The clan chief who wrote the Macpherson Report
Sir William Macpherson 1926-2021
When Doreen and Neville
Lawrence learnt that William Macpherson had been appointed to the inquiry into “matters arising” from the murder of their 18-year-old son Stephen, in a racially motivated attack on 22 April 1993, they were not impressed, said The Guardian. Macpherson’s rulings, as a high court judge, suggested a conservative, possibly illiberal outlook; as a former Army officer, and the 27th chief of his Scottish clan, he was clearly an establishment man; and as another lawyer put it, he was not “exactly up to date with racial awareness training”. The Lawrences’ lawyers asked for him to be removed; but as the hearing got under way, the Lawrences and their supporters realised that Macpherson was a man of “integrity”. He listened to their concerns, and he listened to the evidence – and he was shocked by what he learnt. The result was the “excoriating” Macpherson Report, with its conclusion that the police investigation into Stephen Lawrence’s killing, by a white racist gang, had been “marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership”.
Sir William Macpherson of Cluny and Blairgowrie – known as Cluny – was born in 1926, the son of the 26th chief of Clan Macpherson. Raised at Newton Castle, the family home near Blairgowrie, he was educated at Wellington College, and Trinity College, Oxford, and served with the Scots Guards from 1944 to 1947, rising to captain. Later, he joined the 21st Special Air Service Regiment of the TA, and became first its commander, then its honorary colonel. Called to the bar in 1952, he took silk in 1971, and was appointed a judge of the High Court, Queen’s Bench Division, in 1983, when he was also knighted. Among his higher-profile cases was the trial of Robert Black, a notorious Scottish serial killer who had kidnapped and killed three young girls; Macpherson recommended he serve at least 35 years in prison.
Macpherson was 71, and had been retired for 18 months, when he got a call asking him to chair the inquiry into Lawrence’s death, said The Times. The case had by then become a cause célèbre. Suspects had been arrested, but released; a private prosecution had failed; and the Daily Mail had printed on its front page photographs of five men, whom it accused of having killed Lawrence – and dared them to sue if it was wrong. Macpherson wasn’t sure if he should take on the task, so he consulted his wife, Sheila. She told him: “It’s your duty to do it.” He started work in 1997, and soon forged a good relationship with his three advisers: Dr John Sentamu, then Bishop of Stepney; Tom Cook, a retired police chief; and Richard Stone, a GP and chairman of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality. The hearings lasted just over a year, and the report was published in 1999. “Not only did it bring into mainstream use the phrase ‘institutional racism’, which Macpherson defined as ‘the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin’; it recommended an end to the double jeopardy rule” for murder. Remarkably, the report was accepted by the Metropolitan Police, as well as by the Lawrence family. However, it was furiously denounced by some right-wingers, who felt it was unduly harsh on the police, and that being branded institutionally racist would make it harder for them to do their jobs. Macpherson received death threats. In public life, he observed, “one must have broad shoulders”. He stood by his report, noting recently that while he couldn’t stop people from being racist, it had given Britain a “strong push in the right direction”.