this is the briefing. i'm samantha simmonds. this is bbc news, our top story: theresa may returns to britain after convincing the eu to agree to a brexit delay, the latest headlines: but will it make a difference in westminster? the eu has given the uk government i hope we can all agree, we are now two more months to prepare for brexit, but if parliament does not pass theresa may's withdrawal agreement — at the moment of decision and i will which it's already rejected twice — that will change to just make every effort to ensure we are two extra weeks. 2a hours after she attacked mps, able to leave with a deal and move the prime minister has now said she understands their frustration. oui’ able to leave with a deal and move our country forward. the eu has a week on from the gun attacks on two mosques in christchurch, new zealand has fallen silent given the uk a small window to buy to remember the 50 people killed. before mass burials began, the call to prayer was observed account once and for all what kind of accident it can pass through as 5,000 muslims attended services, supported by around 15,000 others, in solidarity with the victims. aid workers are racing to get parliament — — what kind of brexit. emergency supplies to hundreds of thousands of people stranded by cyclone idai, islamic adhan (call to prayer). which struck south—eastern africa a week ago. at least 300 people are confirmed dead in mozambique, zimbabwe and malawi, but that number is expected to rise.

you're up to date on the headlines. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. there's been an alarming rise in knife crime in the uk prompted a bout of soul searching about the causes and responses. many of the questions focus on the police. are they doing an effective job? how well do they handle the challenges of policing in disadvantaged and minority communities? my guest is michael fuller, the only black briton to have run one of the country's regionalforces. is uk policing fit for purpose?

michael fuller, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. i want to begin with a personal question, a character question. it seems to me in all of your life, from childhood through to adulthood and your many decades of service in the police force, you are a man who is used to swimming against the tide. would you agree with that? i would agree with that. that's partly being in the minority — so at the time i started in the police, there were only six black officers. this was back in 1977, when ijoined. and it was something i always wanted to do, and my book describes my passion forjoining the police. but i was very much in a minority and it was unusual to see a black officer in london.

you mentioned the book. it's a fascinating, honest memoir. kill the black 0ne first, it's rather ominously called. but you forensically go through your own childhood, as well as your policing career. and what we learn is that your ambition in childhood to be a policeman was something that your own family, your father in particular, found it very difficult to deal with. yes. i think the thing is the book's designed to be inspirational. so the title comes from something that was shouted at me at the brixton riots in 1981 and the prologue talks about the dilemmas i faced in terms of which tribe do i belong to? do i belong to this tribe of police officers who are using racist language or do i belong to the people outside the bus, who are black youths who hate the police? it created a big dilemma

and a paradox, as you can imagine. i can imagine it and i want to talk about how you felt on that antiriot police line in brixton because it seems to me a sort of seminal moment for you. but before we even get there, i want to go back to your father because you say that when you announced as a kid that "i'm going to be a policeman, my dad and his friends stared at me as if i'd announced i wanted to be an axe murderer. one of them choked on his rum, and then they started to talk all at once. didn't i understand, they asked, that the police were our enemy?" yes, i think i was a bit naive and blind to the hatred that was felt by the black community at that time, and we're talking about the late 70s and the windrush generation, who told me how they'd been treated by the police and the fact that... i think there was lots of prejudice, discrimination, a lot

of the windrush generation felt they'd been poorly dealt with by the police, either being stopped in their cars, stopped on the streets, unnecessarily stopped and searched. and there was huge resentment. but i didn't let that put me off. i was passionate aboutjoining the police and in my childhood, i'd been very keen on sleuthing and solving crimes. that was still something i wanted to do and i wasn't deterred by people saying don't do it. there's other crucial element in your childhood i think we should mention and i wonder if it's relevant to your ambition to be a police officer and that is your parents did not feel able to raise you themselves. they put you into a council—run care home, which i believe was, frankly, run by white people. so you were raised, effectively and mostly, by white people. and i wonder if, on reflection, you feel that gave you a different perspective on society from many of the young black kids that, you know, were your contemporaries at the time.

