Leading Article: Elements of farce make this tragedy even more painful

SOMETIMES IT takes an element of farce to make tragedy really hurt. And yesterday supplied more than enough of that to puncture any misplaced notion that, with the publication of the Macpherson report and the solemn response to it of the police and the political class (including the newspapers), wrongs had been put right and Britons could now move forward together towards a bright non-racist future.

The sick racists of Eltham had other ideas. And then the absurdities of the day added to the mockery of the good intentions of Wednesday. More police officers were allocated yesterday to investigating the desecration of the memorial to Stephen Lawrence than were detailed to the original incident in which he was fatally stabbed. Overnight, that stretch of south London pavement had been kept under surveillance by a dummy police camera.

Overnight, too, the black officers who had been deployed visibly at key points all over London, such as outside Downing Street, disappeared, to be replaced by the usual officers. We must hope that this is not a metaphor for the Met's cosmetic acknowledgement of its problems over race.

Meanwhile, it emerged that the Macpherson report - which only hours before had been hailed as a model of integrity and careful investigation - had inadvertently identified a number of witnesses who had given evidence against the men accused of the murder. (And remember that the father of one of the suspects has a history of intimidating witnesses.)

All of which rather undermines the hope that the report will indeed "act as a watershed in our attitudes to racism", as Jack Straw declared on Wednesday. Will Macpherson in 1999 really mark a change or will it, like Scarman in 1982, run quickly into the sands of confusion and delay?

Many moving things were said this week, and yesterday's catalogue of disasters cannot wholly erase the solemnity and seriousness of them. What is more, many of these moving things were said by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. No previous home secretary would have gone on television to admit that, in general, black and Asian people are treated as second- class citizens by the public services.

For all that, however, there must be a question-mark over whether the Establishment really wants things to change. It would not be too cynical to observe that Britain's leaders have learnt to make the right noises, and to doubt whether the pace of change will match the urgency of the rhetoric. It would be more than disappointing, for example, if the Government did not legislate to enact the Macpherson recommendations until after the next general election.

It was obvious that the task of improving race relations in Britain was never going to be straightforward or easy, but yesterday's events served as a sharp warning that the way ahead will be turbulent and chaotic.