She said that when she was made inspector she was told she would have to buy the regulation brown gloves herself because the sizes the service had were suitable only for men.Officers who worked part-time because of other commitments, such as looking after a child, were not viewed as “proper officers”, Chief Inspector Berry said Crude and derogatory language also existed within the force. She said that most women accepted the discrimination because they wanted to be “part of the team.”We weigh up the cost of putting our heads above the parapet and we decide that it is less painful to say nothing.” When a female officer complained about harassment she was often victimised, as were those who supported them.. In a small, tired-looking community centre on the outskirts of Telford, a tall, middle-aged black man is crying, tears rolling down his cheeks as he pleads to be told why he has been treated like a second-class citizen all his life. Less than 15 feet from him sits a bewildered police inspector, his complexion as white as his shirt, wearing a mixed expression of embarrassment and sheer surprise. In a small, tired-looking community centre on the outskirts of Telford, a tall, middle-aged black man is crying, tears rolling down his cheeks as he pleads to be told why he has been treated like a second-class citizen all his life.

Less than 15 feet from him sits a bewildered police inspector, his complexion as white as his shirt, wearing a mixed expression of embarrassment and sheer surprise.
This is the face of race relations in the Shropshire town four months after the second member of a black family was found dead in suspicious circumstances. Errol McGowan, aged 32, who had been the object of a racist hate campaign, was found hanging from a kitchen door in a friend’s home in July last year; his nephew, Jason, 20, who had been investigating Errol’s death, died suspended from his own belt on street railings on New Year’s Day.At first, the police labelled the deaths as suicides. Subseqently, however, their investigations were found to have been less than thorough – even though Errol McGowan, a part-time doorman, had been to the police at least three times to report racist threats on his life. So it was that Telford, a new town with a less than 4 per cent ethnic-minority population, found itself – reluctantly, sometimes angrily – at the centre of racial politics in Britain today.It seems an unlikely place to take on such a role. Although labelled a new town, Telford is, in fact a collection of ancient settlements that are drawn under one name by a city centre comprising shopping malls, conference centres and business hotels. It is surrounded by some of the most beautiful countryside in England and contains some of its friendliest people.

When it comes to race, however, its attitudes would appear to lag behind more cosmopolitan areas.”What’s all the fuss? They were only a pair of niggers,” was the reply from one ordinary looking man when the subject was raised in a pub in Wellington, the area where both the dead men lived. And the laughter that greeted his comment suggested that he was not alone in his views.But some locally born members of the ethnic community have a strange attitude to racism, too, in that they take it for granted. Several Asian and black people who were asked by The Independent whether they had ever suffered racial abuse replied “no”. When asked whether they had been called abusive names based on the colour of their skin, they replied: “Oh, yeah.

Does that count?”It was perhaps not surprising, then, that the initial suggestion that the McGowans might have been the victims of racial attack was treated with derision. And it was only after a concerted campaign by The Independent that West Mercia police agreed to launch a fresh inquiry with the help of Scotland Yard’s Racial and Violent Crime Task Force, the unit that has made so much progress in the Stephen Lawrence investigation.Three months on, the McGowan inquiry has taken on enormous significance. Its success or failure will determine the way policing in the area is viewed by ethnic minorities. At the moment, policing by consent is not feasible; the black community simply does not trust the police.At the community centre meeting last week, about 40 people gathered to support the McGowans’ campaign to find out what happened to Errol and Jason. Also invited was Inspector Kevin Burke, the man in charge of uniformed policing in the area.