Stephen Lawrence Enquiry

In the 1990s Hassan Mahamdallie was a reporter on The Socialist Worker newspaper, assigned to report on race and racism in British society – from racially motivated crimes, to deaths in police custody, to enforced deportations.

In this wide-ranging conversation with The Colour of Our Politics hosts, Javaad Alipoor and Tanya Vital, Hassan shares a personal eyewitness account of the murder of black British teenager, Stephen Lawrence. He explains how the dynamics of institutional racism played out from the very first minutes of the police investigation all the way through to the 1998-9 Macpherson public inquiry; about the unrelenting determination of Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, their supporters and legal team to put the police on trial; and the extraordinary yet brief moment – on publication of the Macpherson Report which outlined urgent reforms of the UK police service, and the seismic shift that then followed in public trust in the police – that it looked like the Met was on the brink of being disbanded.

The Colour of Our Politics is a new podcast from Javaad Alipoor and Tanya Vital about the history of anti-racism in the UK, what’s going on today and what might happen in the future..