Richard Stone (campaigner)

Dr Richard Stone OBE (born 9 March 1937) is a British medical doctor, social and religious campaigner. Stone is best known for his association with the Runnymede Trust and the Jewish Council for Racial Equality on issues of race and politics, as well as race and society more generally in the United Kingdom. Stone was appointed to a panel on the Stephen Lawrence inquiry; a case involving a Black teenager who was murdered in London in 1993; which eventually led to the Macpherson Report, which defined the British Metropolitan Police's response to the incident as "institutionally racist." Stone is also noted for his association with the Jewish interfaith group The Woolf Institute.

Background and family

Stone was born on 9 March 1937 to Joseph Stone, Baron Stone and his wife Beryl. Joseph Stone (born Silverstone) was born in Wales to a British Jewish family. Richard Stone's father was a medical practitioner and after relocating to Hampstead acted as the personal physician to Harold Wilson, the two-times Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for the Labour Party from 1964 to 1970 and again from 1974 to 1976. Other close family members of Richard Stone, influential in British society included his uncle Arnold Silverstone, Baron Ashdown, who was involved with the Conservative Party during the time that Edward Heath was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and another uncle Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein, who founded Granada Television, playing a major role in the development of commercial television and was a Labour Party life-peer. During the Second World War in 1945, he had produced the German Concentration Camps Factual Survey documentary, in association with the Psychological Warfare Division. Consequently, Stone is also related to Alexander Bernstein, Baron Bernstein of Craigweil, another Labour Party life-peer who was among the financiers of Michael Levy's Labour Leader's Office Fund during the New Labour-era while Tony Blair was British Prime Minister.

Runnymede Trust and JCORE

Stone has worked as a political activist on issues of race and politics, as well as race and society in the United Kingdom. He has been in the campaign arising around the Stephen Lawrence murder after sitting on the panel of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. Dr Stone served as a Cabinet Advisor to the Mayor of London, President of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality, and spent five years on the Runnymede Trust's ‘Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia’, from 2000 to 2004 as chair. He has also been a trustee and vice-Chair of the Runnymede Trust and a Council and Board member of Liberty.[1] For 14 years he has been the chair of the Islamophobia Commission, set up by the Runnymede Trust in 1996, working with British Muslims.[2]

He was a member of the Home Office's Working Groups on Tackling Extremism Together.[3]

Much of his work has been to bring together British Jews and British Muslims. He was a founding trustee of the Maimonides Foundation in 1985 and in 2004 he founded Alif-Aleph UK (British Muslims and British Jews).

He is an Honorary Fellow and Inter Faith Patron of the Woolf Institute, a Centre for Muslim-Jewish Relations at the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Fellow in the criminology department of the University of Westminster.

Stephen Lawrence Inquiry

In the 'Stephen Lawrence Inquiry' into racism in policing from 1997–99, Stone was appointed to the panel of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, which was led by Sir William Macpherson.[4][5] In 2013 he published the book Hidden Stories of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, documenting his personal experience on the Inquiry and raising concerns about the way the Inquiry was managed. In 2003/04 he sat on the panel of the NHS David Bennett Inquiry.[6]

In 2010 Stone was awarded an OBE for "public and voluntary" service.

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See also

References
  1. "Dr Richard Stone OBE | ROTA - Race On The Agenda". www.rota.org.uk. Retrieved 2020-07-23.
  2. "Commission on British Muslims". www.runnymedetrust.org. Retrieved 2020-07-23.
  3. "Comment, opinion and discussion from the Guardian US | The Guardian". the Guardian. Retrieved 2020-07-23.
  4. "Dr Richard Stone". Dr Richard Stone. Retrieved 2020-07-23.
  5. "The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2020-07-23.
  6. http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf/bennett_inquiry.pdf
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