Lawrence family lawyer Imran Khan: 'We see what the state is capable of'

After more than 20 years navigating the twists and turns that followed the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Imran Khan thought himself immune to the shocks the case might bring. The celebrated human rights lawyer has been confounded many times. His job has been to recover equilibrium and react. But he was unprepared for what unfolded – away from the public gaze – in the office of home secretary Theresa May earlier this month.

There had been no previews of Mark Ellison QC's government-commissioned report into the police and the allegations of corruption that had long surrounded the case. Neither had there been great anticipation. "We had no expectation that it would deliver," Khan says. But it did. "It said there were reasonable grounds to suspect corruption." Pointed fingers; named names.

Light shone upon detective John Davidson, a key player in the early police investigation. Ellison found "reasonable grounds for suspecting that [Davidson] acted corruptly". A finger was pointed at Davidson by Neil Putnam, a self-confessed corrupt detective turned supergrass. Then there was the issue of what the Met knew about the alleged corruption, and the secrets kept from Sir William Macpherson's government commissioned inquiry. And then there was Ellison's confirmatory account of how the Met deployed undercover officers to monitor those who sought to assist the grieving Lawrence family in the weeks following Stephen's murder.

"It was shocking to read it," says Khan. "A shock in the sense of a victim seeing someone acknowledge what has happened to them; in the sense of, finally, someone gets it. Finally, someone in authority has matched it all up, drawn it all out and given a conclusion I always knew to be the case," he says. "It's a cathartic process: 'Now it is out in the open and everyone believes me.' I remember sitting opposite the home secretary and letting out gasps, actual physical gasps each time I read a conclusion."

The grasping of that nettle amazed Khan, and Doreen Lawrence, who sat beside him. But so did the immediate reaction of May. "There was a Conservative home secretary sitting there suggesting things that went completely against everything she and her party must have wanted to do. [She was talking about giving] the cops a good kicking. She read out what she was going to say to the Commons and it was mind-blowing. You would have thought you were sitting opposite a liberal home secretary in a Blair government. That should have been Jack Straw but it wasn't."

These events took Khan back 15 years. "It reminded me of Sir William Macpherson, who came to his inquiry with a bad reputation as a rightwing judge insensitive in race cases, but who had his head completely turned by what he saw. With Theresa May it was happening all over again. To quote the Twitter generation, it was an OMG moment for her. I expected something mealy-mouthed. It was quite a performance."

By the afternoon, the Lawrence case – born of a single infamous attack on a dark night in 1993 – had spawned a second public inquiry, making good on an assurance already given in private by May. Neither Khan or Doreen Lawrence – now Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon – specifically asked for a fresh public inquiry, though they thought that outcome possible.

Following the Guardian's revelations about the deployment of undercover officers to monitor the family's protest campaign in the aftermath of Stephen's death, both met the home secretary. "Theresa May said the best I can promise you is that if Ellison says there has got to be an inquiry, I will order it. That was the undertaking. We took what we thought was an educated guess, a gamble and risk that we were almost certain to get some sort of inquiry. All we had to be sure of was that the home secretary would be true to her word."

New possibilities are now opening up. For if the case seemed dormant after the convictions of David Norris and Gary Dobson in 2012, Ellison's report – and more specifically the Guardian's revelations, aided by former undercover Special Branch officer Peter Francis – have given it adrenaline. Francis claimed that his superiors wanted him to find "dirt" that could be used against members of the Lawrence family and its supporters to deflect the already vocal criticism of the inadequate police inquiry.

"After the convictions, Doreen seemed ready to draw a line, says Khan. "You can't overestimate how much of a toll this took, every time something happened connected to Lawrence. From my point of view it intruded on my professional work, but for Doreen it intruded on her life. She wanted to be anonymous again. But the thing with the Francis revelations was that this wasn't a matter of old stuff being regurgitated. This was something new and very personal and visceral. The sense of revulsion you get that someone has been sitting in your room and spying on you. I don't think I felt very surprised, because I recognised that the establishment would be keeping an eye in some way, but for the family that was so profound. It hit the gut. It hit a nerve."

People misunderstand Doreen Lawrence, he says. "They think she has been there, done it and seen it. But there is still a part of Doreen that doesn't fully understand the criminal justice system. Doreen said not only do we have a responsibility, but I am absolutely furious. They made so many promises to us, so many assurances and yet even now we are finding that not only were we looked upon as criminals ourselves, but we were spied upon."

That rage, says Khan – a tidy, deliberate figure in a file-strewn office – may yet affect those killers of Stephen Lawrence who still walk free. "This wasn't about investigating corruption for the sake of investigating corruption, it was to elicit evidence. Doreen and I said: 'We know corruption existed.' The question was, by investigating corruption, could the relationship between officers, the suspects and their families produce new evidence. People might switch allegiances." It's another line of attack; the quest goes on. "There are years to go," says Khan.

