I try not to remember the day Stephen died. Even 30 years on, the pain of losing your firstborn never goes away. I remember watching him leave the house that morning for the last time and turn down the alleyway up to the main road where he used to catch the bus. I remember the neighbour banging on the door telling us Stephen had been attacked by a group of boys.
Later in the hospital, when the doctors told me Stephen had died, I asked to go and see him, but they said he needed cleaning up first. I remember going into the room and looking at him but I don’t know what I did, how I felt, or even if I touched him. The next morning, I woke up at home thinking it was all a bad dream. I went into his bedroom and saw his bed hadn’t been slept in – that’s when I realised it was real.
Stephen would be 48 years old now and I often imagine what he would be doing today. He had ambitions to be an architect, something I myself wanted to be as a young man. He had been doing work experience shortly before he died. One of the projects he was involved in was later built in Deptford. Every time I drive past that building, I remember him and what could have been.
Your children are the people who carry on your name when you’re not here. I’m now retired, a pensioner – I imagine him supporting me, living a life full of achievements that I was never able to achieve. But Stephen won’t be around in my old age.
Even though Stephen’s case was closed by the Met in 2020, I am still hoping that everyone involved in his death will serve time. I keep in close contact with Clive Driscoll, the detective who brought two of Stephen’s killers to justice, and he has some new information that I hope could lead us somewhere. But what we do with any new leads is complicated. I can’t see us becoming involved with the Met again. If we found something really consequential, how could we trust that they would do the right thing? I will leave it to my lawyers to decide where best to go from here.
The people who killed my son still walk freely. Perhaps they are married now, with children of their own – whole lives lived that my son was never able to achieve because of what they did to him. But I have forgiven them. Even those who haven’t been brought to justice. After the murder, I used to fantasise about what I would do to them if I came across them in the street. At times, I was so angry I couldn’t sleep at night.
I went to my pastor and I asked him how I could forgive. He told me I didn’t need to become friends with these people, but that I could offer them forgiveness inside my heart. So I did, and I got baptised. That brought me a hell of a lot of peace.
On the anniversary of Stephen’s death on Saturday, I will go to lay flowers at the bus stop where he died. Clive will probably join me. When he retired, it dealt a crushing blow to my family. He was the first and only officer to ever explain to us what was happening in the investigation. To treat us with respect. Even when I was in Jamaica, he would call me weekly. Since he retired, I have no relationship with the Met. It was undoubtedly premature to close Stephen’s case. Even the judge who prosecuted two of his killers spoke of his hopes to bring the others to justice.
I have no interest in meeting the Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley. What is there to say? He has refused to utter the words institutional racism. But if it’s not that, then what is it? Reform is not impossible, but if the person in charge of the organisation refuses to accept changes, then how is the force going to change? If I was in trouble today, I wouldn’t call the police for help. Absolutely not. I have no confidence that I would be treated with fairness or respect.
It has been 13 years since the Conservatives came to power. The home secretary is the person who guides the Met. When you have a home secretary who is saying they are going to send people to Rwanda who don’t even come from there, what can you possibly say about a person like that? In 13 years, Theresa May is the only home secretary who has done anything decent by giving us Stephen Lawrence day.
Stephen’s death turned my own life upside down. I don’t want to be in this country any more, so I spend most of my time in Jamaica now. That’s where most of my relatives are. I didn’t feel good about living in the UK after what happened to Stephen here. Stephen is buried in Jamaica, too, because we didn’t want people to vandalise his grave. When I want to feel close to him, I go down to his grave and tend to it and think of him.
Stephen’s image has come to symbolise so much. For me, too, he is the face for change. But he was also my little boy. I will always remember him as both. The promise of modern-day anti-racism movements has faltered somewhat. After George Floyd’s death, they managed to galvanise people all over the world, and unite them behind this cause, but all of a sudden they seem to have disappeared. I don’t know what has happened.
My family has spent 30 years campaigning for the same cause, so that other families don’t have to suffer what we have. What has become abundantly clear in the years since his death is that systemic racism is still deeply rooted in the places that are meant to protect us. But what has changed is young people’s attitudes, and that gives me hope. I have spent a lot of time in schools, and I feel that younger generations today are more accepting of multiculturalism and integration than they were 30 years ago.
On the anniversary of Stephen’s death, 30 years since he was killed, if there is any possibility for justice, however remote, I will keep fighting for answers. I will never stop fighting. I will keep hoping and praying that one day there will be a breakthrough.
Neville Lawrence OBE is an anti-racism campaigner and the father of Stephen Lawrence. As told to Lucy Pasha-Robinson
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