WINSTON Silcott sits in Swaleside Prison in Kent, shaking his head in wonder. He is astounded by public reaction to the Home Office paying him pounds 10,000 as part compensation for the time he spent in jail wrongly convicted of the murder of PC Keith Blakelock in the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985 ‘Outrage upon outrage Shame upon shame,’ roared the Daily Mail. Silcott devotes most of his time to reading, listening to music and writing, mainly poetry He is a keen dominoes and football player. Most people are surprised by his articulate speech and writing, expecting some Neanderthal grunt. Last week, after several TV and radio broadcasts and a letter in the Independent, Swaleside’s managers decided he was too articulate and refused to relay interview requests.
Silcott, now 35, is 6ft 2ins tall, broad-nosed, lean and fit. His thinning hair is trimmed close, in contrast to what he has dubbed his ‘peace beard’, a 3ft growth that he has not trimmed since his conviction and will not cut until he is free.There are many who think he should never shave that beard.
They point out that he is a convicted killer, found guilty in 1986 of murdering Anthony Smith, a boxer But nobody really cares about Smith, another black man. The issue is PC Blakelock.Many people still believe that Silcott is guilty of Blakelock’s awful murder. The grisly details of the policeman’s injuries – he was stabbed more than 40 times – realised people’s worst fears, but at the same time somehow reassured them. An evil black mastermind had murdered a brave, conscientious white police officer.
He had a record of crime and violence; he didn’t look very nice, judging by the most familiar photograph, taken by police when they arrested him in the early hours.Then in 1991 the appeal court said that he wasn’t guilty after all The police were aghast. The notion spread that Silcott had got off on a technicality, thanks to clever lawyers and political pressure.One Scotland Yard source said recently: ‘He is an animal I don’t care if he is guilty or not. You should be glad he’s in jail for the sake of your mother and your sisters.’ Yet his supporters see him as a political prisoner, a symbol of oppression.Icon or demon? His family see him as neither. ‘Winston is no worse than plenty of men out there and better than some,’ says his mother Mary. She is appalled at his conviction, appalled at at press coverage of the appeal and, now, the interim award. ‘I never knew white people could be so wicked.’So what is Winston Silcott really like? Clearly a man who is capable of violence; clearly, too, a man who has conducted himself with dignity (his detractors would call it arrogance) during his years in prison. To understand how he has become what he is, to see past the media image, we can ask his family and friends.
They are bound to see him in a more sympathetic light than the police or Daily Mail leader writers.BILL and Mary Silcott, devout Seventh Day Adventists, came to Britain in 1957 from the Caribbean isle of Montserrat He became a labourer, she a factory worker. They moved into a bedsit in the East End, where Winston was born in 1959. His brother George was born five years later and the family moved to Broadwater Farm in Tottenham, north London.At primary school Silcott was a good reader but at secondary school his academic record took a nose-dive. The reason – according to Stafford Scott, who has known him since childhood – was racist treatment from teachers.One teacher abused several black pupils, screaming at them that they should go back to their own country.