After the death of a black person in custody, information on the circumstances in which it occurred is hard to come by. The police force, as of nature, closes ranks, releasing statements to the press, which can misinform about the victim. The UK’s press colludes with this, failing to properly investigate the role of the authorities in a suspect’s death. The author focuses on the case of Joy Gardner, who died following a deportation raid in 1993. Following her death, the press presented her as a violent, aggressive ‘illegal immigrant’. Gardner’s case shows how the press constructs a Black folk devil, and in so doing can serve to justify police brutality.
LittlejohnRichard, ‘Duggan was a gangster not Nelson Mandela’, Daily Mail (10January2014).
2.
It is significant that the most important work on deaths in custody has been done by freelance journalists and independent writers and film-makers, for example: Diane Taylor’s work on deaths in detention; Tanika Gupta’s play Gladiator Games on the death of Zahid Mubarek in Feltham young offenders’ institution; The Hounding of David Oluwale, based on Kester Aspden’s research; and Ken Fero’s seminal film Injustice, along with many others by the Migrant Media collective on family campaigns for justice after the death of a loved one in police custody.
3.
This is spent on supporting a 24-hour press bureau and four teams of specialist press officers; marketing campaigns; internal campaigns; and external relations with corporate stakeholders. Information obtained from FOI requests received 15 May 2014. Thanks to CallaghanVincent.
4.
‘The inaccurate police account of how newspaper-seller Ian Tomlinson died during the G20 protests in London in 2009 was at first swallowed whole by the bulk of the media … The key amateur footage that disproved the police line was sent to Guardian journalist Paul Lewis largely because he had already shown himself willing … to question the police version of events.’ HarcupTony, ‘Reporting the next battle: lessons from Orgreave’, in Settling Scores: the media, the police and the miners’ strike (London, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, 2014), pp. 95-105.
5.
See DaviesNick, Flat Earth News (London, Vintage, 2009).
6.
See, for instance, SivanandanA., ‘The violence of the violated’, IRR News (16August2011).
7.
FilkinElizabeth, ‘The ethical issues arising from the relationship between police and media’ (January2012), p. 46.
8.
It was reported that the relationship between the CRA and the Met had broken down after the 2012 Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press, with reporters claiming to find more barriers to their access to privileged information.
9.
For nearly fifteen years, the Met’s ex-Director of Public Affairs Dick Fedorcio’s ‘most regular contact [was] with reporters who usually, but not exclusively, belong to the CRA’. For more details, see the witness statement of Dick Fedorcio to the Leveson Inquiry.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Witness statement of John Joseph Donald Twomey to the Leveson Inquiry.
12.
See VictorCilius, of the Newham Monitoring Project, in ‘Racism, liberty and the war on terror’, Race & Class (Vol. 48, no. 4, 2007).
13.
The words are those of the Daily Mail’s Stephen Wright, quoted in the Press Gazette (14November2013).
14.
Evening Standard (10August1993).
15.
Sunday Times (8August1993); Evening Standard (10August1993); Telegraph (4August1993); Independent (6August1993).
16.
Daily Express (9August1993).
17.
Daily Star (5August1993).
18.
Sunday Times (8August1993).
19.
Daily Mail (4August1993).
20.
Daily Mail (5August1993). The Evening Standard reported that Mr Gardner had demanded £5,000 before talking to them, which they refused. He ‘received a substantial sum of money for his story from a Sunday newspaper’ (13August1993).
21.
For example, GardnerJoseph claimed that Gardner’s own mother, SimpsonMyrna, would not live with her because of her ‘violent behaviour’. Simpson vehemently rejects the claim, along with the suggestion that the marriage was a sham. For more information, see ‘Did justice die along with my daughter?’, Independent (26August1993). See also an interview with Gardner’s friend SterlingNellie, in which she claimed that her husband forced her to ‘choose between keeping her marriage or keeping her son’; quoted in ‘The lies being spread about my friend Joy’, Evening Standard (13August1993).
22.
News of the World (8August1993).
23.
Evening Standard (6August1993).
24.
Sunday Times (8August1993). The feature was written by LeppardDavid, who later criticised the Met for being too soft and conceding to ‘Islamic sensitivities’ by allowing Muslims to throw their shoes in protest at the invasion of Gaza outside the Israeli embassy 2009, despite 119 protesters, mostly Muslims, being arrested.
25.
Lest we forget, it was under Condon’s tenure that officers from the Met’s Special Demonstrations Squad went undercover to spy on the grieving family of murdered black teenager LawrenceStephen. For more information, see EvansRobLewisPaul, Undercover: the true story of Britain’s secret police (London, Faber & Faber, 2013).
26.
