Stephen Lawrence’s brother has revealed he used to fantasise about taking revenge on his brother’s killers.
Speaking almost 30 years after the racist murder, Stuart Lawrence said the thought of bringing “shame” on his parents stopped him from seeking vegeance.
Stuart was 16 when his brother, 18, was murdered in an unprovoked racist attack while waiting for a bus in Eltham, south London, in April 1993.
Mr Lawrence told The Guardian he used to think about taking revenge, he added: “But what’s that going to do? Lead to shame on my mum and dad, and the police coming down on me.
“That’s not going to end well.”
He went to school shortly after the incident in 1993 because he wanted to find out who was responsible.
He came home with names of people he thought may have killed his brother, but said the police liason officer did nothing with the information.
Now a motivational speaker and youth engagement specialist, Mr Lawrence said he used to feel angry all the time, but felt pressure to control his feelings because of the media running false narratives that Stephen was a gang member.
He did not want to add fuel to the fire by acting on his rage. Instead, he said, he allowed himself to be angry only twice a year: “So if I lost my temper in January it was, like, well that’s you: now you’ve got the rest of the year to try and manage that.”
But, he added, this was itself an injustice when the Lawrence family had to deal with the tragedy of losing Stephen as well as confront the fact that his killers were roaming free.
“We should have had time to be able to come to grips with it,” Mr Lawrence said. “But we were just in fight mode all the time.”
Gary Dobson and David Norris were finally convicted of Stephen’s murder in in 2012, nearly two decades later and after a botched initial police investigation which led to the Metropolitan Police being branded institutionally racist.
Mr Lawrence said he tries not to imagine what his brother would be like now, saying it would be like “jumping down a rabbit hole”.
“Imagining would probably bring great sadness. Thinking about what he could have and would have been,” he said.
Following a career as a secondary school teacher, Mr Lawrence has written a book called Silence is Not an Option which contains practical tips and insights for young people.
His family is still waiting for the publication of an Independent Office for Police Conduct report on whether corruption was a factor in the handling of the original investigation into Stephen’s murder.
