Murder of Richard Everitt

Many of its white families had been moved from the social housing there onto newer estates, and those who remained lived in poverty and unemployment, and felt in conflict with Bengalis.

[6] Rosemary Harris, an anthropologist from nearby University College London, researched Somers Town's ethnic unrest in the early 1990s.

She documented gangs of white, black and Asian origin, and concluded that the unrest was not caused by external political extremists but rather by the playground rivalries of teenagers.

[2] Harris said that Camden Council were uninterested in the research when it emerged that the unrest was not solely due to white racism, and said that school staff were fearful of disciplining Bangladeshis.

[12] In court Everitt was described by a friend as "well-liked, very kind and someone who would do anything for anybody"[13] and by the prosecution as "a mild-mannered and harmless 15-year-old boy who presented an easy target".

They returned with the food in a bag, walking along Midland Road next to St Pancras railway station and then turning onto Brill Place between 21:00 and 22:00.

A gang of Asian youths had set off from the Euston area towards Somers Town, seeking revenge on an Irish[2] teenager named Liam Coyle[4] over a grievance related to stolen property.

The gang first surrounded a 16-year-old boy named Mark Andrew[4] on Goldington Street and demanded to know whether he knew Liam; when he replied that he did not, they punched him, pursued him and attempted to stab him in the back, with the victim suffering a small knife wound.

The judge, Mrs Justice Steel, acknowledged that the identity of the killer was unknown but characterised Miah and Akbar as "ringleaders" of the attack.

The defence sought to include as part of the appeal a note which they claimed was written by a female juror shortly after the original trial and later provided to Imran Khan, a solicitor on the defendants' legal team.

According to the note, had the jury not been directed to acquit Hai, they would have found him guilty, despite there being - in the opinion of one dissenting juror - "absolutely no evidence to support this at all".

[5] Bengalis told family members to stay indoors, and the police increased their presence in order to combat the gangs.

[6] A white gang member said that he would not accept support from the British National Party because "the BNP comes down here, gets everyone whipped up and then when the trouble starts we get it and they run away".

[8] The murder was mentioned by India Today as attributable to a decline in values among British Asian youth, who were previously considered a model minority but were becoming increasingly involved with drugs and gangs.

[19] In February 2012, politician Richard Barnbrook (then independent, formerly BNP) raised the issue of Everitt's murder and that of Terry Gregory (2003) in the London Assembly.

He questioned why 23 police officers were still investigating the murder of Stephen Lawrence, who was black, yet none were assigned to finding the killers of the aforementioned white teenagers, suggesting there were "hate crime double standards".

[20] In a follow-up statement the following month, Barnbrook said that only one person had been convicted for Everitt's death and nobody for Gregory's; Johnson replied that both cases had gone to court and judgement was made on the evidence available.

[21] Abdul Hai went on to join the Labour Party and be elected to Camden Council, and says it was his experience being charged with murder that left him determined to make the world a better place and motivated him to enter politics.

[27] Socialist Workers Party activist Alan Walter launched Camden Action Now alongside Everitt's parents, offering youth activities and aiming to unite the community.