Twenty years ago on this day, Stephen Lawrence was murdered. We commemorate his life and his family’s grief and struggle for justice by hosting this film made by Paul Greengrass for Britain’s ITV channel in 1999. I watched this film when it was first broadcasted, it chilled me as I had been in similar circumstance but thankfully was very close to my home and though verbally abused, I was not physically attacked. I hope others will join me in donating to The Stephen Lawrence Trust which I believe is struggling financially due to government cuts.
This video has been taken from YouTube and is segmented into 6 parts:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
Part 6:
This is a dramatisation based a real events
Stephen Lawrence (13 September 1974 — 22 April 1993) was a black British teenager from Eltham, southeast London, who was stabbed to death while waiting for a bus on the evening of 22 April 1993.
After the initial investigation, five suspects were arrested but never convicted. It was suggested during the course of investigation that the murder had a racist motive and that Lawrence was killed because he was black, and that the handling of the case by the police and Crown Prosecution Service was affected by issues of race, leading to an inquiry.
In 1999, an inquiry headed by Sir William Macpherson examined the original Metropolitan police investigation and concluded that the force was “institutionally racist”. The inquiry has been called ‘one of the most important moments in the modern history of criminal justice in Britain’. The report of the examination’s work and conclusions was published in 1999 as The Macpherson Report.
On 18 May 2011, it was announced that Gary Dobson who was one of the original suspects, and another man David Norris, were to stand trial for the murder in the light of “new and substantial evidence” becoming available. A jury was selected on Monday 14 November 2011, and the trial started on the following day.
On 3 January 2012, Dobson and Norris were found guilty of Lawrence’s murder. Some of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers have escaped legal retribution to this day.
