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January 6th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
By
David Jones
Last updated at 8:14 AM on 6th January 2012
Neville Lawrence is such a private man, and has become so security-conscious after being repeatedly threatened and abused over the years, that he uses several mobile phones and often changes them.
But one battered old South Korean handset always stays with him.
Fishing it from his top pocket, he shows me why. The phone’s screensaver is a heart-melting picture of his son, Stephen, then aged two and the epitome of doe-eyed innocence, perched on his knee.
Neville’s favourite photograph: Stephen, aged two, is wearing a coat his father made for him in this picture he keeps as the screensaver on his mobile phone
Neville is a keen photographer, and it was he who captured that iconic image of Stephen wearing his favourite striped T-shirt. But this fading old Polaroid snap is the one he most treasures. ‘Not many people see this,’ he says, gazing longingly at the picture. ‘Stephen’s face has become so recognisable, but I like to keep this photo of him for myself.
‘Around the time it was taken I worked making leather garments for a fashionable West End company, and I kept a sewing machine at home, so I made the leather coat Stephen is wearing here (double-breasted with a big collar, Seventies-style).’
He smiles poignantly and adds: ‘Not many two-year-olds had a coat like that. Stephen was quite a daddy’s boy.’
For Neville, the photograph evokes so
many memories. It harks back to a golden time, before his marriage and
the simple family life he cherished were forever destroyed by Stephen’s
murder.
That Stephen’s death has so bitterly
divided the Lawrences is the tragic sub-plot to this protractedly
painful story — and during the Old Bailey trial it became clear that the
rift is wider than ever.
Though they had little choice but to
sit close together in court on a row of specially assigned seats, a
relative, friend or lawyer was always strategically positioned between
Neville, 69, and Doreen, 59, and they barely exchanged a glance.
As they anxiously awaited the verdict, they remained in separate rooms with their respective friends and supporters.
Talented runner: Stephen crosses the finish line as he completes a mini-marathon in 1988
Even after David Norris and Gary Dobson were pronounced guilty, they couldn’t bring themselves to share their emotions. ‘We just had a brief chat about how we would make our statements outside court but there was no hugging or handshakes,’ Neville told me.
‘We haven’t talked properly for 18 years, so we aren’t going to start now.’
Down the years, Neville and I have become good friends. But he is a proud, traditional Jamaican man — ‘the strong, silent type’ he jokes — and doesn’t find it comfortable to express his feelings.
However, he endeavoured to explain how his family has been torn apart.
‘When Stephen was murdered, Doreen and me had been married for more than 20 years. Things might not always have been perfect between us, but we had a normal, loving relationship,’ he told me.
‘But our world began falling apart from the moment the hospital staff told us our son had died.
‘For some reason that I’ve tried to understand — and I still don’t — we couldn’t reach out to one another.
‘We stayed together for another six years, but from that day we never physically touched one another again. We didn’t cuddle or hold hands for comfort, as you might expect a couple to do.
‘We would sleep in the same bed, but we lay side-by-side like statues.
‘It took those boys ten seconds to murder Stephen. Ten seconds to take the life of somebody they didn’t know, who was just going home on the bus, minding his own business.
‘In those ten seconds they wrecked four other lives, too: mine, Doreen’s, and Stuart and Georgina’s (his other children, now 34 and 29 respectively).’
From the moment he arrived in Britain, as a callow 18-year-old in 1960, Neville’s only real ambition was to have a wife and children and earn enough to provide for them.
In explaining why it was so important to him, he recalls how he was abandoned as a baby into the care of his maternal grandmother (a white, German-Jewish émigré) who raised him in one of the tough, communal tenement yards in Kingston, fabled by reggae singer Bob Marley.
The irony that Dobson claimed he only went to the home of Neil and Jamie Acourt on the night Stephen was murdered to borrow a CD by Marley is not lost on Neville.
Until he was about seven or eight, he and his friends believed his white granny was his mother. ‘But it was just accepted there,’ he says. ‘No one cared what colour you were.’
Sorrow: Doreen and Neville Lawrence in 1993, after Stephen’s murder. They divorced after the heartbreak of the murder
The young Neville was talented at drawing and wanted to be an architect — an ambition he handed down to Stephen — but, as they were poor, he left school at 14 to become an apprentice upholsterer.
