Justice for smiley
It’s time the London police answered hard questions over the death of UK reggae and rap figure Smiley Culture.
Eamonn McCann, 30 Aug 2011
Six weeks before the English riots, more than 600 people marched from Brixton to Scotland Yard chanting, “No justice, no peace!” and calling for a public inquiry into the death of Smiley Culture.
Smiley will be remembered as one of the most significant figures in the history of British rap. He was the first MC to use a mixture of London street-talk and Jamaican patois, set to a rapid-flow beat. He had hits with ‘Police Officer’ and ‘Cockney Translation’, fronted a Channel 4 youth programme, had a small part in Julien Temple’s Absolute Beginners. He had a wonderful way with words. The Guardian described him as “a fabulous storyteller”.
Smiley died on March 15 from a stab wound through his heart. At the time, Metropolitan Police officers were executing a search warrant at his Surrey home. Within 48 hours, the Independent Police Complaints Commission confirmed the Met’s story that Smiley had gone into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea while officers searched the house and, without warning or preliminaries, had picked up a kitchen knife and stabbed himself to death.
Said a family spokesman: “It beggars belief that they let someone go into the kitchen where there are sharp utensils, hot water and whatever else, to make a cup of tea. I’ve never heard of anyone whose house has been raided and who is being held as a suspect afforded these kind of liberties... I can speak for the family and the rest of the community – we don’t believe it.”
It was the IPCC which initially endorsed the Met’s explanation that Mark Duggan, the man whose death triggered the London riots, had died after opening fire on police officers. Six days after the riots erupted, the IPCC admitted that it may “inadvertently” have misled the public. Readers may wish to calculate the odds against the IPCC making this admission had it not been that London was burning.
Isn’t there a lesson in that for Smiley’s family and friends?
I gather that people in Donegal are waiting with anxiety and dread for the report on clerical child sex abuse in the Raphoe diocese.
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