Hammer case: Detective saiys it was complex (From Swindon Advertiser)

Hammer case: Detective saiys it was complex

2:20pm Saturday 21st November 2009 in

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A complex picture of the Henry Webster hammer attack emerged as the detective who led the investigation insisted it was a racist incident – but “not racially motivated”.

Inspector Mark Wilkinson, who was the senior investigator on Operation Dakota in January 2007 which looked into the hammer attack, made his claims on the last day of evidence in the five-week legal action under cross-examination from 18-year-old Henry’s QC, Robert Glancy.

The QC took the detective through a welter of evidence and statements dealing with incidents in the months before the attack and the critical incident itself.

He touched on events in May and December 2006 – when Asian and white pupils at Swindon's Ridgeway School traded verbal abuse – which he said painted a picture of simmering racial conflict.

He suggested that, from this background, the police “should have concluded that the January 11 assault was a racist incident”.

Ins Wilkinson replied: “It was a racist incident but it was not racially motivated.

“Those are two fundamentally different issues,” he said, adding that “it was not in my opinion racially motivated”.

The officer said he based his conclusions on the terms of the Sir William Macpherson report into the murder of south London teenager, Stephen Lawrence, which made far-reaching recommendations about how to tackle racism. From Sir William’s report it was clear that the attack was a “racist incident” because it was “perceived” as such by the victim, Henry Webster, said Ins Wilkinson.

But, in legal terms, it could not be established that it was “racially motivated” because it could not be proved that Henry had been attacked by reason of his race, he added.

He said the attack was essentially sparked by a “schoolboy fight that got totally out of hand”.

But Mr Glancy suggested that was an “entirely wrong” assessment.

The QC pointed out that the outsider who lashed out at Henry with a hammer was “not involved in a schoolboy fight”, and had been summoned to the scene by Asian pupils with the text message: “All the white people in year 11 are there and the big one is the one to fight”.

Mr Glancy put to Ins Wilkinson: “The reason why this person and his accomplices were brought to that school was because it was a white person that the Asian pupils at the school wanted to attack."”

“I disagree,” responded the witness, instead suggesting that the Asian intruders came to the school primarily to “defend” younger family or friends.

But Mr Glancy insisted that the text message demonstrated “beyond any doubt” that the intruders went there “to inflict harm on a white person”.

“To inflict harm on Henry Webster?” asked Ins Wilkinson.

“Yes, a white person,” Mr Glancy replied.

But the police officer retorted: “I don’t agree that it was because of his colour.”

Under questioning from the school’s defence QC, Ronald Walker, Ins Wilkinson said the ultimate decision on whether the attack was charged as a race crime lay with the Crown Prosecution Service – and not with the police.

But he stressed that, if he had genuinely felt it was a racially motivated assault, he “would have raised that issue with the relevant body”.

Ins Wilkinson’s evidence came at the end of the fifth week of Henry Webster’s lawsuit against his former school brought over claims that it failed to safeguard him from the January 2007 hammer attack.

Henry’s lawyers say Asian pupils at the Ridgeway summoned older youths from outside the school by mobile phone to tackle Henry after he clashed with an Asian teenager earlier that day.

Henry suffered a fractured skull when he was felled by hammer blows from an intruder who strayed onto the school's tennis courts as Henry squared up to what the court heard he believed would be a “one-on-one” fight with an Asian pupil.

The school denies all blame for the attack on Henry, pointing out that it took place after school hours, and arguing that, short of stopping and searching every visitor, nothing could have been done to prevent what happened.

The school is also denying that the incident was racially motivated.

The school’s duty was to discipline pupils, not outside adults, and arguments that laxity in enforcing rules contributed to the attack have been dismissed by the school’s barrister, Ronald Walker QC.

With the evidence in the case now concluded, both sides will use the early part of next week to draft their final submissions to the judge, Mr Justice Nicol. The case will return to court on Thursday next week but the judge is almost certain to reserve his decision.