The Blackwash
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The Blackwash
Stephen Lawrence Day: Humanising a Historic Tragedy
Knowledge truly changes everything. On Stephen Lawrence Day, we take a profound journey beyond headlines and statistics to discover the full humanity of a young man whose life was cut tragically short by racist violence.
Stephen wasn't just a victim or a symbol—he was an average 18-year-old, worked at McDonald's, studied diligently for his A-levels, and had already completed work experience with a Black architect. He was pursuing dreams that racism would ultimately steal from him. Through Doreen Lawrence's powerful memoir "And Still I Rise," we glimpse the vibrant personality behind the tragedy that transformed British society's understanding of institutional racism.
The contrast between Stephen's loving family and the violent criminal background of his attackers provides crucial context. While the Metropolitan Police's institutional racism allowed his killers to initially escape justice, we cannot forget the personal dimensions of this case—from the Christian couple who comforted Stephen in his final moments to the perpetrators' previous racist attacks that went inadequately addressed by authorities.
Stephen's legacy—symbolized by his name meaning "crown garland" and "shining one"—continues through the Stephen Lawrence Foundation's work in classrooms, communities, and careers. This Stephen Lawrence Day, expand your knowledge by exploring Doreen's memoir and supporting the foundation's vital mission. Remember: it could have been any of us (hate race crimes still numbering around 100,000 annually in the UK) and that's why this story still matters profoundly today.
Hello and welcome to the Blackwash. This week, on Tuesday, the 22nd of April, was Stephen Lawrence Day. To mark the officiated day, I went live on my social media. I started by asking the audience to rank their knowledge of Stephen Lawrence. Here today I'm going to do the same on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being up-to-date, proficient, detailed and 1 being very little knowledge. I want you to self-assess in your head now. Hold that number, as I will ask you towards the end of the podcast. My hope is that by the end, you would have learnt something new, just as my live audience did. Now, from the analytics of this podcast, I can see that 31% of my audience are from the US and Canada. In addition, when I asked my live audience to rank themselves, I had people ranking themselves from 2 being very little knowledge to 10 being in-depth and proficient knowledge. So I will start with the basics. This is listed on Wikipedia and it's just a brief summary of the case, and it reads Stephen Lawrence was born on the 13th of September 1974. It continues.
Speaker 1:After the initial investigation, five suspects were arrested but not charged. A private prosecution subsequently initiated by Lawrence's family failed to secure convictions for any of those accused. It was suggested during the investigation that Lawrence was killed because he was black and that the handling of the case by the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service was affected by issues of race. Fast forward, a 1998 public inquiry headed by Sir William McPherson concluded that the original Metropolitan Police Service investigation was incompetent and that the force was institutionally racist. This led to the partial revoking of the rule against double jeopardy. Two of the perpetrators were convicted of murder on the 3rd of January 2012. As I said, that was lifted off of Wikipedia and chances are it felt a bit mechanical. It felt mechanical. Me reading it and I'm assuming that you guys hearing it it would also feel a little bit mechanical, a little bit stiff, a little bit impersonal. So I'm going to start now with my earliest memory that I have of the case. So when my life intersected with the case, and that was in 2012.
Speaker 1:At that time I taught in a racially diverse school in Lewisham, south East London. It was early January 2012 and the students had just come back from their Christmas and New Year's holiday. Excitement was in the air as they ushered into tutor class one by one to take their seats. Over the general chatter I overheard a conversation regarding the two recent convictions in the murder of Stephen Lawrence, I was taken aback. Yes, the unjust murder, racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence occurred in the neighbouring area of Eltham. However, it occurred in 1993, before they were born. Perhaps naively, the school and I hadn't prepared a space to facilitate this watershed moment. The conversation continued until I heard a black male student blurt out all white people are racist. At that point I had to command the attention of the class, but I didn't need to question where this notion was coming from, as a 1998 public inquiry headed by Sir William McPherson, as I mentioned earlier, concluded that the original handling of the case by the Met Police Force was incompetent and institutionally racist. Thankfully, I was familiar with the details of the case. I calmly explained to the class in Stephen's final moments he was comforted by a white Christian couple and I asked them if they were aware of that fact, and largely none of them were, because of what they were seeing in the media was purely the faces of the perpetrators. Sidebar For further context, a Christian couple gave their accounts of events in the Standard newspaper.