He tells this story without self-pity. To the contrary, he looks back on his childhood fondly and says it was the making of him, teaching him to be self-reliant and see people equally.
Arriving in a London riven with Alf Garnett-type bigotry towards the many West Indians invited to fill menial jobs as the Sixties economy boomed, these were qualities he needed in abundance.
For many years he led a depressing existence, moving from factory to factory and between dismal bedsits. Though he was a skilled craftsman, job vacancies would be miraculously ‘filled’ when the boss saw his colour.
Finding a prospective wife was equally difficult. At 27, he had almost given up hope of settling down and having children.
Then, while working for a clothing company, he happened to deliver some material to Doreen’s mother, who worked at home as a machinist — and fell for her petite, pretty 17-year-old daughter.
Doreen, then a clerk for NatWest bank, was also smitten. With his bearded good looks and lithe, 6 ft 2 in frame, she felt Neville resembled her favourite soul singer, Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops.
Though her parents were strongly opposed to the relationship because of their age difference, they were married at Lewisham register office, South London, in November 1972.
By grim coincidence, their wedding reception was held in a hired room above one of the Deptford pubs later frequented by David Norris’s father, Clifford, and his crime gang.
Trendsetter: Aged about 16, Stephen poses with a friend in a T-shirt he designed himself
When Stephen Adrian Lawrence (he took his middle name from Neville’s father) arrived into the world on Friday, September 13, 1974, Neville was overcome with joy.
‘He was so precious that when he came home that first night I didn’t sleep. I kept getting up to check he was still breathing. Even though I sometimes worked 14-hour days, I wanted to spend every spare minute with him. I did my share of nappy changing and feeding and, later, I would walk him to nursery school.’
In her memoir, Doreen confirms that Neville was a wonderful father: kindly and full of fun, but firm when he felt it necessary.
He was also a good husband, she says. He was forever doing jobs around the house, bought her presents (though he always seemed to choose earrings) and loved to cook Jamaican food and entertain friends.
It is difficult to reconcile the gregarious, jolly Neville she describes with the gentle and unfailingly courteous, but almost monastically solitary man I have come to know.
When Stephen was four, and his brother Stuart was two, the family moved from a cramped flat to the smart new council house in Plumstead, South London, to which Stephen was returning the night he was murdered. Georgina was born four years later.
Though it was only a mile-and-a-half away from the white enclave stalked by Dobson, Norris and their cronies, theirs was a relatively harmonious, mixed neighbourhood, close to a leafy park and good schools.
Neville and Doreen felt they had been held back by discrimination but, by the Seventies, it seemed, times were changing and they were determined to see their children maximise their potential.
They stressed the importance of education and hard work, and always did everything as a family.
TV dinners were frowned on: they sat at a table and ate together. Stephen developed into a brilliant sprinter and, when he competed, they all went to support him; on Sundays they all attended the local Methodist church.
‘We were in a nice little community and we wanted our family to play a part,’ Neville says. To show me the way they were, he thumbs through an old family album.
Boy scout trip: Stephen (centre, front row), aged about 12, with other members of his troop dressed as pirates
Here they are on holiday in the Isle of Wight, 15-year-old Stephen with a protective arm around his little sister, as always.
There they are in the gardens of a friend’s country house in Oxford where they sometimes stayed during the summer.
There is an evocative picture of a straight-backed Stephen marching earnestly down the High Street with the Scouts, and another of him breathlessly crossing the finishing line after running a mini-marathon.
As the Thatcher years dawned, and property prices soared, Neville developed a thriving business, renovating expensive houses in the most sought-after parts of London.
Proud of his craftsmanship and eager that Stephen should understand the satisfaction it brought, he would often take him to see his handiwork.
It seemed to rub off for, by his late teens, Stephen was a budding entrepreneur. He and his best-friend, Elvin Oduro, would paint white T-shirts with colourful designs and sell them to trendy shops in Camden Town.
Ambition: A young Neville Lawrence in Tottenham in 1962, aged 20
While studying for his A-levels at Blackheath Bluecoat School (where he was chosen as a mentor to the new pupils), Stephen also had a weekend job at McDonald’s. He knew from the age of seven, however, that he wanted to be an architect.
