We have just passed the second anniversary of the Macpherson report into police handling of the Stephen Lawrence murder. Much of the debate has been about its use of the term "institutional racism". I find that unfortunate. The term concedes more than it reveals and gives our enemies an opportunity to babble on about marginal issues.

What really matters is whether we go back to the days when the police kept blacks at heel. That was certainly true in the 1950s and, in those days, many of us colluded in our own oppression. "We can't win" was the general attitude of the first generation. "We are only here for a few years before we go back home. This is not our country, this is the white man's country." Police officers thrived behind the backs of the rest of society and were defended hugely by large sections of white officialdom. At times, it appeared a hopeless task to achieve change.

The ice began to crack up when entire police squads were convicted for being at the centre of prostitution, pornography and drugs. Members of the drugs squad based at Scotland Yard had black informers who told them where marijuana could be found. They would then raid premises, seize the drugs and sell them to the informers. I lived in Notting Hill then and worked at Release, a legal advice centre. We busted the entire squad and its informers.

Across London, the news spread that victory was possible. A new generation of young blacks had grown up with the first scent of victory and without any fantasies of returning home.

They faced two very different challenges. First, they had to convince their parents that police malpractice was routine; second, they had to convince the rest of society.

They were largely working-class kids who ate the same school dinners as whites, sat in the same classrooms, wore the same styles as their white counterparts. Theirs was not a polite discourse with official society; they abjured the race relations industry as pussyfooting before their masters.They socialised within youth clubs financed by local councils (how times have changed) and they confronted the police in huge numbers. It was a physical battle, always a part of a fundamental struggle for freedom. I spent about two decades in the heat of this battle.

Always, always, the Police Federation and the Daily Mail, sometimes lying openly, sold the rest of society a demonisation of young blacks, who were routinely associated with thieving and violence. That was the propaganda side of the battle. The physical side involved helmets, shields and batons.

It all coalesced in the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The police had lost their detective skills. The baton, the helmet and plastic shields, tear gas and plastic bullets had displaced forensic science and investigation. All the negatives had come home to roost.

Sir William Macpherson, point by point, dismantled the myth of the British bobby. We were forced to confront the truth: the British police had degenerated into third-world-style, baton-swinging brutes.

But still the Mail and the Police Federation fight on. Take the latest example: the federation is gathering 400 officers to sue the Metropolitan Police Commissioner over a report that blamed the north London constabulary for persecuting a young West Indian following his support for those who were illegally detained and charged around the Tottenham riots. Time and again, it has been left to black police officers to expose racial abuse and frame-ups within British police forces.

If we do not fight for what we have gained, we shall be back to the position we were in half a century ago. It has taken us years to cleanse the police (a highly trained body) of recalcitrant behaviour. Now Tony Blair tells us we are going to be policed on the streets by a bunch of rough-and-ready security officers. Heaven forbid.

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