POSTCARD FROM LONDON

Over the last week, we have repainted London in two colors, black and white. There is no lilac, no green, not even the red of the city's famous doubledecker buses. Or, perhaps, these hues exist, but no one notices. Everyone is too busy reading faces--the colors of faces, more exactly--whether they are black or white.

The bold, black letters of tabloid headlines, offset by the stark white of the paper beneath, unrelentingly flash their news before the bustling traffic of the London subways. The story is the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young black high school student killed five years ago at a bus stop allegedly by five white men.

Police investigators--inept, or maybe even corrupt and racist--have failed to put Stephen's killers behind bars. Over the past five years, they have ignored leads and left evidence unexplored, in effect assisting in the much-disputed acquittal of three of the suspects and failure to prosecute the other two. Stephen's parents have attended every court session, sitting erectly and silently as witnesses relived the incident again and again.

After so many years of inaction, the Lawrence family and others are finally demanding justice loudly and forcefully, and, at their request, the police stand, as if on trial, before a month-long public inquiry into their mishandling of the case.

As tension escalated over the past week, I witnessed the events first from the ladders in the press pen, then as part of the sweating, shouting masses--a supposedly objective reporter thrown all-too-easily from my precarious perch into the swirling currents of emotion below.

I have watched crowds of black men and women lunge at the suspected killers, enveloping them and oozing onto the surrounding streets like volcanic lava. I have seen the sheer power of their hatred stop eight lanes of traffic and shatter bus windows. I have witnessed walls of white police officers dressed in riot gear equipped with tear gas, dogs and clubs and yet powered by much more. And I have stood between the two, helpless before the baying masses, but rigidly constrained by the iron wall of police.

In the process, I have been trampled, kicked, spat on and cursed. I have observed a small, silver blade snake down the arm of a fellow reporter, leaving a red trail. I have been called a murderer--a murderer only because I am white, only because I am trying to rationalize the hatred.

Before these demonstrations, I naively thought the British incapable of feeling the deep-set racial anger visibly present in American society. Now, I realize their disdain is older, more ingrained in their lifestyle and chillingly frightening.

For centuries, civility reigned in Britain with the permanence of the black and gold of the Royal Standard. Maids served their aristocratic lords and ladies hot dishes of traditional lamb and beef peppered with the appropriate number of sirs and madams. Masters, in turn, gave them the courteous nod, the occasional leftover and fair pay. But, underneath the lacy facade, fear and hatred lay brewing, occasionally ruffling the cover with a small gust of wind.

In this century, the cover has blown off. Descendants--all white--of those who once scrubbed the floors and washed the dishes of the Churchills, the Wellingtons and others that for so many centuries ruled the world demanded their share of power, glory and education.

And recently, a third group--all black--has landed on England's shores, seeking retribution for the slavery, brutal killing and humiliation their ancestors suffered at the hands of British generals. Immigrants from the old Empire's colonies in the Caribbean and Africa now populate England's lower and middle class neighborhoods, joining the revolt against the long-standing symbols of aristocratic influence.

Insecure with the conflict that England has studiously avoided on the home front, both sides--whites and blacks alike--have behaved like irascible children on the playing fields. A blow from one side incites a retaliation by the other, but neither will voice the undeniable truth: England must move into the 21st century. It must change its image of an old boys club where highly-educated, aristocratic men play at ruling the world and admit to what it really is--a nation with more poor than rich and a large population of black citizens who deserve a voice.

In the supreme irony of fate, the death of a young, innocent boy who probably knew little of hate or history spurred the black community to demand its rights. Stephen, who never tried to wound or even threaten his killers, could have been an example of how to bring change peacefully, but, instead, he is now a symbol for a group determined to destroy and condemn.

Over the five years since his death, Stephen, the boy--Stephen, offering hope--has been forgotten by the masses. His image--a marketable picture of a smiling boy wearing a M*A*S*H shirt and giving his photographers a wave--lives on, reproduced on t-shirts, in the British tabloids, on television and on propaganda posters. It is, however, but the ghost of person--a voodoo doll that, when pricked, creates an automatic yelp from hundreds of protesters.

The media, the police, the observers--and, yes, especially, the black protesters themselves--no longer see the sensitive boy behind the image. The boy who dreamed of going to college in a couple of years; the boy who played soccer and watched movies with his friends; the boy, who like all of us, wanted to fit in. The boy who should stand for the peaceful way forward in England.

England's solution lies with those like Stephen, the black children who can still race across the football pitch with white children. During the riot, as I frantically shouted my story above the screams of the protesters to my editor on the other end of the line. I watched a tough, black man with a scarred face and missing eye--wounds from a fight that must have happened years earlier. He carried a large photograph of the smiling Stephen in his M*A*S*H shirt, shouting racist epithets to incite the crowd. I silently compared the two men, Stephen and this massive ruffian--both black, both poor, both probably with a reason to hate whites. But Stephen's eyes sparkled above his childish grin. The man's eyes had narrowed, and his skin had deep furrows from a permanent frown on his deep set jaw. And I watched the beefy, red-faced white police, armed with shields and jackboots, herding people--most particularly black people--as if they were cattle headed to slaughter.

Innocence does not last forever, and children learn what adults teach them. I fear that England, set in her ways, is unready to teach her children to see not black and white but the multitude of brilliant colors that surround them. For what has happened, I cannot blame one side or the other; they are both to blame. I can only find the victims: Stephen and his mother, Doreen, and his father, Neville.

After all, it takes many to paint a city, but even more to give it a fresh coat.

Jenny E. Heller, a sophomore romance studies concentrator in Lowell House, is writing and reporting for the Associated Press in London and free-lancing in her spare time. She grew up in Brussels, Belgium and now lives in London.