Twenty years ago today Rolan Adams was murdered by cowardly racist thugs, but he will never be forgotten.

Ignorance
A gang of at least eight racist thugs attacked two defenceless black youths, making their way home from a youth club in Thamesmead, South-East London in the evening of February 21st 1991. It changed the lives of Richard and Audrey Adams forever. Instead of being allowed to grieve their loss, the thugs made sure that Rolan would never see 16 and Nathan would be scarred life. Loren was just seven then. How do you tell a child that they will never see their brother again, especially when it was so callous and senseless?

The institutionally racist Thamesmead Police decided that territorialism was the main motive for the attack – nonsense. The attackers were white thugs with a history of racist crimes. Some of them were on bail for the violent attack on a teenage Marlon Conton at the time. It mattered not a whit to police or the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Both connived to remove racism from the murder, but that was not the only crime committed that night. Nathan was also attacked. The same youths evaded all sanction for that crime. Police and CPS were not interested in prosecuting them for that.

More Ignorance
Nathan reacted angrily. He returned to Thamesmead, seeking to confront the thugs who robbed him of his elder brother. At 14 he had to live with the trauma and guilt of surviving the attack. There was no Victim Support for him. There was no assistance for him. He had to rely on his family to keep him strong and level-headed. It was a hard task and it took time and the whole family had been robbed of their birthright.

Police insisted that territorialism was the most important feature of the attack. What a crock? And to its eternal disgrace the CPS relied exclusively on the police view of the crime and evidence gathered by them. Nathan was no fool. He knew that police were removing the most important feature of the crime – a factor that would now be considered a serious aggravating feature of the crime – racism. An independent witness, Stephen Borland, saw the attack. He also heard it. His testimony leaves no room for doubt as Borland heard the thugs hurl numerous racist expletives at the two black boys. This was undoubtedly a racist murder and also a racist attack.

But where did police and the CPS get the idea that it was not a racist murder  in the first place? Borland made it clear that it was a racist attack and he had no axe to grind. Nathan was adamant that he had survived a murderous racist attack. The only people who said that it was not racist were the racist thugs who committed the hate crimes. The fact that both the police and CPS believed lying racist thugs exposes shameful institutional racism and added to the ordeal of Nathan and his family. Shame on them!