As a Home Office Minister responsible for race relations, Mike O’Brien worked with Jack Straw to set up the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, meeting with the Lawrence family and their lawyers. He later endorsed the Macpherson Report in a book called “Institutional Racism and the Police: Fact or Fiction?” saying that, "The Report is about securing the commitment of all of us to tackling racism, whether open or unwitting throughout our society, not just in the police force.... The important thing for all of us is that Britain is a multiracial society. We have a choice whether to succeed as one or not. Racism in all its guises endangers and undermines the future success of our society; that is why to be racist in today’s multi-racial Britain is to be ‘un-British’."“Institutional Racism and the Police: Fact or Fiction?” David G. Green (Editor) John G.D. Grieve & Julie French, Michael Ignatieff, Mike O’Brien, Robert Skidelsky. Institute for the Study of Civil Society London First published August 2000 © The Institute for the Study of Civil Society 2000 email: books@civil-society.org.uk Pages 25-26
