Doreen Delceita Lawrence, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon,, is a British Jamaican campaigner and the mother of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager who was murdered in a racist attack in South East London in 1993. She promoted reforms of the police service and founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire for services to community relations in 2003, and was created a life peer in 2013.
Official portrait, 2023
Murder of Stephen Lawrence
Stephen Lawrence was a black British teenager from Plumstead, southeast London, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Well Hall Road, Eltham, on the evening of 22 April 1993, when he was 18 years old. The case became a cause célèbre: its fallout included changes of attitudes on racism and the police, and to the law and police practice. It also led to the partial revocation of the rule against double jeopardy. Two of the perpetrators were convicted of murder on 3 January 2012.
Well Hall Road, Eltham, in 2006, near the scene of the crime.
Lawrence in 1993
After the February 1997 inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing, the front page of the Daily Mail labelled all five suspects "murderers" and instructed them to sue if the assumption was wrong. Lawrence's parents and numerous political figures praised the Daily Mail for taking the potential financial risk of this front page.
Floral tributes marking the 30th anniversary of Lawrence's murder in 2023; these have been placed around the memorial plaque to Lawrence in Well Hall Road, Eltham