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EXCLUSIVE: Stephen Lawrence’s younger brother Stuart interview
(January 08, 2012)I'd never seen Dad upset. But that night he was all over the place, crying out loud... all he could say was 'Stephen's dead'
EXCLUSIVE: Stephen Lawrence’s younger brother Stuart has always kept out of the public eye. Here he gives a moving - and inspiring - first interview
Last updated at 10:29 AM on 8th January 2012
Stuart Lawrence idolised his older brother Stephen. He thought him the ‘coolest thing in the world’. There was his charisma, good looks, his clothes, the effortless way he excelled on the sports field and in the classroom.
And as older brothers should, Stephen always looked out for Stuart, protecting him, for instance, when he felt apprehensive on his first day at secondary school.
Over the years, the two boys played together, played jokes on each other, shared a bedroom, occasionally fought, competed on the athletics track, shared hopes and dreams. Stephen was the touchstone against which Stuart, two years younger, measured his life and achievements.
Close bond: Stephen, left, aged nine, with his brother Stuart, seven
‘He was everything I wanted to be,’ says Stuart, now 34. ‘All his teachers thought he was a golden child and to me he was a role model. I was always trying to be as good as him. But I felt I was never quite getting there. He was amazing at drawing. I used to sit for hours, tracing things, copying things, practising, but it would never flow. Whatever he did came naturally to Stephen.’
After his brother’s murder in 1993, Stuart was shielded from the spotlight by his parents, Doreen and Neville. While they fought for justice, often very publicly, they did not want the same exposure for their remaining son and his younger sister Georgina, now 28.
For the past 18 years, Stuart has led a quiet, inconspicuous existence. ‘People who have known me for years are often unaware I’m Stephen’s brother,’ he says.
Left behind: Stuart looked up to his brother Stephen and is now a teacher
Since mid-November he has listened to much of the often harrowing trial of two of his brother’s murderers, Gary Dobson and David Norris.
He returned to Court 16 of the Old Bailey again last Wednesday to look them in the eye when they were sentenced, when they were told by the judge that their evil crime had ‘scarred the conscience of the nation’. Indescribably relieved by the verdict, Stuart only now feels able to talk in depth about the case and his life with the brother he adored.
He was 16 when Stephen, for no other reason than the colour of his skin, was cut down by Norris and Dobson and their racist white gang on a South-East London street. It is easy to imagine how this might have rendered the teenager vengeful – though it never did. ‘I don’t have any feelings towards them, as anger and hate are wasted emotions,’ he says. ‘They have to live with what they have done, that is what’s eating them up inside and will continue to do so.’
It is also easy to see how the murder might have caused Stuart to stray from the path his parents encouraged him to follow. Again, to their great credit and his, it never did. Demonstrating great fortitude, Stuart was unswerving in his determination to make something of himself ‘for my brother’s sake’.
So, while the murder forced Britain to search its soul, while it changed race relations and ultimately society itself, Stuart kept himself focused through sheer hard work. It was the only way he could contain his grief.
‘I encased my feelings, dealt with the grief by myself – because only I could get through it,’ he explains. He says he existed in a bubble, keeping one eye on the developments in his brother’s case but never immersing himself in them.
Today he is a teacher at a South London girls’ school and is, by all accounts, a very good one.
Stephen, who wanted to be an architect, would be proud of him. ‘I don’t think I would be in the position I am today if Stephen hadn’t passed away,’ he says. ‘I would have been coasting. His death made me more determined, made me step up to the plate.
‘Stephen was always the one doing things first, then showing us the way. So I had that in my mind when he died. I felt I had the responsibility of leading the way, stepping into his shoes, especially for my sister’s sake.’
Stuart speaks cheerfully of his life now, of his affection for his pupils, his love for his fiancee whom he met at university and their 12-month-old son, Theo, the baby who has finally made his life ‘sweeter’. He proudly shows off photos on his mobile phone.
‘I will be strict with him,’ he laughs. ‘But I have given his godfather clear instructions to remind him when he complains about me when he’s older, of how much of a cool guy his dad actually is – that he wasn’t always this task master!’
Like his parents, it is Stuart’s dignity that is his most shining quality. He is also affable and engaging company. But when recalling that terrible night of April 22, 1993, a drowsy sadness envelops him and he lowers his voice. Occasionally he rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
He says relations with his brother had been strained in the week before the murder. ‘I’d borrowed his Walkman and broke it, and we weren’t talking. Just a silly row,’ says Stuart. ‘But that morning as he left for college, Stephen asked me, “Are you OK? I’ll see you when I get home.” ’
'Stephen (pictured) was always the one doing things first, then showing us the way,' says Stuart
They were his last words to Stuart.
It was shortly after 10.30pm that day – the time Stephen was due home – that Norris and Dobson and the rest of their gang ‘swallowed’ up the A-level student through weight of numbers, then knifed him to death.
