As He lay dying.

It was a mild morning in June and people in their thousands were dressed in black. There was a funeral going on. A young boy whose life had been cut short by the hands of a knife and by the actions of evil lay in a casket where his family and friends attended to pay their respects. The amount of people who attended the ceremony at St Johns on Lower Clapton Road was significantly large; a rough estimate would probably be around the 2,500 mark. Young, old, black, white, some walked, some took their cars, a sombre occasion for a life no longer. Looking down from above, he would have been grateful and proud.

A couple of hours had passed and I was walking up the narrow way of Mare Street leading up to Lower Clapton. There was plenty of traffic coming into the one way system of the narrow way and also on the opposite side where it meets at crossroads with Dalston Lane. Two police cars and one police van turn their lights on to make their way through the congestion of vehicles. Nothing unusual here, this little section of Hackney is always gridlocked by busses and cars making their way to and from their destinations. But as I walk further along, I can only stop and inquire to two old West Indian ladies: “what is going on?” In the thickness of their Caribbean accent they both tell me that they were at the funeral but came out after fighting started. A shop keeper of perhaps Greek or Turkish descent says “It’s a funeral; people have got emotional and started fighting”


Looking across from the other side of the road the people in the park outside St Johns, it is hard to ascertain what is going on amongst the masses of people. The police are having the same problem as they struggle to find parking space and to distinguish between the trouble makers and just people who have come to pay their respects. As I walk further along the road towards the police station the police sense trouble. They run down towards the graveyard path on the left hand side of the church. They run towards a large crowd, made up of what I can tell adolescents, and emerge in a police hold with a young man in a plain white t-shirt, his head bowed down, and arms behind his head, and two policemen on either side of him escorting him forcibly towards their van. The crowd of adolescents have moved up towards the main road, some are on bikes. One solitary elderly man of about fifty starts shouting at them. What he is saying I don’t know, but from his finger pointing it seems like condemnation.

A young woman comes up to me in her mid twenties, she sees that I am smoking a rolled up cigarette; she has an unlit cigarette. I had already taken out my lighter to give to her. As her hands are shaking I immediately realise this was the wrong thing to do and try to light it for her. Visibly shaken and distressed, her attire brings me to the conclusion that she was at the funeral. “You okay?” I ask. It seems that a cigarette is all she needs for the moment, something to calm her nerves. “What happened?” I prompt. She says that they she was at the funeral and “they”, (whoever they are? The young group of men?) saw him throw a knife into the bushes. “For the boy’s family to witness this fighting at their son’s funeral. It’s shameful.” I asked who died. She said it was the boy that got stabbed on Amhurst road. Another lady lamented that black people do not know how to behave sometimes. This lady was herself black. Sometimes when you self depreciate it is hard to let out the words

After the dust of aggression had settled a band of trumpeters consisting of children led the way for the funeral procession. Followed by the deceased’s coffin in a horse drawn carriage. This was an enduring spectacle in stark contrast to what went on before. Something Jahmal Manson-Blair’s parents would be pleased about and not the aggression and youth conflict of what went on before. From what people who knew Jahmal, they say that he was not one who was involved in fights or gang culture. In truth his death came about from him trying to stop a fight. He loved football, was on the books at the Tottenham Hotspur and his life was only destined for success. Unfortunately I cannot say the same thing about the guy who was arrested and the people who were involved in the fracas at the Jahmal's funeral.

Related Links

Times Article

BBC News article and video