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Silcott's done his time - so give him a break
By Will Self, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 15.11.02Anyone who remembers the racial climate in London in the early 1980s should be able to understand the significance of the forthcoming release of Winston Silcott. Silcott, who was convicted and then cleared of the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots in Tottenham, has remained the Janusfaced symbol of bad race relations in our city to this day.
On one side are those who view Silcott as the incarnation of all their fears. It matters not a jot that he was cleared of Blakelock's killing, the fact is - they say - that he has a string of convictions for violence, and has currently served 17 years for another killing. At 6ft 6in, and with the three-footlong beard he has been growing, tucked in a bag around his neck, Silcott is a gift-order bogeyman sent from Central Casting.
Earlier this week, when he left the open prison in Kent where he is currently incarcerated, there were photographers from The Sun on hand to record his shopping trip in Ashford, and a brace of reporters to write it all up in righteously scandalised tones.
But, on the other side, there are those who have always maintained his innocence, not just of the Blakelock killing, but the 1984 murder of boxer Anthony Smith as well. To these people - who are by no means exclusively from the black community - Silcott was fitted up for it all.
Far from being a violent rabble rouser, he was a wayward youth, whose persistent run-ins with the police radicalised him and made him something of a community leader. As for the beard-in-a-bag, this is Silcott's symbol of his innocence, which he has vowed to shave off only when he's released.
I don't intend to come down on the pro-Silcott side, but what I will say to those who continue to vilify him is this: a society that cannot extend forgiveness to Silcott is one that will continue to fail young black men who feel marginalised and stigmatised. Whether guilty as charged or innocent, he's done his time. The continued campaign against him is a sickening product of racial stereotyping.
The fact that he was cleared on appeal in 1991 was a de facto acknowledgement that police evidence was fabricated against him. The Met should remember this, just as it should never forget being compelled to admit its own " institutionalised racism". The bad old days of the sus laws that led to the Brixton and Tottenham riots of the early 1980s must never return.
The black community is facing up honestly to its problems, especially with the influx of more and cheaper crack cocaine to the inner city. In The Voice this week there's an editorial comment which says it all: "The police might be stopping black people in larger numbers, but until the number of black people engaging in street crime falls we cannot accuse the police of racism."
The same piece goes on to point out that crimes of violence that don't involve robbery or burglary are disproportionately committed by whites, before concluding that no racial grouping is predisposed to criminality.
If the minority black community can be this searching and fearless in its self-examination, then it's up to the majority white community to do the same. The past few years in London have seen race relations all too often move shakily one step forward, only to lurch two steps back. The stepping stones have been almost exclusively bad ones, the murder of Stephen Lawrence being the most obvious.
Let's make Winston Silcott's re-entry into a community that was torn apart by racial strife 20 years ago an occasion for bringing the two sides of the city together in peace and amity.
Wanted: a demigod for Lambeth
Anyone who saw Brian Paddick's performance on Newsnight this week cannot have failed to be impressed.
For those of us who have always been supporters, it was no surprise that he came across as the clean-cut, sensible, intelligent officer we've always maintained he was. Let's hope his superiors recognise it and let him have his old job back in Lambeth.
For those of us resident in the borough, the idea that our commander wanted to - as he told Kirsty Wark - "do this job more than anything else" was both reassuring and amazing.
Paddick wanting to clean up crime in Lambeth is on a par with Hercules being desperate to clean out the Augean stables - something that most of would us heartily wish to avoid. On that basis alone the man deserves to be regarded as a bit of a demigod.
Only Fergie knows how to play this royal farce
How sad it is to see the Duchess of York won't be doing a one-hour "special" with chat-show supremo Michael Parkinson after all.
Fergie may be the only member of the royal family who truly understands the way to play it. She's always seemed to me a pantomime figure.
Surely, with all these revelations of camp antics in the Prince of Wales's household, the Queen must appreciate that the best way to present the whole farrago is as a knockabout farce.
Far from Fergie keeping her mouth shut, she should soldier on - and become a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother.
My fence and I
If I were the Palace, I'd play down this stuff about Royals selling off the gaudy and gauche gifts they're presented with by foreign potentates.
I'm not insinuating anything guv', but among the street traders of south London it's long been understood that certain ... erm ... items can be fairly easy to come by.
But then I would say that, wouldn't I? Sitting as I am currently on a Tongalese palmheart throne-chair, while sipping mango juice from a carved ibex horn.
Blair's justice is a dog's dinner
Yet again my one-man campaign to have Elizabeth II joyously crowned "Queen of Dogs" has received important - if inadvertent - support.
What a delight it was to see Tony Blair - one of the Windsors most beautifully groomed poodles - up on his hind legs in the Kennels of Parliament yesterday. No matter how much that Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the Leader of the Opposition, howled against it, Tony's speech has to be acknowledged a major triumph. If, that is, you consider its new criminal-justice provisions as applying solely to dogs.
No sensible dog owner would dream of allowing a pack of dogs to decide the fate of a canine malefactor, any more than she would fail to take previous biting incidents into account when meting out punishment.
And as for double jeopardy, a good mistress knows better than to throw the savaged slipper or peed-upon bath mat out before real responsibility has been allocated. Why, even the crustiest of Old English Sheepdogs must admit that it will be nice to lap at a bowl of lager whenever it feels like it - under the new dog-licensing laws.