it may have given me a different perspective but i think much of the story, and my story is born of experience in that, yes, i was brought up by somebody called margaret hurst, who the book is dedicated to. she is white. she was effectively a role model to me. —— she's white. she was quite encouraging about mejoining the police. if that was something i was passionate about doing, her view was i should go ahead and join the police regardless of what other people said and follow my passion. and i'm glad i did. but she was — you can imagine lots of other people were concerned that i might experience racism. and let's go back to that police line in 1981. where you are staring at the rioters. they obviously weren'tjust black rioters, but there were a lot of young black

men involved in the brixton riots. they shouted at you. some called you a ‘coconut‘, an offensive term that means you were black on the outside but basically white on the inside. yes. i think you were accused of being a sell—out and a traitor. how alone did you feel at that point? i felt very isolated and i felt that i didn't belong either to that group of police officers, and i certainly didn't belong to those group of people who... it was the first time after being shouted "kill the black one first", the person who shouted that made this rather strange laugh and i thought, well, maybe he's just joking, and the next thing i heard was a smash of glass and i smelt petrol fumes and flames shot up in front of me and the other officer beside me who had his beard singed... neither of us were injured but it was quite a shocking experience. and it was new to britain. we hadn't had riots before, and certainly hadn't seen this

hatred towards the police. the previous day i'd been helping people who were poor and marginalised, victims of crime and child abuse, i'd been helping people who suffered from alcohol addiction, drug addiction, helping old ladies, and, you know, the next i was facing these very angry individuals in this riot. it was quite a shocking experience. one of the interesting elements of that answer was that you said you didn't feel you belonged on the police line or with the rioters either. and this question of belonging is very complex for you. it is. ijust wonder, why you persisted with the police, and you did for over three and a half decades, when you patently did not feel accepted or that you belonged for much of your career. and you have itemised the systemic, nasty persistent racism that you faced from your fellow officers, white men and women in the fource, not overjust the beginnings

of your career but throughout much of your career. —— force. i always felt that either through naivete or otherwise, that i could change things for the betterfrom the inside. and persuade people about the right thing to do. so one of the things i did do, when we had a disproportionate number of black officers leaving the police, that i set up, with others, the black police association and i was the founding chair. and that was seen as quite a radical organisation, particularly for the police, because there was already a union that was representing police officers, albeit police officers aren't allowed to have a union. but i set up this staff association of black officers and the idea was it was a support organisation and designed to stop these officers leaving, because they were leaving in droves. but did it make any difference? because, again, you describe situations in police canteens and other environments, surrounded by fellow officers, where the n—word was used and then covered up

afterwards when you made official complaints. where people would mock you with shouts of ‘bananas!’ every time they went past your office door. once at a police function, a comedian saw you and described you as a ‘spear chucker‘. i mean, this was humiliating. utterly humiliating. i have illustrated a lot of humiliating occasions but, clearly, not everybody was racist and clearly there were many people who supported me. were there? yes. a lot of people who supported me in myjourney from the bottom of the police as a cadet making tea, to get to the very top and become a chief constable. so without that support, without that encouragement, i would not have made it and i would have left. let's — if we follow the chronology of your career, before we get to your promotion, and it was a huge thing to be the first county director of a police force in the uk, chief constable of kent.