Speaker 1:It says Connor Taffy and his wife Louise had been attending a prayer meeting at their local Catholic church and were walking home. They saw Dwayne Brooks and Stephen running up the road in the opposite direction. Stephen was lagging behind and holding his chest with his hand and his friend was urging him to keep up. I sense they were running away from something or someone, but I couldn't see anything, said Mr Taffy in a statement read to the court. He fell about 10 to 15 feet behind us. Louise said Look, he's fallen. But I decided to continue walking because I sensed danger. I thought it could have been a ploy to get our attention and that we would be victim of a crime or mugging. I had to fight my instinct to see if he was alright. They quickly changed their minds when they heard the screeching of tyres of an off-duty police officer arriving and they could see Dwayne Brooks frantically trying to wave and flag cars down. Louise said come on, it's serious. And they went to where he was lying, said mr taffy. I put my right hand on his back and my left hand on his head. He was still breathing but was unconscious. I was still holding his head and back and I was praying for him, internally as well as externally. I heard louise praying too. She put her right hand on his head, mrs Taffy said in a statement that Stephen was gasping for air with his eyes closed. We stayed with him for 15 minutes. He didn't speak, but he seemed peaceful, she said.
Speaker 1:I said to my students the binary opposites in this case were racist versus non-racist, not black versus white. I saw their impressionable clogs connect in real time. The rage of the black male students and the shame of the white students dissipated in harmony. My second experience slash intersection with this case was in 2017. Five years later I saw the sinister manifestation of misinformation. By this time I was working in a college. The overall staff atmosphere was a lot more relaxed.
Speaker 1:During my lunch break I returned to my department desk and continued reading Doreen Lawrence's book and still I rise which my friend had recommended unsolicited. My older white male line manager said Stephen was a bad boy. This statement took me aback. I replied what makes you say that? He cattily replied my husband's from the area he knows. At this point I should probably point out that the college is again a stone's throw away from where Stephen Lawrence lost his life on the Well Hall Road. I pointed to passages from Doreen's memoir where she recalls her 18-year old son, stephen, studying for A-levels in English literature and language and design technology, just like our students.
Speaker 1:On the weekend, he was working part-time at McDonald's. He had hobbies and ambitions, just like our students. By all accounts, he was a normal teenager, something we experience on a day-to-day, not a saint, but not in a gang and definitely not deserving to die. I replied plainly. We have plenty of quote-unquote bad boys in this college. Do they deserve to be racially murdered by a gang of youth that they do not know? The line manager had no substantial reply other than a stuttered well, well, well, well, well.
Speaker 1:My line manager was a lovely guy, but at that moment, this sinister manifestation of misinformation scared me. What would he have said if he were in my shoes in 2012? Would he have falsely and baselessly said Stephen was a bad boy, meaning he deserved it, or would he have said nothing and allowed the racial wildfire to spread? You may have heard the idiom the devil is in the detail, which alludes to the detail finding being complicated and likely to cause problems. Paradoxically, it derives from the earlier phrase God is in the details, expressing the idea that whatever one does, it should be done thoroughly because the details are important. That whatever one does, it should be done thoroughly because the details are important. Back to the ill-conceived notion from my tutee and my manager I can confidently say God, or at least God, were in the details. For years I pondered what could have manifested in those minds had I not gone beyond the hearsay and the headlines.
Speaker 1:Coincidentally, the Stephen Lawrence Day strapline for this year's campaign is knowledge changes everything. How apt. For me, it was the knowledge of the Christian couple that changed the tense, racially divided atmosphere in my classroom. It was the knowledge of Stephen's teen years that changed the atmosphere of my manager's baseless claims. This knowledge was acquired from Doreen Lawrence's book and still I rise and it allows us to humanize and empathize.