Some time later, a neighbour and his son knocked on the Lawrences’ front door in Plumstead, South-East London. They said Stephen had been in a fight, that it had happened in Well Hall Road in nearby Eltham.
Doreen and Neville grabbed their coats. Well Hall Road was five to ten minutes away by car. Stuart, then 16, remained at home with his ten-year-old sister, who was in bed.
‘At first, I was more curious than anything,’ he says. ‘Stephen in a fight? It just didn’t happen. It wasn’t like that. He was always the diplomat, the one who worked around trouble.’
Some of his memories are fragmentary but what he clearly recalls about the interminable wait for news was the sound of the mini-grandfather clock ticking on the living room wall.
‘It seemed to fill the entire house. It chimed every half an hour and I remember a lot of chimes, so my parents must have been gone a long time. I couldn’t understand why. I thought they’d be gone an hour at most.’
He remembers looking out of the bedroom window, scouring the landscape for his brother. With growing anxiety, he opened the front door and stepped outside, trying through sheer will to hasten his return.
‘Then I decided to go out on my bike to look for them, something I haven’t even told my mum to this day,’ he says.
Pedalling hard on his silver BMX – he and Stephen had been given identical bikes for Christmas two years earlier – he reached Well Hall Road in 20 minutes and encountered a police cordon manned by two uniformed officers.
‘I asked why the road was closed and they said there had been an incident. But I didn’t connect Stephen to what they were saying.
‘I said my mum and dad should be down there and I explained that my brother had been in a fight. I suppose I must have given them my name.
‘One of the policemen said, “I don’t know where your mum and dad are but they wouldn’t have gone down there because it has been closed for a long time.” ’ He didn’t know it at the time, but Stuart was standing just 550 yards from where his brother died.
Mother Doreen outside the Old Bailey after Gary Dobson and David Norris were jailed. Stuart is to her left
‘Looking back, if I had found out then, and had seen it, it would have been worse, much more soul-destroying than finding out from my parents,’ says Stuart. The officers then did something that has preyed on Stuart’s mind to this day. ‘They said they really needed to take me home, and asked where I lived,’ he says.
‘They were really helpful, very nice, and put my bike in the boot and drove me home. I can’t help wondering if they knew who I was and that’s why they did it.
‘There is no record of this happening. But if they tried to shield me, I’d like to thank them.’
Stuart’s shattered parents returned home shortly afterwards.
‘They came into the kitchen,’ he says. ‘I was asking, “Where’s Stephen, where’s Stephen?” ’
Of that moment, Stuart says: ‘My dad is 6ft 2in. He was always the rock. He could instill the fear of God in me, just by looking at me.
‘I had never seen him cry or look upset before in my life. He was all over the place, unsteady, crying out loud. All he could say was, “Stephen’s dead.”
'I rode my BMX bike to the scene that night and found a police cordon'
‘To see someone that you hold in such respect and awe, to see them so physically upset about something . . . well, it made me angry at first, angry at what it had done to my dad, angry at what it was therefore going to do to all of us. Every sort of emotion came flowing through my body all at once – anger, disbelief, confusion. I was crying uncontrollably.
‘Why would someone do that to my brother? He wasn’t a horrible person. He wasn’t someone who got into trouble. He wasn’t part of a gang. There couldn’t be a less likely victim.’
Against his mother’s wishes, Stuart insisted on going to school the following day – to ‘search for answers’ – though he remembers little about it now.
Notes naming the killers were put through the Lawrences’ letterbox. Some people turned up at their door to repeat them. Norris and Dobson were among the names mentioned. One woman named all five suspects and said they ‘were well known for hating black people’.
Weeks then months went by in a blur. ‘It destroyed my faith in God,’ says Stuart. ‘It is something I have had to rebuild.’
Neville, a painter and decorator, and Doreen, a special-needs carer, had arrived in Britain from Jamaica in the Sixties and had worked hard to build a better life for themselves and their children. Life revolved around their local Methodist church and the couple instilled in their children a firm set of values.
‘Our parents wanted us to do well academically, and wanted us to pursue things that had longevity,’ says Stuart. After church, the family would return home to a Sunday lunch, usually cooked by Neville.
‘I remember the house being filled with the music my dad played,’ says Stuart. ‘There was Marvin Gaye and Lionel Ritchie and Motown classics.
‘Then Stephen got to the age when he was really into music. We had an old record player and when he was out I would play his records and then replace them carefully. But he would always know and tell me off.
‘We had separate rooms until Georgina was born and after that we shared the biggest bedroom in the house. His side of the room would always be clean and mine would always be messy.
‘I suppose there were times when it got annoying for Stephen to have me tagging along, trying to do the same things he was doing with the rest of the older kids. But he didn’t push me away often, he included me and my friends in group activities like football. I idolised him.
‘One of the biggest things in our lives in those days was athletics, and we both belonged to Cambridge Harriers. Stephen was the star.
‘On the way to the athletics track, we’d walk past a cemetery. It was dark and petrified me. I must have been 11 or 12. Stephen would scare me by saying he could see someone by the crypt.