He talks earnestly of his responsibility to clients – and though this case defines him – there have been many of them. He acted for the parents of Victoria Climbié and the family of Zahid Mubarek, the young Asian man murdered in a cell in Feltham Young Offenders Institute in the year 2000. He represented Hasina Patel, the widow of the 7/7 plot leader Mohammad Sidique Khan, and has advised others facing terrorism charges. He cites a thread. "The cases are about a state that has gone too far or hasn't done what it should be doing. My objective is to make sure that the state is held accountable." Accounts of undercover spying have helped. "We now see what the state is capable of. You need to understand how state power can be abused."

For all that, he will always be the Lawrence lawyer. He had been a solicitor for just 18 months when he began working with the family. "It's a great feeling because it's such a morally fantastic case to be involved in and the comments you get from people are fantastic."

Khan once talked of "impact cases" that change society, and Lawrence fits perfectly. It has resonance, support across a spectrum. And it has Doreen Lawrence, enobled last October. The two figures meet at the intersection of two journeys – her route Jamaica and then south-east London; his Karachi and then a racially turbulent east London, where early battles for equity and survival involved bravery and fists. Their experiences bring multiple insights. "We are a bit like a longstanding couple now," he says. "We finish each other's sentences. We know what the other is thinking. When we are in meetings, we don't need to speak. There is a sense of telepathy about where we want to go."

That's a bond born of good days and bad, for the convictions brought relief to both, but for him a measure of redemption after the failed private prosecution of the murder suspects in 1994. "Don't forget that in a sense, I was responsible for that. We come from those traumatic experiences: her from the murder of her son, me from the trauma of failing her as a lawyer. I still am incredibly embarrassed and ashamed and hurt by that failure. You don't fail as a lawyer, or at least I don't fail as a lawyer, and you don't fail in such a big case in such a big way. I am in no doubt things happened afterwards that ameliorated the sense of despair she must have felt, but she has never once said: 'I blame you' – publicly or privately. In the same way as I protect her, she has been my biggest defender and champion."

It is, Khan says, a fusion of two strong personalities, though he stresses his role is to advise, hers to take decisions. Where there is disagreement, there is respect. "I am not a believer in the House of Lords. I think it should be abolished and I have told her that. But I went with her to the ceremony."

He believes she will add value to the institution. "How many times do you get someone in power who understands police racism, institutional racism, injustice and all the things you want those in power to feel in their veins and not just as an idea? My belief is that people don't believe in issues, they believe in people. One reason for the successes of the campaign is a belief in Doreen and what she was doing."

Both felt ready to move on, but as the trail hots up again both will soldier on. The public inquiry will further probe police practices. Already Khan sees a direction of travel. "It is no longer sustainable to say police should investigate police; look at Ellison. He used his experience as a prosecutor to investigate from the outside, looking at things objectively. The police are doing exactly what they used to do. They are still protecting each other, not letting the cat out of the bag. [Met police chief] Bernard Hogan-Howe and the police hierarchy still do not see the need for transparency. At the top end of the police service in London and elsewhere, there is a siege mentality. The sooner that ends the better."

Khan tried politics once, as a candidate for the Socialist Labour Party. He won't again. "That was a horrible experience," he says, chuckling. "I am not a politician in a sense of being able to say things to all people." And yet the impact political decisions have on ordinary lives troubles him greatly. The £215m cuts to the legal aid budget, for example. "I am working twice as hard as I used to, with half or a third of the money I used to get. Not to put too dramatic a point on it, if the Lawrence case landed on my desk today I wouldn't take it. There are not enough hours to be able to make enough money on legal aid to be able to survive. I did Lawrence on a pro-bono basis."

He's hamstrung now. "It is my biggest regret that I have to have conversations with families and say you deserve better, but I can't help you. What will happen is that society won't get the benefit of those cases. You don't need to have inquiries and spend lots of money if you have lawyers who are challenging courts in individual cases and making law. If we had the bedrock of reliable public funding, we would be able to do a lot more. I can't imagine there is going to be another Lawrence case for a long time – if ever."

Khan is also concerned about the impact of government terror legislation and the effect of foreign policy. How, he says, can the government assist groups opposed to Assad in Syria, then criminalise those who seek as individuals to do the same. "I represent people who have been alleged to have gone to training camps in Syria. The government thinks we can say one thing and do another. It hasn't engaged in that very difficult philosophical, ideological and legal conundrum as to what is terrorism, what freedom fighters are and the effect of globalisation. Britain still thinks it can operate in a vacuum."

The in-tray stays full, with most cases likely to shine harsh light on the establishment. Then, through the twists and turns, there is always Lawrence. Anti-police, anti-establishment; Khan says he is assailed as both, and worse, but his description is of a radical hoping to use the law to conserve the best of British values. Trying to protect a wayward establishment from itself.

"I don't know when it happened but I reached a stage of going abroad and becoming very protective and proud of what we have in Britain. Maybe that is the essence of Britishness. You feel it encapsulates everything you believe to be right."

• Law
• Stephen Lawrence
• Doreen Lawrence
• Police
• Race
• features

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