Speaker 1:On page 50, doreen says Stephen was an extrovert and loved clothes that made him stand out. Once we went shopping and a pair of green leather shoes caught Stephen's eye. Not many people would dream of walking around in green shoes, but he tried them on, like them, and I bought them for him. He loved his green shoes. He didn't even care if anyone stared. Green shoes he didn't even care if anyone stared. Another time I remember him wearing a corduroy suit which had a leopard skin lining with orange in it and I said Stephen, please, do you really want to wear that Pimps wear things like that. But if he saw something that he liked, he would wear it and it didn't matter what anyone else said or thought. When I read that paragraph it cracked me up because it sounds like Stephen is going to them Bashment dance. You know the Bashment dance dance. Where you know color, you know you need to be looking vibrant. So when I'm hearing green shoe, corduroy, leopard skin, I'm thinking Bashamant Dancehall. What are you lot thinking when you think of all those combinations of colours Moving on?
Speaker 1:At the bottom of page 50, it says once he needed a new tracksuit and, being his flash self, he wanted one with a yellow trim. There's a photograph of him in it when he was running a mini marathon in 1988. Looking very stylish, with the jacket open, his shoulders thrown back. When he was about to do work experience with the black architect Arthur Timothy in Tower Bridge, I went shopping with him and with the money that he had saved we bought various outfits in preparation for his placement, dressed up to the nines to set out to work, and he looked a picture Once again the detail, the detail, the detail. Remember earlier I said that Stephen aspired to be at the age of 18 and was studying subjects that would help him to become an architect. But it wasn't until I read this that he also did work experience with a black architect. How incredible is that, and how does it show that it wasn't just merely hearsay? It wasn't just, you know, a dream or a quick dream. This was something that was innate, something that he was working towards from a young age.
Speaker 1:Who remembers their first work experience? Mine was in peter jones, which is equivalent to john lewis, and it was on sloan square and it was in the china linen department. So, you know, like the plates and the and the mugs and the knife on, fuck yeah, and you had to be really careful when you were like packing it up. You had to, you know, wrap it in a certain tissue paper and then bubble wrap it and then put it in the bag. Yeah, Memories, what was you guys work experience? I could imagine that you're either smiling fondly right now and reflecting back, or looking back and thinking, boy, what a waste of time. Or looking back and thinking, boy, that was not a good time. It continues on page 51.
Speaker 1:As he got older, stephen would do his homework in the kitchen and he would be down there for hours, while most children his age went to bed at around 10. He was still up at 11 o'clock or later, if you let him. While doing his homework, he would be listening to tapes on his walkman and eating at the same time. He loves soul, r&b, pop singers like mariah carey, and he liked l l cool j, the early and more melodic kind of rap. In this chapter, doreen obviously continues to speak, speak about Stephen, and I'm not going to share everything, of course not. We would be here for quite a while. So I definitely would recommend buying Doreen Lawrence's book.
Speaker 1:And Still I Rise. The last little bit that I'm going to pick from in regards to Stephen and his early life is something that Doreian said that stuck with me. She says that was my life as it stood in 1993. Nothing much disturbed me or my confidence in my family's future. The binary opposite here is functioning family versus dysfunctional family. By contrast, let's talk about the Norris family.
Speaker 1:According to DreamDeferredcom, clifford Norris, who's David Norris's dad, one of the convicted murderers. He was brought up in Deptford in the 1950s. To give you a little bit of context, during this time it was the post-war resettlement and it saw a breakup of crime families that historically had controlled soho, east london and parts of south london, think the cray twins. That void left a space for local career criminals who deemed the center of london, ie soho, as quote-unquote too hot. So they mapped out new territory in southeast london and the outer l outer London boroughs bordering Kent, bexley, greenwich, lewisham. So although the Norrises started out as teenage hoodlums, by the 80s they quickly turned to violent criminals, to violent criminals. It's said that in 1989, clifford shot a woman in the fro who he believed to have spread rumours about the state of his marriage. The victim refused to testify against him because she was scared.
Speaker 1:In the 80ss there was the increase in rave culture and families moved into the ecstasy trade and began to rake in profits. And the norrises began to illegally import into the uk from illegal factories in holland, along with cannabis and later cocaine smuggled from the US. Typically it would be smuggled in from, you know, boats that would land on the Kent and Essex coast, or light aircraft, light private aircraft landing in strips in the remote countryside. And of course it was very lucrative. So by the mid 1980s Clifford Norris was involved in major drug importation, allowing him to buy in his wife's name, tracy, a six hundred thousand pounds Tudor house in leafy Chislehurst near Sidcup in Kent.