‘He would race off and leave me and I would try to catch up with him. There was never a time when he was malicious, though – it was all in jest. He was protective of me. He wouldn’t let anyone pick on me.
Jail: Gary Dobson, left, and David Norris, right, have been found guilty of Stephen's murder
‘I took advantage of that a bit too much. Saying things like, “My brother is Stephen Lawrence in the third year.” In retrospect, I wasn’t the easiest child – I suppose I was a bit of a tearaway compared with him. He didn’t do anything wrong. I wanted to be him, that perfect.’
Stuart says he never encountered racism as a child. ‘My best friend was white but people never made an issue of it – it never crossed my thoughts,’ he says. ‘I just thought I was a normal kid living in a normal area.’ However, his eyes were opened when 15-year-old Rolan Adams was stabbed to death by a gang of white racists in 1991 within two miles of the spot where Stephen would later die.
‘Stephen went on a march over that – he was passionate about it, and very upset about what happened,’ says Stuart.
After Stephen died 18 months later, Stuart spent eight weeks in Jamaica with his family. There, he struggled, he says, to make sense of the fact his brother was killed for no other reason than the colour of his skin. He says: ‘After finding out why Stephen died – that it was because he was black – I began to think I’d be safer in Jamaica.’
Instead, he was persuaded to continue his studies in London and a few years later graduated from university with a degree in graphic communication before embarking on his teaching career.
Now Stuart takes his time, sometimes years, before telling work colleagues and acquaintances he is Stephen’s brother.
‘I’ve worked hard to be my own person, at my profession, so no one can say I am just Stephen Lawrence’s brother,’ he says.
‘People say they can try to imagine what you’re going through, but the only people who really do know are those closest to you. And for me that’s my partner.’
Stuart’s fiancee is white. ‘We get the odd looks,’ says Stuart. ‘She notices it more than I do. Once, we walked into a pub in Skegness and everyone looked around and stared, like something out of the Wild West. We got up and left.’
Despite noting the drop in racist attacks since 1993, Stuart says society has become more violent. ‘It’s now young people attacking young people with knives – it’s soul-destroying.’ And far from the Lawrence case making police afraid to stop and search black people, Stuart has found the opposite to be true. Sadly, he has been pulled over in South London ‘loads of times’.
‘They come out with the same excuse, that it’s because cars like this one have been stolen in the area. I don’t tell them I am Stephen Lawrence’s brother, but I give my name and then say my mum is on the Stop and Search Community Panel [a group set up by the Home Office amid allegations police had overstepped the mark with the searches] and then they suddenly become increasingly apologetic.’
Before attending the trial of Norris and Dobson, Stuart told his GCSE pupils about the case. He says: ‘They didn’t know about Stephen and some of them got really upset because they couldn’t understand why it happened.’
'His death stopped me coasting through life – I stepped up to the plate'
Facing Dobson and Norris for the first time was an unsettling experience. ‘I think it was important for me to see them and to see what their parents looked like,’ he says.
‘Eltham isn’t somewhere I go. I drive round it. But it’s a small world. I would want to know if I was in their presence, just so I could keep my distance or be on my guard.’
Stuart sat in court next to his mother, scrutinising the two men’s every facial tic, every cocky nod towards friends and family in the public gallery. But neither of them so much as glanced in their direction. ‘They just seemed very comfortable and apathetic. It didn’t seem to bother them,’ he says.
‘So much about being in court made me very angry – seeing the winking and the nodding and listening to all the lies.
‘When they and their families gave evidence, I found it hard not to stand up sometimes, laugh out loud and say, “Have you really just said that?”
‘Once, Norris’s mother was directly outside the court with her solicitor. She seemed to be in a really great mood, laughing and joking. There was a book that she was reading and she told the solicitor that she found it funny.
‘Then she went into court and looked a completely different woman from the person I saw outside. She looked like she was shaking, very timid, unsure of herself. I got so angry I got up and walked out.
‘The hardest thing was to sit there and be composed and not show facial reactions to what was being said.
‘I didn’t go to court for the day Stephen’s injuries were read out. And I wasn’t there when Duwayne Brooks [Stephen’s friend] gave evidence, as I couldn’t bear to hear about the night that Stephen died.’
Bracing himself for the verdict, Stuart says all he could think about was his mother, how she would cope if they were cleared. When it was announced, it was ‘surreal, like an out-of-body experience’.
‘Justice has been done,’ he says. ‘But they [Norris and Dobson] can still be in contact with their parents and siblings. We’ll never have that with Stephen.’
Stuart adds: ‘Having my own child now, I can only hope that I would have the strength, determination and drive to fight like my mum for my son. The world we live in can be unjust and unfair, and we should walk tall and believe in what is right and just.’
- To donate to the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, which provides bursaries for youngsters from ethnic minorities to pursue their educational ambitions, call 020 8100 2800 or visit stephenlawrence.org.uk