Stephen Lawrence’s mother has launched an attack on Boris Johnson:
Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, yesterday launched a fierce personal attack on Boris Johnson, saying he would destroy multicultural London if elected mayor, and that no informed black person would vote for him.
I wasn’t aware that Ms Lawrence spoke for all black people? News to me. Why has she taken agin Boris?
Ms Lawrence, who does not normally become involved in party politics, said she had been moved to make the criticisms by her anger at Mr Johnson’s attitude to the Macpherson inquiry in 1999 into the Metropolitan police’s failure to bring her son’s killers to justice 14 years ago.
Really? So it seems that Boris is guilty of thought crimes, then?
“Those people that think he is a lovable rogue need to take a good look at themselves, and look at him. I just find his remarks very offensive. I think once people read his views, there is no way he is going to get the support of any people in the black community.”
It’s starting to look that way. I happen to like Boris. Indeed, I frequently share his views. This is because Boris supports such liberal concepts as free speech, freedom of association and so on; the hallmarks of a civil, civilised society.
Mr Johnson wrote a series of articles at the time of the Macpherson inquiry, claiming some of its recommendations were born of political correctness and that the furore around the murder had created the whiff of a witchhunt against the police. The inquiry team found the police institutionally racist.
Mr Johnson was especially condemnatory of a “weird recommendation that the law might be changed so as to allow prosecution for racist language or behaviour ‘other than in a public place’.”
So, criticising the Macpherson report is not allowed now. Frankly, the Macpherson report deserved being roundly criticised. That the police investigation into Stephen’s death was incredibly incompetent is true enough; that those failures should have been investigated was certainly quite proper. The outcome was, frankly, nonsense. The police were incompetent and need to learn from their mistakes; the institutionalised racism charge was an arrant piece of politically correct poppycock and Boris’ criticism, particularly of the recommendations regarding racist language was perfectly valid – it comes back to the freedom of speech issue. You know; “I abhor what you say but defend your right to say it”. Not, however, for Ms Lawrence. She not only abhors what Boris says, she doesn’t want him to be allowed to say it on pain of curtailing his political career. I appreciate that it is not politically correct to attack the Lawrences but despite their loss I am going to; Ms Lawrence is an illiberal bigot. In this country – at the moment, while illiberal fuckers are kept from stifling free speech completely – people are allowed to criticise official reports and still stand for office. Don’t like it? Piss off to Cuba or some other illiberal dictatorship where thinking and speaking agin the politically correct philosophy of the incumbent regime is a punishable crime.
She added: “He felt that people should be entitled to say what they want. It sounds to me that what he believes is that because something is said and done in private it is acceptable, but clearly it can never be acceptable to hold those views. Anyway, what is said in private normally manifests itself out in public.”
Yes, in a free country people can say what they want no matter how offensive to others, people can (and will) hold whatever views they want; that’s the whole fucking point of a free society. It is not up to Ms Lawrence to decide what views are acceptable, nor to decide what is to be a thought crime, nor, for that matter to decide who may be a suitable candidate for political office. If she doesn’t like Boris for Mayor, she can vote for someone else; that’s how it works.
Ms Lawrence gets todays Neil Harding award for her outstanding contribution to illiberal fuckwittery.
This is really deplorable. Doreen Lawrence deserves, and has received, a great deal of public sympathy. No-one can be proud of, or satisfied with, the way her son’s murder case – or that of Damilola Taylor – was handled by the police. But for her to attempt ‘politically correct’ censorship of candidates for public office displays ignorance of, and contempt for, the democratic process. Maybe she should enrol on a civics course before engaging in further polemics. Or why doesn’t she stand for Mayor herself?
I think you will find upon a little digging, the grubby hand of Ken Livingstone at work. Playing the race card is a particularly low, dirty political trick and one I would expect of that obnoxious, totalitarian fuckwit Ken Livingstone.
I’m running a post on Boris later and have done an about face and now think he’d be good for the reasons you do but also because I’d love to see the London Olympics in his impish hands, rather than the dead hand of Red Ken.