Most boys have early ambitions, of course, and they are seldom realised. Neville feels sure Stephen would have achieved his, however.
He takes me to a see a new sandstone building, close to the Deptford pub where his wedding reception was held.
‘When Stephen was doing work experience with Arthur Timothy (a black London architect), this place was just being designed and Stephen made the scale model of it,’ he says. ‘He was such a talented drawer that I’m sure they’d have taken him on.’
As he reflects on Stephen, and the accomplished young man he was set to become, I remark on the vast differences between his upbringing and that of Norris and Dobson.
Neville nods. ‘That’s why I say that their parents should have been in court alongside them. They brought them up with hatred in their hearts. They created the monsters.’
Before Norris and Dobson were sentenced, Mr and Mrs Lawrence and Stuart and Georgina each provided the judge with a victim impact statement, describing how Stephen’s death had affected them.
At their request, these deeply personal statements were not read out in court, but Neville has permitted the Mail to publish extracts from his.
His words would move the hardest of hearts.
He begins by setting the scene on April 22, 1993. Then, as now, Britain was in recession, the property bubble had burst and his work had dried up.
While Doreen studied for a university degree with a view to becoming a teacher, he ‘kept the house going’.
That day, Doreen was away on a field trip, so he gave Stuart and Georgina breakfast and sent them off to school leaving Stephen to feed himself as usual.
Before leaving the house, Stephen saw him sitting on the ottoman in his bedroom and just said ‘See ya’, whereupon Neville told him to make sure he was back home in time to greet his mother on her return.
On parade: Stephen (left) and fellow scouts march through Plumstead in this family photo
‘I guess I looked a bit low as Stephen came back and said to me: “Are you sure you’re OK, Dad?” ’ he writes. ‘I turned to him and said: “Yes.”
‘He left the house and I got a glimpse of him as he walked down the path with his rucksack on his back. That last conversation has lived with me. Maybe I had a premonition.
‘I wish more than anything that he had come straight home.
‘I also think how short that conversation was and how much more I could have said, if only I’d known it would be our last.’
Neville was then in his early 50s, and what he doesn’t write in his statement — because he dislikes self-indulgence — is that his unemployment had left him depressed and caused simmering tensions in the household. Matters were not made better by the fact that, while he was kicking his heels at home, his 41-year-old wife was belatedly flowering.
Doreen had worked as a special-needs teaching assistant and was so proficient that it was suggested she should train to become a teacher in her own right.
Neville tried to be supportive, but he admits: ‘There was a lot of pressure on us and, though I didn’t say it, I was thinking it would be easier if she was working than going to college.’
They didn’t have volatile arguments, he says, because that wasn’t his way. But, as Doreen has recounted in her autobiog-raphy, there were squabbles among Stephen and his siblings.
Justice for Stephen: The teenage A-level student in his favourite t-shirt shortly before his death
At 18, he was spreading his wings and, inevitably, clashed with his 16-year-old brother and, sometimes, his little sister, too.
Shortly before the murder, Stuart broke the zip on Stephen’s pencil case. Then he removed every screw in Stephen’s prized Sony Walkman, and no one could put it back together.
For days afterwards Stephen wouldn’t speak to him.
For some long-forgotten reason he also sent the 11-year-old Georgina to Coventry but, thankfully, their differences were resolved before he died.
Anyway, as Neville says, these were just the ebbs and flows of family life, and everything would have been fine — if only Stephen had come home for the supper he had cooked for him that April night.
Instead, what had been a minor schism in his marriage became an unspoken gulf.
Soon after the murder, Neville was warned by Richard Adams — whose 15-year-old son Rolan had been murdered by white racists in a nearby area, three years earlier — that the majority of couples split up after losing a child in such a violent manner.
‘You and Doreen have got to talk about it,’ he implored Neville. Yet, somehow, the taciturn Jamaican was unable to.
‘For the first week it was just me, leading from the front — Doreen was sedated. My only thought was to protect her, and Stuart and Georgina.