Speaker 1:It's said that when police were raiding the house in search of evidence linking his son, davidris, to the Stephen Lawrence murder, that they actually tiptoed around the house because it was so posh. This speaks to the dirty cops, the bent justice and racism at that time in Scotland Yard. So it should come as no surprise that David followed in the footsteps of his father and displayed violent tendencies as a boy and was permanently excluded from school at the age of 13. Unsurprisingly, the boy began to mimic the social organisations of his father and his uncle and associates as they entered their teenage years. In Doreen's book on page 138, it says this. Page 138 it says this it was now that we discovered the sheer scale of the information the police had been given from the first hours of the investigation the role of clifford norris, the dad to david norris, about whom we had been kept completely in the dark. We heard that he had emerged from hiding when his son was charged with the stabbing of Stacey Benefield. Stacey Benefield is a person that his son, david Norris, had stabbed prior to Stephen Lawrence, so he emerged and tried to bribe Stacey into changing his evidence into changing his evidence, wrapping up his offer of £5,000 with a threat to shoot the boy if he did not go through with altering his story. Stacey took the £2,000 in cash that Norris pressed on him because he was so frightened, but then told the police about it and became a protected witness. It may have been after this that Norris tried to interfere with the jury in his son's trial. Whatever he did, it worked.
Speaker 1:Moving on, it says the boys were no longer just hooligans. They had sinister and dangerous connections. The boys themselves had been involved with many other stabbings or assaults. Neil Acott had been thrown out of a sports club to which his friends also belonged for pulling a knife and holding it to the neck of a black child in the course of a football match. He was the only boy expelled from the club in over 10 years. Jamie Acott, another perpetrator, had kicked a black child down the concrete steps of his school and knocked him unconscious. The school refused to treat this as a racist attack and both boys were expelled.
Speaker 1:In May 1992, david Norris and Jamie Acott stabbed and beat two boys, the Witham brothers in Chislehurst town centre. The brother who was stabbed had a deep holiday tan and dark hair and looked either Turkish or Asian. Norris was charged, but the CPS dropped the charges just six weeks before Stephen was killed. Had they not dropped it, stephen might still be here. Had they not dropped it, stephen might still be here.
Speaker 1:Spiritually put, they are demonic, demon-possessed, demon-oppressed. They are rabid racists. The word monsters or racists isn't sufficient for their heinous hate. Sufficient for their heinous hate. Often, in circumstances like these, the binary opposites is to immortalize and glamorize versus demonize, but glamorization leads to justification, like what happened to me in 2017. How dare that man, my manager, make me have to justify anything? The binary opposite here is humans versus demons, and I use the word human, symbolic of humanity, because, as you previously heard, there were other victims. Equally, it could have been anyone with a slightly darker hue.
Speaker 1:Let's take it deeper. Let's take it deeper because it is written. Jamie Acott and Neil Acott are currently sitting in prison for drug charges, attempting to smuggle four million pounds worth of drugs. What does the name jamie mean? It means supplier, suppliant. His name acot means tribunal, to be literally in a court, one of the main perpetrators. His name is gary dobson. The name gary means spear or spearman. Spear is a form of sword, a form of knife.
Speaker 1:It is written, and Doreen and her family have had to bear this for 32 plus years. Even most recently in the past couple of weeks, david Norris admits finally to being there, but only punching Stephen, but not stabbing Stephen. And I could only imagine, after 32 years, how that must feel. And when I see Doreen I feel the palpable grief. There was this one time that my friend who is a well-known anointed singer he sang for Doreen at one of their events and he got her up on stage and they sang a little bit together and he twirled her around and because he's an anointed singer, in that moment I could see the weight lifted off of her shoulders and I saw a glimmer of what I guess would have been the Doreen before all of this. Now I've done work on humanising Stephen and I also think it's important to humanize Doreen, because we often see this pillar of strength and unfortunately our black women are always subjected to being strong black women and that's fine, but not at the expense of their vulnerability and their softness.
