Doreen Lawrence, who has campaigned tirelessly for justice and equality since her son was killed in an unprovoked racist attack in 1993, has spoken candidly for the first time about finding her inner strength after the brutal murder that seized Britain.
In a BBC Maestro course released on Thursday, Lady Lawrence reflects on being thrust into the spotlight and having to publicly mourn her son Stephen, then 18, who was stabbed while waiting for a bus in Eltham, south London, nearly 30 years ago.
“It took me a while to feel comfortable in talking about what had happened to Stephen, in talking about my feelings,” Lawrence says in one episode. “It was too raw at the beginning, too early to process my thoughts to anyone.”
Speaking in the three-hour BBC course, Lawrence refuses to tread lightly over her delayed decision to have therapy, her feelings of impostor syndrome and the guilt of not having been there for her son on the night of his murder.
“There are times that you think you can’t go on, but then you just think of the person who you’re fighting for and the fact that Stephen didn’t have a voice,” Lawrence told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday. “I needed to be his voice and to speak out about the injustice.”
The 1999 Macpherson inquiry concluded that institutional racism contributed to the Metropolitan police’s failure to bring Stephen’s attackers to justice. In 2012, two men – Gary Dobson and David Norris – were jailed for murder.
Lawrence later became a life peer and received an OBE. With her then husband, Neville, she founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, now called Blueprint For All, and she is a member of the board and of the council of the human rights organisation Liberty, as well as being a patron of the hate crime charity Stop Hate UK.
While the loss of her son is not something Lawrence is able to stop thinking of, with time the pain has lessened, she says.
When asked by Today how she managed to carry on, Lawrence said she drew strength from two sources: the fight for justice for Stephen, and modelling her behaviour on that of her Jamaican grandmother.
Lawrence referred to an old Jamaican saying – “We likkle but we tallawah” – which she equated to standing tall in the face of adversity despite one’s small stature. She said it was a position she had had to assume after Stephen’s murder to speak out and demand justice. Otherwise, she said, his name would have been forgotten.
“I wanted to make sure that his name and what he stands for and how we can help other young people because they have a right to life and that was denied Stephen,” she said.
Lawrence, who has been selected to sit on panels within the Home Office and the police service, said the racism that existed in today’s police force brought her back to her son’s death. “He wasn’t seen as a human being, and we weren’t also,” she said.
“What happened to Stephen was terrible and I would not wish that on anybody, but when I look at what came out of what happened to Stephen, that is what I think I take some comfort in,” she says in an episode of the course. “That is what has helped: to look at the positiveness.”