‘Doreen has said I closed up. But why? Because I felt such pain. I didn’t see the need to speak about it — I just assumed she must be feeling exactly the same as me. It didn’t occur to me until much later that people can grieve in different ways.’
Nor did it help that for months after the murder the Lawrences were never left alone.
Their house was perpetually filled with family members and black rights activists — some helpful but others whose aim, Neville says pointedly, was to ‘hijack Stephen’s name’ and use it for their own ends.
‘We would discuss the campaign and the case, but always in groups. As a couple, we discussed nothing — and I mean absolutely nothing. We did go to family counselling, all four of us, but I think Georgina spoke most, and she was only 11.’
Grief: Neville Lawrence, who finally saw two of his son’s killers convicted of murder, had his marriage torn apart after losing his son in the bus stop killing in 1993
As if aware of the impact of what he is about to say, he pauses. ‘You know, in 18 years, me and Doreen have still never once talked about what happened to Stephen that night. About how and why he died and how it affected us.’
Was this something to do with guilt? Or rather, since Doreen had been away from home and he was running the house when Stephen was killed, was there an element of blame?
‘After the murder, I did torment myself for a time with the thought that I could have done something to prevent it. I wished I had locked him in the house that night,’ he replies carefully.
‘I was 51 and Stephen was 18 and just starting his life, so I felt it should have been me who died.
‘But I realise now that there was nothing anyone could have done. I certainly don’t blame myself and I’m not blaming Doreen. I don’t know whether she blames herself, or me. She has never said she does.’
Doreen has chronicled the disintegration of their relationship in painful detail in her book.
She described how she walked out on him for four days on their awful first Christmas without Stephen because his behaviour was so intolerable; how they argued bitterly over his remoteness on a trip to Jamaica to lay a headstone on his grave.
And she told how he would later drift away from his family for months at a time to stay with relatives on the island, or in Florida, leaving her to face the inquest and continue the work of the Stephen Lawrence Trust alone, before settling permanently in his homeland in 1998.
Neville accepts all this, but points out that it was he who fronted the campaign for the first year, and that he has striven to end racism in his own more understated way, by speaking in schools, for example, and appearing with a theatre group which tackles the issue.
He certainly doesn’t begrudge Doreen the many accolades that have come her way, but says: ‘We have both tried to get justice for our son and I think any parents would have done the same.’
He had to leave London because he was unable to live with the agonising memories; and those memories resurface every time he drives through the South London streets. ‘I was told that I would have had a nervous breakdown if I’d stayed.’
Having been raised to believe that Scotland Yard was the finest police force in the world and that Britain had the fairest justice system, he also felt this country had failed him, and given the way the original investigation was so appallingly mishandled, one understands why.
Heartache: Neville and Doreen Lawrence together in 1999 when the Macpherson report was published
The doggedness and skill of the detectives and forensic scientists who trapped Norris and Dobson have gone a long way to restoring his faith, as have the improvements in policing methods instigated by the Macpherson Inquiry.
This week, in an interview with TV’s Panorama, Doreen suggested she and Neville might have gone their separate ways, even if Stephen hadn’t been murdered.
Neville disputes this. He never wanted a divorce and is convinced they would still be married today, had he not received an unexpected letter from Doreen, in 1999, requesting that their separation be formalised.
Since then, he has tried to find a new partner with whom to share the secluded house he has built in Jamaica — within driving distance of Stephen’s grave — for he hates living alone.
But he has found it difficult to form a relationship, because as he says, smiling wryly: ‘The women I meet either feel sorry for me — and I don’t want sympathy — or it seems they are only interested in me because I’m Stephen Lawrence’s father.’
Later this month, therefore, after kissing his three infant grandchildren goodbye, he will leave the modest South London hotel where he has stayed throughout the trial and fly home — alone.
In another life, Neville was an accomplished jazz, soul and blues dancer but, after Stephen died, he promised himself that he would never take to the floor again.
On Saturday night, however, he plans to attend a friend’s birthday party where he will permit himself a few modest steps.
‘But I still won’t do my favourite dance,’ he told me. ‘I won’t do that until every one of the gang that killed my lovely son is behind bars.’
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Who else thinks Princess Diana would have wanted a memorial for Stephen?
