The MacPherson Report of February 1999 – see here – changed the nature of community and society in Britain. On the 22nd of April 1993 Stephen Lawrence, a young black man of working class parentage, was murdered on a street in south London. Early investigation by the London Metropolitan Police was ineffective. But the following month Stephen’s parents met Nelson Mandela, who was visiting London, and Stephen’s murder was transformed into an international news story about Racism – unlike the murder of Kriss Donald in Glasgow a year later (here). 

The MacPherson Report arose from the enquiry by Lord MacPherson of Cluny into the Met Police’s bungled probe into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The Report saw his blackness, not his working class origin, as the source of the Met’s early blunders. No doubt about it, the source was Racism. 

The English word Racism began with Leon Trotsky writing in French, something Joseph Stalin could not do. Trotsky’s “Le Racisme” became Racism in English. By “Le Racisme” Trotsky meant a belief in white superiority, and Racism & Racist are the English words that attribute that belief to other people and to their thoughts, words and deeds. 

Before the cultural revolution in the Anglosphere in the 1960’s the stock word for racial antipathy & antagonism was Racialism, which could include unfavourable beliefs of any race about any other. The word Racialism is rarely heard today, it has given way to Trotsky’s words Racism & Racist which refer to white racialism only. 

Black people can never be Racist, though they can be racialist. Blacks are always victims of Racism, especially if they believe in white superiority themselves. Only white people can be guilty of Racism. Consequently Anti-Racism has become part of a racialist campaign against white people. 

Although the MacPherson Report discovered no “racist” word or deed by any Met Police officer, it found the Met Police guilty of “Institutional Racism” as defined by its star witness Robin Oakley, an eminent authority on training public sector staff in race relations. 

For Robin Oakley “Institutional Racism” is covert and hidden. It is a matter of thoughts and feelings, attitudes and habits – of which those who are “institutionally racist” are themselves unaware. It can amount to discrimination through “unwitting” prejudice, ignorance and thoughtlessness. Robin Oakley made no bones about it, he found that although hidden and covert, “Institutional Racism is pervasive throughout the culture and institutions of the whole of British society” [MacPherson “The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry” Cmd, 4262-I, p. 26].

The recommendations of the MacPherson Report were adopted by the government. MacPherson made seventy Recommendations to be followed by public sector, that is taxpayer-funded, staff in Britain. Recommendation 12 for the guidance of police officers was that “A racist incident is any incident perceived as such by the victim or any third party”, in other words “perceived as such” by anybody.

So perception is proof, not just presumption, of Racism. But proof of what? Just what is meant by “Racism” here? If Racism is anything perceived as such by anybody, then Racism can be anything at all. On the BBC radio programme “Thinking Allowed” Dr Ben Pitcher, a senior university lecturer in Sociology, opined that the “Gardeners’ Question Time” programme on BBC Radio 4 habitually broadcasts disguised racist messages. How so ? Through its frequent mentions of soil purity and invasive non-native plant species. Dr Pitcher knows Racism when it stares him in the face. 

A fellow panelist, Baroness Lola Young, a cross bench peer and former professor of Cultural Studies, seconded him with her memories of the panic of gardeners in the 1980’s over invasive rhododendrons, which she linked to street attacks on Pakistanis. Dr Pitcher in his book “Consuming Race” perceives Racism as prompting the purchasing choices of consumers. So you are racist if you shop at IKEA – because IKEA is Nordic and therefore white. Paranoid suspicion of racial persecution will know no limits. 

If Racism is anything perceived as such, then paranoia will be enthroned in power, and the paranoiac sees Racism everywhere, just as John Calvin saw Sin everywhere in his Republic of Geneva. The paranoid anti-racist conjures up the racists whom he persecutes, when racism is anything “perceived as such.” As when pensioner George Staunton was charged by police with “racially aggravated criminal damage” for writing “Free Speech For England” on a derelict house in Liverpool. 

When a racist is anybody “perceived as such”, anti-racism can be capricious in its choice of targets. 14 year old schoolgirl Codie Stott was brought to trial in Manchester, for asking in Harop Fold High School to be in a study group that spoke English, as she didn’t speak Urdu. Any white person can be perceived as “racist”, and caprice in its choice of victims is an aspect of tyrannical rule. 

Are robbery or murder “anything perceived as such”? Obviously not, but Racism is, according to Macpherson, so it is an offence unlike any other. When perception is proof of the occurrence of racism, there will be endless “racist incidents” in Britain. For instance, racism “perceived as such” makes possible the routine response from black criminals that their arrest by white police officers is institutionally racist. 

The concept of Institutional Racism encourages innuendo and insinuation, springing from suspicion and distrust of white people. The MacPherson Report has legitimised paranoid delusions of racial persecution, and consequently aggravated interracial acrimony.

MacPherson has aggravated interracial animosity by defining “racism” as anything “perceived as such” which is a definition as imprecise as it is possible to be. It is a measure of the marked decline in the quality of Britain’s governing class that MacPherson rose to eminence within it. And that such idiocy as MacPherson’s is now accepted & included in the canon of government practice is further evidence of the growing imbecility of our governing class. 

 

Photo by 4WardEverUK

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