Hamill Campaign gets London boost
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Jeremy Hardy
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Three of London's most eminent lawyers and human rights campaigners
joined Diane Hamill in Camden Council Chamber in London on Tuesday 14
December to speak to a joint meeting of the Robert Hamill Campaign and
the recently formed National Civil Rights Movement. The NCRM provides
support for the victims of racial injustice and promotes family-based
campaigns to challenge the criminal justice system and institutional
racism.
Diane Hamill explained the circumstances of her brother's murder, and
the subsequent police harassment faced by her family, particularly one
of her brothers. She recounted a number of incidents of overt police
intimidation, including her wedding day when, as she left the
hairdressers, she discovered her car had been deliberately blocked in
a nearby car park by a police Land Rover
Imran Khan, solicitor to the Stephen Lawrence family, Michael
Mansfield QC, Gareth Peirce, together with Sukhdev Reel, mother of
racist murder victim Ricky Reel, Suresh Grover of the Southall
Monitoring Group, Jeremy Hardy and Dr Robbie McVeigh of the Rosemary
Nelson Campaign, gathered to urge those present to become involved in
the various campaigns for truth and justice and to join the National
Civil Rights Movement.
Suresh Grover told the audience that the Metropolitan Police inquiry
into the death of Stephen Lawrence had been ``an epic tale of racism,
an epic tale of corruption'' and urged increased solidarity between
black and Irish people in campaigning for the human and civil rights
of both groups. He said that whilst this and a number of other
individual campaigns had succeeded in calling the authorities to
account, a more systematic approach was needed.
``Where we have failed is in linking organically the anti-racist
struggle with the struggle of other communities in this country, in
particular the struggle of the Irish people, and we cannot go into the
next century in that predicament. We say that the murder of Robert
Hamill was a racist murder in the same way as the murder of Stephen
Lawrence.''
In an impassioned contribution, Michael Mansfield QC, who for legal
reasons was unable to speak directly about Robert Hamill, outlined the
malign, anti-democratic effects of both the new Criminal Justice Act
and the new permanent Prevention of Terrorism Act which also received
its first reading in the British parliament on Tuesday to profound
disquiet on the part of civil rights campaigns and a number of Labour
backbenchers.
Referring to the case of Stephen Lawrence, he talked about precisely
what campaigners mean when they speak of the corruption of the
Metropolitan Police Force. By corruption, he said, he did not mean
``corruption in the [Neil] Hamilton sense of money in brown envelopes''
but ``a different kind of corruption and that is intellectual
corruption. Actually, racism itself is corruption, whether it occurs
in Ireland or whether it occurs here''.
Speaking about Robert Hamill, Jeremy Hardy explained to the audience
that his murder should be classified as racist. ``Sectarianism in
Ireland is not a matter of theological difference. Loyalists have a
settler mentality, a colonial mentality. They do see Catholics as
inferior. They're all right if they know their place, if they're not
uppity. When they get uppity, some of them have to be taught a lesson
to keep them in their place. Portadown is the absolute crucible of
this and it has got worse since the Garvaghy residents have said `we
are not putting up with it any more'. Sectarian murders have got worse
in Portadown because they are determined to get a march down that
road.''
British Labour MP Kevin McNamara called on Wednesday, 8 December for
an independent judicial inquiry into the killing of Robert Hamill.
McNamara urged MPs to back Sinn Féin, Amnesty International, the
International Relations Committee of the US Congress, the SDLP,
Alliance and the Woman's Coalition in calling for an inquiry.
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