In praise of David Blunkett
Today two men have been convicted of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. Currently there’s a lot of talk of justice on twitter. Although it seems to me that the fact that it’s taken nearly 19 years to get any conviction at all will probably somewhat water down the impact of that justice for the family and friends of Stephen Lawrence.
Family and friends who’ve campaigned so tirelessly and with so much dignity for two decades. Initially in the face of racism from the police. These friends and family are rightly being praised for their quiet stoicism in the face of what often looked like overwhelming opposition from ‘the system’ in their pursuit of justice for their son.
But I also want to pause a moment to mention the contribution of David Blunkett to today’s conviction. He wasn’t a universally popular Home Secretary, particularly in the Labour party. And the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was a controversial piece of legislation. Certainly there was much to dislike in it. From almost any political perspective!!!
I was a press officer at the Home Office for much of the controversial bill’s passage through Parliament. Although I wasn’t the lead (I headed the prisons and probation desk, before the creation of Justice), I was across many elements of the bill because of the cross over with my sister desk, the Criminal Justice desk. The many controversial elements to the bill meant there was a lot fo horse trading over its provisions and many amendments laid and negotiated over, by the Government and by the opposition.
The Double Jeopardy provision, that made today’s conviction possible, was itself the subject of considerable controversy. Many, very acute legal minds argued that a verdict in a criminal trial should be both binding and final. In all the horse trading and lobbying that went on, I was never once aware of Blunkett wavering for even a second. His commitment to this section of the bill was absolute.
In no small part due to his firm commitment to enabling the Lawrence family to secure justice should the police ever be able to recover their mistakes of the original criminal investigation. Today they did. In such a controversial bill it may have been easy or tempting to cede this point in favour of other areas, perhaps provisions that could have been viewed as having a bigger or wider impact. That David Blunkett didn’t is to his emmense credit. And while I’m a long way from being his biggest political fan, I always try to give credit where it’s due.
