The Louder I Will Sing

I came out of that meeting not feeling reassured, but like I’d been played. It wasn’t a genuine apology, but part of the legal process, part of the game. I got the sense that they [the Metropolitan police] wanted to be able to say in the inquest that they’d made the first move, that they’d reached out to us. But the fact that they couldn’t say what they were sorry for, or weren’t prepared to go public with the fact they’d apologised, belittled the approach. It felt less about justice and more about saving face. It felt mealy-mouthed and begrudging, that we were having to drag the apology out of them, word by word.

...when I was learning London street by street, now with my orange light on I got to know its people. An office worker, a corporate type, someone coming back from a night out. Quirky, outgoing, creative, quiet, older, well-to-do – driving that cab gave me a real sense of seeing a cross-section of the population. I always found it interesting, talking to people, how often you’d start chatting away and pretty soon those barriers would come down. The preconceptions that both of you might have would disappear. Underneath all of chat, people are, on the whole, just people.

[Postscript 17 July 2020] Will the protests lead to permanent change? Instinctively, I would say yes, it does feel as though a shift has occurred. But thinking back about my own experiences, I’m much more cautious. What I do know is that it’s not enough to think things will just happen: we’ve got to keep applying the pressure to make sure that change is permanent.

None of this is easy. None of this is a quick fix. But in a year when statues to slave-traders are torn down and a memorial to my mum is put up, now feels as good a time as any to make a start.