There can be few people in Britain who have not heard of Doreen Lawrence.  With her husband Neville and the help of the Press, Doreen elevated the terrible episode of her son Stephen’s murder into a national scandal.  Between the murder in 1993 and the setting up of the Macpherson enquiry in 1999, Doreen and her husband worked with dignity and energy to demonstrate that her son’s death was not just another tragic incident which could be quickly forgotten, but a racist act of deliberate murder.  At the heart of the subsequent enquiry set up in 1999 was not the murder alone but the extraordinary inertia of the police in responding and gathering evidence.  The suspects were fairly easy to identify but there were delays and many failures in their pursuing the case.  The Lawrence parents found themselves fighting for justice, battling against a huge institution which was both incompetent and almost openly hostile to them and their case.

The Macpherson report which coined the memorable phrase ‘institutional racism’, taught the British public about what happens when an evil is allowed to infect an entire institution.  Within the Metropolitan Police force, there were few officers from ethnic minorities.  Those who did join had found the atmosphere so toxic that most resigned within a short time.  There was thus a dominant white majority in the force so that lazy stereotyping and acts of prejudice against ethnic minorities had become entrenched.  To misquote a modern American slogan, black lives did not matter on the streets of London in the days before Macpherson.  The assumption that Stephen Lawrence was just another violent incident which needed little effort on the part of the police proved to be a miscalculation.  Doreen and Neville Lawrence began energetically to campaign on the part of their son.  The campaign grew so loud that British society was unable to ignore their voices.  The Macpherson report, when it appeared, was the platform for a new transformation of the old culture.  It reached out not just to the police themselves, but to the whole of society.

The events revealed at the IICSA enquiry in the past two weeks have also been about the culture of a large organisation, here the Church of England.  There are some uncomfortable links with the Lawrence story.  On the one side there is a large organisation which has seen uncovered many disturbing events related to sexual abuse; on the other there are a small group of campaigners who are determined to reveal truths that the institution would rather remain hidden.  The parallels are not exact.  The Inquiry has already begun and no one is suggesting that Teresa May set up the entire IICSA process as the result of campaigning individuals.  Its scope goes far wider than just the Churches.  Campaigners have, nevertheless, played a vital part in the process, just as the Lawrences did twenty-five years ago.  Last week the witnesses known as A4 and Matt Ineson both stood up and gave powerful witness to the Inquiry.  They were not there by some random choice.  It was because each of them has contributed enormously to the work of illumination that has taken place in the past four years since the process began.  Their evidence spoke not just of the original abuse that each had received, but they described vividly the obstruction, blanking and ignoring by the institution that has gone on over the time since they disclosed.  A4 and Matt could claim to be like the Lawrences in their fight for justice.  They have been opposed, not by an inert police force, ripe for radical reform, but a quite different kind of organisation, the Church of England.

British society indirectly colluded in the original attempts to silence the Lawrences by not supporting their campaign efforts.  Eventually the tide turned. Doreen was honoured and taken into the heart of the establishment.  First, she took a prominent place in the Olympic procession in London in 2012 before being invited to sit in the House of Lords in 2013.  Meanwhile the Church of England has not begun to see A4 and Matt Ineson as anything other than the enemy.  But, like the Lawrences, they are not in fact the enemy.  They and the other survivors are part of the solution.  The post IICSA Church of England will not remained unchanged.  When it starts to effect a change of culture, it has to realise that this will involve real painful transformation.  Those who have acted as the voices of conscience, A4 and Matt included, have to be listened to and their advice heard.

Is there an equivalent to the House of Lords in the Church of England?  Probably not, but if there is a place of honour to be had, then A4 and Matt deserve to be placed there.  They have helped to exposed the murky and sometimes immoral behaviour within a large institution just as the Lawrences did.  Instead of being angry, the Church of England should be grateful to them and honour them.  It can never be right to resist exposure of evil.  The longer this is done, the worse the illness and threat to the integrity of the entire institution.   For the church to recover drastic steps are needed.  I am not in position to recommend changes of leadership as Macpherson did, but I can suggest that Matt, A4 and other survivors are given paid consultant status so that the Church can listen to what they have to say about the changes that need to be made.  Whatever else should happen to the church post-IICSA, I ask, even plead, that the time of fighting survivors has to end.  Their tenacity, courage and insight of these survivors is exactly the energy the Church needs to harness for its journey into the future.  Declaring a truce during a war may seem like an act of weakness.  In this case it is an act of strategic necessity for the Church.  IICSA has inflicted severe damage to the Church in ways that have not yet become apparent.    The truce with survivors is one part of a strategy which will embrace the values of openness, honesty and true understanding.  The alternative scenario of resistance and defiance has been seen not to work.  We need new ways forward and the embracing of survivors has to be part of that process.  Baroness Lawrence is an example of how we should treat the campaigner and the disturber of vested interests.  Can the Church of England afford to do less for the campaigners and victims of its past abusive cultures?