‘We’re not to blame blast death cops’, Daily Star (11August1993); ‘We’re scapegoats, say suspended officers’, Daily Mail (11August1993); ‘Our struggle with deportee Joy, by suspended police’, Daily Express (11August1993); ‘How Joy Gardner died, by mystery “go between”’, Today (11August1993); The Sun (15August1993).
27.
The Sun (15August1993).
28.
See, for example, ‘Gagged deportee “was suffocated”’, Guardian (11August1993).
29.
LittlejohnRichard, ‘Barmy Bernie and a dose of the Trots’, Sun (5August1993).
30.
Described in The Sun (6August1993). Littlejohn’s attitude provoked calls for a boycott of his ‘dangerous and pernicious’ coverage.
31.
See RoseDavid, A Climate of Fear: the murder of PC Blakelock and the case of the Tottenham Three (London, Bloomsbury, 1992).
32.
RoseDavidGerardLesley, Observer (8August1993).
33.
For a fuller analysis, see MurrayNancy, ‘Anti-racists and other demons: the press and ideology in Thatcher’s Britain’, Race & Class (Vol. 27, no. 3, 1986).
34.
Daily Mail (27April1994).
35.
LittlejohnRichard, Daily Mail (16June1995).
36.
McKinstryLeo, The Sun (16June1995). McKinstry later led a backlash against the MacPherson report’s landmark finding of institutional racism in the police while working at the Telegraph. Now, as a columnist for the Daily Express, he campaigns for the repeal of the Human Rights Act, the deportation of foreign national prisoners and the end of ‘mass immigration’. See ‘The Press, the police and MacPherson’, CARF (No. 49, April−May1999); and GraysonJohn, ‘“Veto nationalism”: populism, nationalism and the Tories’, IRR News (11January2012). See also BurnettJon, ‘When class becomes a commodity’, IRR News (4September2014).
37.
See, for instance, GutzmoreCecil, ‘Capital, “black youth” and crime’, Race & Class (Vol. 25, 1983).
38.
‘No justice for Joy’, CARF (No. 27, August−September1995).
39.
Daily Mail (20May1995).
40.
Spectator (24June1995).
41.
Daily Mail (15June1995).
42.
Telegraph (16June1995). Emphasis added.
43.
LittlejohnRichard, Daily Mail (16June1995).
44.
JunorJohn, Mail on Sunday (18June1995); EvansDavid, Sunday Express (18June1995). While editor of the Sunday Express, Junor reportedly refused to publish an interview with the prominent gay African American author, BaldwinJames, on the grounds that he was a ‘black pervert’. See LordGraham, Press Gazette (10April2013).
45.
Daily Express (15June1995).
46.
Spectator, op. cit. The article went further with its accusation that the police had been hobbled by a misguided politically-correct elite: ‘It is no secret, for instance, that black crime is increasing. Of course you cannot prove it, as statistics are deliberately concealed by scared or political [sic] correct authorities. But it seems to be a fact.’
47.
Mind-Forg’d Manacles, for example, by rightwing think-tank Civitas, claimed that political correctness had forced the Metropolitan police to acquiesce to black people’s ‘grievance’, which ‘demanded the right not to be policed’. The report, which prompted a feature in the Daily Mail (6August2012), was published twelve months after Met officers shot and killed DugganMark. For further discussion, see Erfani-GhettaniRyan, ‘Did Macpherson manacle the police?’, IRR News (13September2012).
48.
Black deaths in police custody: the story of Roger Sylvester 1968-1999, Inquest and Unison.
49.
AthwalHarmit, ‘Roger Sylvester – police condemned for black death’, IRR News (9October2003).
50.
BarkasBetsy, ‘Powell family’s police complaint upheld’, IRR News (7November2013); PalmerAlasdair, ‘The Michael Powell case shows how charges of racism hobble the police’, Daily Telegraph (19December2009).
51.
Stockwell Two: an investigation into complaints about the Metropolitan Police Service’s handling of public statements following the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005, Independent Police Complaints Commission (July2007). HaymanAndy was in charge of the initial inquiries into alleged phone hacking at the News of the World. In 2009 he concluded that no investigation was needed, despite the Met’s possession of the notebooks of MulcaireGlen, which detailed a history of hacking offences and implicated nearly thirty News International journalists in the practice. Hayman later left the police to work for News International as a columnist.
52.
Times (23July2005), accessed via Spinwatch’s online Powerbase resource: powerbase.info
53.
News of the World (24July2005).
54.
‘New claims emerge over Menezes death’, Guardian (17August2005).
55.
For an account of Mark Duggan’s death and the misinformation that was spread in the aftermath, see BarkasBetsy, ‘Framing the death of Mark Duggan’, IRR News (17April2014).