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I need a break from all these racism stories ..Its been overplayed ..18 years have elapsed..people change..Who can accurately remember what they did last week let alone 18 years ago..Time to drop out of the limelight Mr and Mrs Lawrence and move on !
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a lot of you really seem to be missing the point. to hijack this awful story to try and justify some kind of “well white people killed by a black person wouldnt get this kind of coverage” attitude is pathetic. generally said by those who love feeling like victim, and thus oh how unfair life is. imagine if this happened to your child. and say you had to wait 18 yrs for some kind of justice would you really be sitting here saying this? No of course you wouldnt. if one thing is for sure this story has again highlighted the quite obvious racism in people who profess not to be.
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I feel incredibly sorry for the Lawrence family but hope Doreen and Neville can finally talk to each other, not the press as I don’t think either will be able to move on without doing so, despite what Doreen said after the sentence was handed out. I also hope their two other children can start life afresh and look forward to the future at last.
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Amazing that some people making comments don’t realise the significance of this terrible crime. The murder of Stephen Lawrence highlighted not only horrendous street level racism but also institutionalised racism in the police. The whole way British police investigated crimes was to be transformed due to the shambolic performance of investigating officers in this case. Unfortunately due to the poor initial handling of the case Im not sure others will be bought to justice after evidence lost. However we must never forget as a society what happened to this boy and the near 20 year campaign by his family to get justice. I pay full respect to them, their team and all who never gave up.
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I wonder if the perpetrators had been black boys and the victim a white person if there would have been this much interest in the story – going on past experience I doubt it. Or am I missing something? – Roger Jones, Leicester UK, 6/1/2012 ———– Yes, you are missing the fact that 18 years ago, if he had been white, the police would have handled the investigating of the murder differently. This was not just about racism in the community, it was about racism in the Police at the time. That is the point that you are missing.
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For once, this poor victim appears to be a true innocent, with a future totally separate from gangs and crime.
Every reasonable person cannot feel deeply for the Lawrence’s, their son and feel a shame on behalf of England.
The bad in all cultures has to be attacked vigorously and taken responsibility for, by the cultures involved.
Only they can defeat them. Then this ‘tit for tat’ hatred will be minimised and proper ‘managed’ integration can occur.
Adding good diversity across the cities of England, rather than unmanaged immigration dominating areas and irreversibly changing them. Which naturally results in issues with the original residents.
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i genuinely sympathise with the plight of the Lawrence family but the absense of comment on the racist murder of the white British boy, Gavin Hopley, has become as obvious as it is disturbing. Does he not count?
– mtp, SE England, 06/1/2012 09:18 ============= It’s not that he doesn’t count. He was killed in a racist attack, it was properly investigated and a year after his death 6 men were jailed for it. The police did their job and there was nothing disturbing about how the case was handled. The difference with Stephen was that the investigation into his death was not handled correctly due to ‘institutional racism’ within the police force. It’s obvious that a lot of people still don’t get that, and continue to wonder why Stephen’s death has got so much publicity!
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A few people said if it was a white you man it would not have received the same level of coverage……….however Ben Kinsella’s murder received significant coverage and the killers were caught and jailed swiftly and the Police did their jobs properly hence why the story has taken on less significance over the course of time.
Somebody also spoke of the tragic murder of Danny O’Shea but this incident had nothing to do with race……the suspects are grown men and I would not be so crass as to state the reasons he was targeted as smearing his name would do nothing to change your ignorance.
Lastly PC Blakelock was not killed for being white………he was targeted during civil unrest because he was a Police officer…………as were all other Police officers who harmed during that unrest.
I agree this case has seen momentus coverage……..at times seemingly too much but it is because of how this young mans death unmasked prejudice at all levels of society.
RIP Stephen
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People that keep banging on about ”there are other guys whove been murdered’ or ‘ would it be the same if the victim was white’ need to wake up ad realise why this story is as big as it is. Majority of these cases dont wait 18 YEARS for justice, very rarely white people are mistreated by police purely because they are white and usually it is ever the black kid that makes the front page. so FIX UP and look at the bigger issues at hand. RIP Stephen and im afraid your mother may have been right, this country does not deserve ur grave. And im British
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