before we get there, you were in the metropolitan police at an extraordinarily sensitive time, after the totemic murder of the young black man stephen lawrence, a teenager, who was stabbed to death by a group of white youths in south london in 1993. the fallout from that lasted for many years and it raised deeply disturbing questions about the failings of the police to properly investigate the murder. you were inside the met. were you aware, yourself, of how the police were failing? yes, i was. yes, and that — i actually wrote an article whenjudge macpherson had talked about the police being institutionally racist... which was the key moment, after all the failings of the police that a senior official was appointed to investigate and his report, the so—called macpherson report, referred to the institutional racism inside the metropolitan police. you, as one of the senior

black officers inside the metropolitan police at the time, you must have felt very conflicted. i was very conflicted but i was very keen that the force, the police, address the criticisms that had been made. and institutional racism is a hard concept to grasp. you know, the idea that you could unintentionally be biased, unintentionally be prejudiced, was very difficult for most officers, including myself, to understand and grasp. but i spent a lot of time. i wrote articles for police magazines and i was interviewed by police magazines and that's described in the book, explaining what this racism was that we were being accused of. and, of course, the stephen lawrence murder investigation and the evidence highlighted by the judge showed that there had been prejudice in the way that that investigation had been handled and dealt with. and that — i was very keen that

a lot of those issues be put right. i wrote an action plan for the met, i suggested setting up a racial task force. i suggested that racially motivated crime be dealt with and investigated in the same way as any other crime and of course, at the time, that was seen as groundbreaking. it doesn't seem so now but at the time, it was groundbreaking. the question to ask now is that when you look at the metropolitan police and the british police forces generally today, do you believe that if macpherson were to come back and report again, he would still find institutional racism ? well, i think there's an improvement — albeit i have spoken to officers who are currently serving, we're talking black officers who are currently serving, and they say, well, they feel there's still racism there. but, i mean, the thing that exists now is there are sanctions in the way — for racist conduct and racist behaviour by police officer.

that there weren't specific sanctions at the time i was serving as a junior officer. if one draws conclusions from the raw data and the numbers, if you look at the higher levels of the police senior officers, i think it's still 3% or less of senior officers are black, asian or minority ethnic. now, given that the overall proportion in the population of bame people in the uk is around 13% suggests there is still a profound problem. yes, and i'd agree with that. there is still a profound problem and there hasn't been a black chief constable appointed since i left and i can't understand why not. i've asked why not and there's certainly people who are talented and capable of performing the role that i performed in kent, but it hasn't happened. and at the time... i looked back at the press reporting

of your rise through the ranks. there was a lot of talk at the time that you may be the first commissioner of the metropolitan police. it would have been a symbolic moment if it had happened too. why did that not happen? well, i think that's for others to answer, really. i would have been capable to do the job. i certainly would have been capable of doing the job. i mean, i qualified as a lawyer and ifollowed and pursued a different career. but i think it's for others to answer that and others to answer as to why there haven't been any other black chief constables appointed since i left. i said at the introduction of this interview, britain right now was wrestling with an alarming rise in knife crime. now, you had to wrestle with violent crime in the black british community, as a senior officer. yes. 0peration trident was your operation, operating against the gang culture and the use of guns in inner—city london, do you think that the fact that many black people then and maybe still today have a problem with the police is a huge problem in effectively policing the inner—city? well, the first thing i'd say

is that knife crime is rising at a faster rate outside of london, so outside the urban areas. so it's a problem throughout the uk and it's a problem that needs to be tackled. now, the thing we learned on operation trident is you had to have the support of the community in tackling the problem at the time — gun crime. the reason for that was once you actually catch perpetrators of the violence, whether it's knife crime or other violent crime, you need witnesses, you need people who are going to come forward and give evidence against very violent people. now if the police alienate potential witnesses and alienate the public, then clearly you're not going to get the public support. what we found on trident is that when we set up the operation, and i took 18 months and setting it up, having spoken to community groups about what i was trying to do and the fact that i was sincere in trying to reduce the problem of gun violence in london, that having explained to people what i was going to do and why, that we got huge public support and we were inundated with intelligence. over 3000 pieces of intelligence when we started our operation.

