Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Remembering Stephen Lawrence
Ahead of National Stephen Lawrence Day on Friday 22 April, Dr Glen Jankowski, Dr Ian Lamond and Margaret Chawawa discuss the impact of his death, the continuing fight for equality and how students and colleagues from Leeds Beckett can find out more about Stephen and the anti-racist work taking place at the university.
Stephen Lawrence was a Black British teenager who was murdered in an unprovoked racist attack while waiting for a bus in Eltham on the evening of Thursday 22 April 1993. The subsequent police investigation was so deeply flawed that it took years of political campaigning, a chance connection Stephen’s father had to an-otherwise unsympathetic British tabloid newspaper (that named the 5 killers publicly on their front page in 1997) and a legal review in 1999 that declared the police “institutionally racist” to bring just two of Stephen’s five killers to justice (20 years after).
Today three of Stephen’s murderers, Neil Acourt, Jamie Acourt and Luke Knight still walk free. Last year the author of that report Judge William MacPherson died. As the painful and recent cases of police racism demonstrates, MacPherson did not live to see the change he recommended.
The Child Q case
In another example of police racism and sexism, recently it emerged, that in December 2020, a 15-year-old Black school girl was strip searched by police. The search took place at school, without an adult present and whilst the girl was on her period. Her teacher had wrongly suspected she was carrying cannabis in what is now known as the ‘Child Q’ case. The police have since had to apologise after acknowledging the search was unjustified and ‘race’ was “likely” a motivating factor. The police had previously been criticised for its unjustified and disproportionate use of the dehumanising and ineffective tactic towards Black, Asian and Minoritised Ethnic people in the UK.
George Floyd’s murder
Another recent and horrifying example of police racism is the murder of George Floyd. On Monday 25 May 2020, George was murdered by Derek Chauvin, then a police officer with the Minneapolis Police Department. The police had been called to a local grocery store where the staff had suggested a man matching George’s description had tried to use a forged twenty-dollar bill. Four officers came to the scene – Chauvin was one of them. He restrained George, holding him down and kneeling on his neck. Despite protests that he couldn’t breathe, Chauvin knelt on George’s neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. He remained in that position till medical support arrived, even though no pulse had been detected on George Floyd for the two minutes before the arrival of the ambulance. Even though Black Lives Matter had formed in 2013, following the killing, in Florida, of the Black teenager Trayvon Martin, it was the protests in response to the senseless murder of George Floyd that brought it some it to the widest global media attention.
A poll conducted in the summer of 2020, reported by both CNN and The New York Times, suggested that – up to that point - somewhere between 15 and 26 million had participated in some form of BLM protest around George Floyd’s murder. This is not an issue limited to the U.S., we must not forget the horrendous figures for race-based hate crime in the England and Wales (Scotland and Ireland report their crime statistics differently). According to the Home Office, in the year 2020/2021 reported hate crime, based on Race has increased, by over 46% over the last five years. To cite a BLM campaign slogan from the year of George Floyd’s murder – All lives cannot matter until Black Lives Matter.
The challenge Stephen’s friends and family faced
A person’s death often devastates communities so that it can feel like there has been multiple losses. For Stephen’s loved ones this devastation must have been made unimaginably worse by racism from the police, media and wider society. For example, Duwayne Brookes, himself terrorised by Stephen’s killers that night, was often treated as a criminal in the deeply flawed police investigation into Stephen’s murder. For Duwayne, this included facing a spurious drug charge in 1993 (later thrown out by a judge). Stephen’s immediate family were also mistreated by the police including by being spied on. As former undercover cop turned whistle blower, Peter Francis, later revealed: “Throughout my deployment there was almost constant pressure on me personally to find out anything I could that would discredit [them] ”. Instead of being able to grieve Stephen’s murder, Stephen’s family: Doreen (his mother), Neville (his father), Georgina (his sister) and Stuart (his brother), and other loved ones had to face years of legal appeals, media intrusion and police harassment. Despite this, Stephen’s loved ones have shown incredible skill in experiencing- and challenging- British racism, in the police, criminal justice system and media, over the last three decades. This is why we are grateful to our library who will soon have obtained Duwayne’s, Doreen’s and Stuart’s books so that we can learn from these perspectives.
Getting involved at Leeds Beckett University
We encourage everyone to get involved at some capacity, whether it is simply spreading awareness of the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation or ensuring that your workplace is supporting BAME workers. To join our race forum email here and view the Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality’s work here.
We also have a remote panel event on Friday 6th May 2022 from 14.00 - 15.30 featuring five student and staff speakers reflecting on the importance of anti-racist work to the university. All are welcome to attend the event, which will be available here.
Finally, we would encourage anyone working in education and early years to take a proactive approach to discuss the issues surrounding racism and hate crime with the young people that we teach today (a useful start to the related campaign of #decolonizingthecurriculum). As such a place to share teaching resources around the day can also be found here.
