institutionally racist" in
January this year because cases such as the killing of Tom ap Rhys Pryce,
the solicitor, had gained more publicity than the equally terrible death on
the same day of Balbir Matharu, who had tried to stop thieves ripping the
radio from his car.
An extensive search of national and regional
newspaper reports, however, shows that cases involving black and minority
ethnic victims are widely reported, while there is an almost total boycott
of stories involving the white victims of similar attacks. Is this because
newspapers fear their reports appearing on BNP leaflets, or because the police
are less likely to issue appeals for help?
Peter Fahy, chief constable of Cheshire police
and spokesman on race issues for the Association of Chief Police Officers,
said: "A lot of police officers and other professionals feel almost the
best thing to do is to try and avoid [discussing such attacks] for fear of
being criticised. This is not healthy."
The silence means it is impossible to know
how many white people are victims of racist attacks in today's multicultural
Britain and whether they are right to feel aggrieved that the attacks they
suffer do not appear to get the same recognition as those of black victims.
Take the case of Christopher Yates, who had
been out celebrating a birthday with a group of friends in London and, concerned
about their safety, insisted on taking some of the women he was with to a
bus stop during a cool November evening two years ago.
Without warning, the 30-year-old office worker
was viciously assaulted by a gang of drunken Asian men - Sajid Zulfiqar, Zahid
Bashir and Imran Maqsood - who stamped on his head, smashing every bone in
his face before killing him.
After the murder the attackers shouted in
Urdu, "We have killed the white man - that will teach an Englishman to
interfere in Paki business." Despite this appalling racism, the three
were never convicted for committing a race crime - which would have meant
a heavier sentence.
This led to comparisons with the brutal and
unprovoked murder of Anthony Walker, a young black man who was attacked when
walking to a bus stop in Liverpool with a female friend. The 18-year-old was
bludgeoned with an ice axe by Paul Taylor and Michael Barton, both white,
and died later in hospital.
The attack was undoubtedly racially motivated,
but the fact that Taylor and Barton received sentences nine and three years
longer respectively than their equally racist counterparts in London has led
to suspicions that racist attacks against whites and non-whites are treated
differently in the courts.
At the same time there is growing concern
that attacks by Asians and other ethnic minorities have been steadily increasing,
leaving some white people feeling too scared to enter city areas dominated
by Asians and other minority ethnic groups.
Figures recently published under the Freedom
of Information Act seem to support such fears: of the 58 people killed because
of the colour of their skin between 1995 and 2004, almost half were described
as white.
The British Crime Survey reveals that in 2004,
87,000 people who described themselves as black or minority ethnic (BME) had
been victims of what they believed was a racially motivated crime. They had
suffered 49,000 violent attacks, with 4,000 being wounded.
At the same time a staggering 92,000 white
people also said that racism was the cause of an attack or crime they had
suffered. The number of violent attacks against whites reached 77,000, while
the number of white people who reported being wounded was five times the number
of black and minority ethnic victims at 20,000.
The truth is hard to get at: Jenny Bourne,
of the Institute of Race Relations, says its figures show only eight white
victims of racially motivated killings between 1995 and 2004: "The Kriss
Donald case involved an Asian gang which had been involved in violence already.
These cases are incredibly rare compared with the number of racist attacks
on minorities which take place every day."
What is clear is that unless the attacks on
whites are reported and discussed, the truth about what is happening out there
will remain hazy.