and we were able to create a top ten list of criminals that we wanted to capture, who were responsible for multiple murders. and we actually took four years, but we actually captured all those individuals, as well as lots of other people. we also, with the intelligence, we recovered guns, we recovered knives, and people went to prison as a result. so, in that answer, you're suggesting to me that the key to focus on is intelligence gathering within the community and working with the community. you didn't mention anything about police numbers in that answer. but as you know right now, the political hot potato is whether the reductions in police numbers that we have seen in recent times, and theresa may, the prime minister, says there is no link, causal link with crime levels and police numbers,

many others disagree. i disagree, yes. i disagree. from your experience on the ground, are police numbers relevant or irrelevant? police numbers are highly relevant. one of the things in tackling any kind of violence is there needs to be consequences. so in terms of knife crime, those who carry knives, those who are involved in knife violence or gang violence need to know that there are consequences and fear being caught, and clearly if there isn't the police presence that there should be, then the people involved in the crime won't feel that there'll be any consequences in carrying a knife and actually using it. and i think that's the problem you're seeing at the moment. do you think it's problematic when theresa may says that there is, and i'm quoting her directly, "no direct correlation between the rise in knife crime and the fall the police numbers"? well, she is probably commenting on the stats. but i would disagree, personally. and clearly i don't see the police presence, as somebody who's lived in london for a0 years,

and the police response is worse than it ever was. i regularly call out the police to incidents, fights and things i've seen, and the police response has been a lot slower and poorer than it used to be. and the explanation that's given to me by the police officers is theyjust haven't got the numbers. when you were a beat officer in london, you were involved in what has become known as stop—and—search operations, where you would target particular communities because of the data you'd seen on rising crime or particular crime problems. and you would stop people on the suspicion that they may have committed a crime or be carrying a weapon or whatever. the lse has just done a study on this, the figures suggest that there is now a new spike in the use of stop—and—search powers by the police and it is disproportionately being used against black people. yes.

8.4 times the rate of white people, in terms of who was being stopped. yes. now, there are voices in the black community, including trevor phillips, who is an influential voice, because you stared up the equality and human rights committee and, saying that is a good thing and we shouldn't be embarrassed to say, because perpetrators and victims in many inner—city areas, are largely black, we should be using stop—and—search primarily against black people in these communities. do you agree? well, i think what's important is the criminality, really. i don't think racial profiling or introducing racial elements to criminality is actually very helpful, certainly on operation trident what we found was successful was having community support with people, we had a hotline, people told us who were carrying the guns. we didn't care what colour they were. if they were carrying guns they were engaged in crime and they were doing harm to other people, involved in drug dealing, then my view is they should have been arrested — regardless of what colour they were. we saw the problem, certainly in kent, where there were very few

black people, there were similar problems of violence. if you look at the town centres on a friday or saturday night you'll see violent crime happening right in front of your eyes, outside some of the public houses. understood. it's not a problem that is peculiar to london, not a problem that is peculiar to black people. indeed it's not. i totally take that point. but trevor phillips says this, he says "police officers should be, in certain situations, exempt from discrimination laws in order to target black youths in high crime areas, where the crime, according to the data, is being committed by black youth". well, i don't agree with that. i think police officers should work within the law. we were able to do that in tackling the serious and difficult crimes of gun violence. we are able to tackle it successfully, reduce the problem. so much so that the operation i set up, afterfour years the commissioner of the day said, well, the level of gun violence now

doesn'tjustify this big operation and we're going to scale it down. and i recommended it be scaled down, but not actually got rid of. so the point is that we were able to successfully tackle a problem of violence by using targeted stop—and—search, so stopping people who we knew, we had good intelligence, were involved in the violence, gang members, we dealt with drug dealers, and some of the violence that we're seeing now associated with drug markets and people involved in drug dealing can't be surprised that they‘ re stop—and—searched by the police. but to actually narrow it to down to race and profile, try to profile people racially, is a very narrow way of looking at the problem. let me ask you a personal question. you came from a difficult background. we have discussed how your parents put you into care, you were raised in a care home. had lots of reasons, it seems to me,

