Charlene Downes: missing from Wikipedia
There are few people who would decry the peerage announced today for Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. With her remorseless, dignified campaigning she made it impossible for British society to ignore the appalling slaughter of her son.
Wikipedia, as is often the case, summarises the story with admirable lucidity:
“The Stephen Lawrence case became a cause célebre and one of the highest profile racial killings in UK history; its fallout included profound cultural changes to attitudes on racism and the police…”
But here’s a funny thing. As I was looking at Wikipedia’s Lawrence entry, I tried to compare it to Wikipedia’s treatment of other “racialised” killings. Like that of white 19-year-old Gavin Hopley.
Ten years ago, Gavin Hopley, who worked as a security guard in Oldham, was hoping to get a late-night taxi with two friends. They approached a number of cars, in the Muslim area of Glodwick, which had seen serious racial tension in preceding months.
Suddenly they were surrounded by at least a dozen Asian youths, armed with lumps of wood. After a vicious scuffle, where he was kicked in the face, and clubbed with fence-posts, Gavin was left unconscious in the road. His friends escaped. A few days later Gavin died from his injuries.
No one was ever convicted of Gavin’s murder, though several men served a few months for “violent disorder”. Hopley’s family said they felt “let down” by the justice system.
It’s not hard to see parallels between the cases of Lawrence and Hopley. Both killings were brutal and, it seems, motivated by race. Both suffered from imperfect police investigations. Years passed, as both crimes went unsolved, and those responsible for their deaths walked free. So what does Wikipedia say about Gavin Hopley?
Nothing.

That’s right, nothing. There was, in the past, a Wiki article on his case, but it isn’t there, not any more. However, the Wikipedian debate surrounding the removal of the Wiki article can still be seen.
This is a flavour of that debate. “The very fact that it has been ignored by the national media shows it isn't suitable for inclusion.” “I don’t see why we need an article on every murder”.
You see what happened there? Because no one was talking about the murder, that was a good reason to remove the entry on this murder from Wikipedia. And yet, one reason Gavin Hopley’s case is little-known is because it has been removed from Wikipedia. The editorial decision was circular, and self-fulfilling.
To add to the intrigue, the same fastidious editors who deleted “Gavin Hopley” also removed entries relating to several other savage murders of whites by non-whites: Richard Whelan, Mary Ann Leneghan, Charlene Downes, etc. Here are some of the Wikipedia comments on those deletions: “Sad to say, murder is far too common to confer notability on its victims”; “We really don’t want articles on every single crime”.
The debate on the deletion of the ten-year-old Charlene Downes case (she was allegedly killed by an Asian grooming gang, and the murder is still unsolved despite claims that her murderers were involved in cannibalism) is spectacularly revealing: “nothing particularly notable – unless there was an uproar over the girl being served in food”. Personally, I’d say a case involving race, sex abuse, murder and alleged cannibalism in Blackpool Lancashire is about as notable as it gets. But maybe that’s the tabloid journalist in me.
So what’s going on? Is there some vast, anti-white conspiracy at work in the Wikipedia labs? I doubt it. I suspect this is more a case of people hating the Far Right so much, they will redraft history, in order to deny them “helpful” publicity.
And yet it is difficult not to sense a deeper injustice, when you compare the silence that governs the Hopley case, and those like it, with the furore surrounding Lawrence.
In modern Britain it seems there are racist killings, and racist killings. And some are deemed very important. And some are “non-notable”.
Tags: Doreen Lawrence, Gavin Hopley, Stephen Lawrence, Wikipedia

The deaths of Richard Everitt and Stephen Lawrence: compare and contrast
Posted on 4 January, 2012 by Dr Sean Gabb | 37 Comments
19 Votes

Note: I am writing a detailed piece on the convictions in the Lawrence case. There is some rather interesting comments in the Macpherson report about the forensic examination of garments etc see http://www.chronicleworld.org/archive/lawrence/sli-25.htm. RH

The deaths of Richard Everitt and Stephen Lawrence:
compare and contrast
Robert Henderson

The Death of Richard Everitt (see below) is an article I wrote in 1994. Compare and contrast the elite response to his death and that of Stephen Lawrence.

Richard was knifed to death by an Asian gang approximately 300 yards from my front door. The gang was large, perhaps as many as 15 members. The gang was known as the Drummond Street Posse and had gone out that night specifically looking for a “white boy” to attack because they felt they had been “wronged” by a white boy (http://www.mamaa.org/infalre.html).

The gang were arrested the same night for a separate incident and blood was found on 19-year-old Badrul Miah. This turned out to be a match for that of Richard. Miah, later boasted that he had “stabbed up some white boy”. http://www.mirror.co.uk/life-style/kids-and-family/2008/10/13/exclusive-i-can-t-forgive-my-son-s-knife-crime-killer-115875-20799700/

After nine months the police had arrested 11 people in connection with the murder. The 11 dropped to six and after a committal hearing the number fell to 3. Eventually only two came to trial, Badrul Miah and Showkat Akbar. Akbar was found guilty of violent disorder and sentenced to three years, of which he served 18 months. Miah was sentenced to life but let out on licence after 11 years despite the trial judge describing it as an unprovoked racist attack (see Mirror link above).

The parents of Richard suffered beyond the loss of their child: “After the trial Mandy and Norman tried to move on but were the victims of threats and racial abuse. They had to leave the home where they raised their children and move out of London to Essex.” (http://www.mamaa.org/infalre.html)

Those are the bare facts of the Everitt murder. Compare the elite response to his murder with their response to that of Stephen Lawrence:

1. Only one person was convicted of the murder even though all were guilty of joint enterprise.
2. There has been no media campaign to bring the others to justice.
3. There has been no public inquiry into Richard’s murder.
4. The one person was convicted of Richard’s murder was released after 11 years without any media or political uproar.
5. There has been no concerted media campaign stretching over nearly two decades to bring the others in the gang to justice.
6. Unlike the Lawrence case where the Daily Mail accused the five suspects of murder in 1997 (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/frontpage/lawrence.html) , no representative of the national press or broadcasters called any other member of the gang which murdered Richard a murderer.
7. The gang members who attacked Richard were older than those accused of attacking Stephen Lawrence.
8. Unlike the Lawrence murder, British politicians from the word go not only refused to adopt the tone of moral outrage which they routinely do when the death of Stephen Lawrence is discussed, but actively tried to play down the racist aspect. Considerable pressure was put on Richard’s parents at the time to go along with the usual Maoist pc line that they were not racist and so on. The local MP, Frank Dobson, was most notable for his silence.

It is often said these days that the grip political correctness has on British society is much worse than it was. It is true that the absurdities get ever greater as the politically correct compete to be the purest ideologue, but as the Everitt case shows in really important matters such as the administration of justice it was already solidly entrenched two decades ago.