Speaker 1:Once again, this is from Doreen's book and Still I Rise and it speaks a little bit about her and Neville's love story. It says Neville Lawrence and I got married in late 1972. Our first meeting was in 1970, when he visited our house with a friend. I mainly noticed his height. He was six foot two inches tall and he reminded me of Levi Stubbs in the great Motown group, the Four Tops. I know who the Four Tops is, but I didn't know who Levi was. I had to Google that one time. He never had an afro, his hair was cut very low and he had this funny widow's peak. I thought he was very handsome.
Speaker 1:I was 19 when he proposed though it was not a conventional proposal. Neville put it in such a casual way that I had to double take to realize what he was saying. We were walking down the street setting out to work one morning, and as we got to New Cross Station he was like oh, when we are married? My response was bewildered what did you say? What did you mean by that? As proposals go, it lacked drama. There was no romantic business of going down on one knee or making a big performance out of it. That would have been nice, but when it came to emotional expression, I think he was afraid to risk being knocked back. He didn't say I love you. I'm not sure he ever did. But he cared for me. That much was clear. And I loved him, though it was not an overwhelming exciting feeling, it was more of a calm assurance that I was doing the right thing.
Speaker 1:She also says, and I'm going to paraphrase, that her father didn't like Neville at first and how their first concert they went to Wembley and it was the pre-Bob era and they saw Pat Kelly and Max Romeo and Jimmy Cliff and to me all of this feels very Jamaican, 1970-80 coded. You know your dad, not approving the man that you've chosen to be your husband, you know isn't the most affectionate, but you know he loves you some way, some shape, some form, but he just can't fix his lips because he's a trader and he's a man's man and he can't just say my love. You don't moving on ever so slightly because I want you to buy the book, so I'm not going to give you all of the tea you get me. But on page 46 now the children are here she says my children had a carefree life.
Speaker 1:My marriage was happy, even though Neville worked long hours. When he was doing building work he would rush home to be with me and the children. He was not one of those husbands who sat at the pub for hours after work. The only time we had arguments is when we disagreed about how he disciplined the children. He was very strict with them, like many West Indian parents, quick to punish, quick to punish them when he thought it was necessary by confiscating their toys or stopping them from watching TV. Occasionally they might get a slap from him, which was a normal way for parents in Jamaica to discipline their children. But looking back and seeing my surviving children now, I don't think their upbringing did them any harm.
Speaker 1:A functional family, very Jamaican, coded, perhaps stereotypical, but done to humanize. Question what does your name mean? Stephen Lawrence means crown garland and shining one, bright one. And when we look at his legacy, his legacy for change, we see a shining bright legacy. If you check out the Stephen Lawrence Foundation website, their three C's is classroom, community and careers. Their three C's is classroom, community and careers. If you're able to donate and or share the word fundraise and support the noteworthy cause, why? Because it could have been us. But equally, his legacy for change, his shining bright legacy, is that of architecture. As I said earlier, that was his work experience when he went to college. He was studying subjects to help him to become an architect, and now the step Lawrence Foundation are doing just that building and working with those aspiring to be architects.
Speaker 1:In addition, there may be a notion to think that Stephen Lawrence was so long ago, but, as demonstrated with my conversation with my students in 2012 and with the conversation with my manager in 2017, and if you look at the hate crime statistics from the govuk website, you can see the hate crime, especially in regards to race, is still very prevalent. If you look at the graph, hate crimes have gone up since 2012. 2013 it went up 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. It's only when it comes to 2022, 2023 does it begin to decrease, but still, hate crimes based on race is still around the hundred thousand mark. So we simply cannot think that it won't be us because, similarly, doreen didn't think that it would be Stephen. We still have so much work to do and remember.
Speaker 1:This year's slogan for Stephen Lawrence Day is that knowledge changes everything. So, with that pretense, now re-rank your knowledge. Hopefully you have learned something new. I'll end by saying if you want more, make sure you buy dorian's book. You can visit my link on my socials, which will take you to my bookshoporg website, where I get a small commission and so does an independent bookshop rather than going to Amazon. But I'll end with this Thank you for taking this opportunity out to mark this shining bright legacy for change. That is Stephen Lawrence Day. My name is Cain Kawasaki and thank you for listening to the Black Wash.