to be angry and resentful. and we know, that in many situations, many young people who've had difficult backgrounds, disadvantaged backgrounds, do end up angry, resentful, and sometimes committing crimes and socially abusive behaviours. you absolutely didn't. you chose to join the police and be, in essence, the ultimate conformist. what you think made you different? well, when people say you came from a difficult background, it didn't seem difficult to me. it didn't seem disadvantaged. i didn't know i was disadvantaged. i didn't know any different. other than the fact that i'd rather have liked to have been with my parents rather than in a children's home. but the actual experience of the children's home in the person who brought me up, margaret hurst, who was a white woman, she was very loving, she said very clear boundaries... i guess what i'm asking is a very simple question in the end, which is, reflecting on a long career in the police force, and reflecting on the links between criminality and environments, are you now a man who believes that those who choose to indulge in criminality are driven

more by nature or nurture? well, i think i was a product of my upbringing, really. and the fact i was brought up by somebody who was very loving, said very clear boundaries for me, tell me the difference between right and wrong, and i had positive dealings, clearly, with the police, and the police officers in my life were role models and were very positive individuals. i think men, particularly young men, need — you need good, strong male role models. my experience was a good one. and i loved the policing. i didn't like the racism. and i wouldn't have done anything else. and i'm glad that i ignored all those people, including friends, teachers, and my mother, my natural mother and father, who i didn't live with, they all told me not tojoin the police. and i'm just so pleased that i ignored them, because i had a wonderful career and wonderful opportunities. but i wouldn't want other people to be deterred from doing something that they're passionate about.

that's a good place to end. michael fuller, thank you very much indeed for being on hardtalk. thank you. thank you very much. hello, 18 degrees in the sunshine in yorkshire on thursday, but for much of the uk, it may have been mild but it was cloudy again, and all that cloud is still with us as friday starts. but there are changes on the way. as this weather front moves south during friday and early saturday,

behind it, it will bring cooler conditions, but more of us will get to see some sunshine over the weekend. but ahead of that weather front, this is all the cloud we have to start on friday. cloudy, damp, drizzly in places, misty and murky but very mild. here's a weather front with rain bearing down from north—west scotland, and as it moves through, we see the wind strengthening. this is where we'll see the strongest gusts during the day, in excess of a0 mph, in excess of 60 mph across the northern and the western isles. so the rain is moving south across scotland and northern ireland, into parts of north—west england and north wales. but look behind the weather front — the land appears, an indication that the sun is coming out. a few blustery showers, wintry on the hills, though, coming into north—west scotland. ahead of the weather front, plenty of cloud, a few brighter breaks in north—east england, in yorkshire and along the south coast, but most stay cloudy and mild. behind the front, it is turning cooler. and the front continues to move southwards, but increasingly light and patchy rain friday evening

and night, before grinding to a halt close to the south—east of england and into east anglia, where it stays mild for another night. a little damp and places. elsewhere, under clearest skies, a cooler night. a touch of frost and parts of northern england, northern ireland and scotland. so quite a change this weather front is bringing, the cooler, clearer conditions in time for the weekend. more of us seeing some sunshine, but the front, notice, lingers close to south—east england at least on saturday, and that means there'll be a lot of cloud lingering here, and maybe some light rain or drizzle. elsewhere, good sunny spells, showers and a brisk wind pushing to scotland. wintry, maybe not, just on hills, and there'll be a few showers into northern ireland as well, and temperatures for most areas around 9—12 degrees. so they are down compared to recent days, and more widespread frost going into sunday morning. slowly brightening up across southern parts of england on sunday. sunny spells elswhere. some heavier and more prolonged downpours running through scotland, parts of northern ireland and northern england. again, wintry on hills.

similar temperatures, still very blustery in northern scotland. so this is how the weekend is shaping up. it's going to be a little different because that weather front will have moved on through. cooler days, chillier nights, with a touch of frost, but more in the way of sunshine around. those showers, blustery and in places wintry in scotland.