Isabelle Osborne
On 22 April 1993, 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was waiting at a bus stop in south-east London with his friend, when he was murdered by a group of white youths in a devastating, unprovoked attack.
In August 2020, the Metropolitan Police closed their investigation into Stephen’s murder, having only brought two of the suspected five men involved to justice. 18 years on from his death, Stephen, an ITV dramatisation, reflected on the events that led to the arrest and charge of Gary Dobson and David Norris in 2012, two of the men involved in the attack.
At the opening of the first episode, we see Doreen Lawrence (Sharlene Whyte), Stephen’s mother, opening the Stephen Lawrence Centre. “When my son was murdered, the police thought: ‘Just another black boy stabbed.’ But there’s no such thing as ‘just another black boy’”, she tells her audience, both a poignant reflection on Doreen’s remarkable work in campaigning for justice for her son and fighting for racial justice, whilst also setting the tone for what is to be a harsh and necessary critique of the Metropolitan Police in spotlighting the flaws inherent to their investigation into Stephen’s death.
“The investigation into Lawrence’s muder was declared “marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership”
DCI Clive Driscoll (Steve Coogan), the officer who led the team that secured the conviction of Dobson and Norris, is introduced finding a pile of boxes. He soon identifies the boxes as being associated with ‘Operation Fishpool’, the investigative title given to Stephen’s case. Whilst Driscoll views the reopening of Stephen’s case as a ‘privilege’, the eye rolls and shared looks amongst his team upon the announcement of their next task demonstrate an acute level of resentment towards their assignment. Such is accentuated when a police officer on Driscoll’s team resigns himself from the case, claiming “I’m just a copper at the end of the day, this is a bit, you know, too…you know what I mean. No offense.” These are two moments where the simple lack of care and willingness to find justice for Stephen is made blatantly obvious. We are asked to question why the Metropolitan Police, an institution that claims ‘to keep London safe for everyone’, would exhibit an impression of resentment in reopening a case that could lead to justice being served for an innocent young man killed in a brutal attack; Mrs Lawrence’s comment to that DCI Driscoll that “You need to ask yourself why there are people in your organisation who don’t want you to succeed” in the penultimate episode encapsulates this sentiment. The answer to one’s disbelief perhaps lies in the fact that the investigation into Lawrence’s murder was declared “marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership” by the Macpherson report, a reality that haunts the drama.
“We see two parents whose grief has been perforated by the reality that the Met did not do enough to bring their son’s killers to justice.”
Driscoll exhibits the persistence and sense of duty that was catastrophically absent in the original police investigation, his efforts jarring with the frustrating moments across the drama that characterise the police’s prior failure to seek justice. “Why has it taken thirteen years?” Mrs Lawrence asks in response to Dame Cressida Dick’s (Sian Brooke) promise to ‘rectify’ the fact that the leads Mrs Lawrence provided following her son’s death were not followed up soon enough. When Neville Lawrence (Hugh Quarshie) tells the police ‘Just do your best. That’s all we ever asked’, we see two parents whose grief has been perforated by the reality that the Met did not do enough to bring their son’s killers to justice. Stephen traverses between the police investigation and the experience of Stephen’s parents in the wake of their fight for justice, capturing the devastation, frustration and pain they suffered. The moving performances offered by Whyte and Quarshie throughout the drama convey the disappointment and agony the Lawrence family continue to feel. Mrs Lawrence’s claim that “Trust has to be earnt, Mr Driscoll” puts into perspective how the police’s inadequacy understandably led to disbelief and scepticism when the case of Stephen’s death was reopened.
In a particularly emotive scene, Mr Lawrence says ‘Every time I come here [England], I just start to feel so angry all over again…It is hard to pray when your heart is full of hate.’ Mr Lawrence’s reflection on England as the place of his anger, in addition to the Macpherson report’s declaration that the investigation exhibited ‘institutional racism’, asks viewers to reflect on the distressing reality that racism continues to exist within our country, and whether failing to accept this fact is holding the country back from tackling the persisting problems that plagued the investigation into Stephen’s death today. On the relevance of Stephen today, Quarshie said ‘I’ve got a son who is now Stephen’s age and every day when he goes to college I feel that concern which sometimes spills over into anxiety. With all of the knife crime in London and so on. The pleasure and pride you take in your children and their achievements, just watching them grow, sometimes tiptoeing a few paces behind is that anxiety. Especially if you are a parent of a black or mixed race kid. You know they will be subject to more stresses and tensions growing up than white kids.’
“We are asked to consider how far the country’s justice system will go to truly protect all members of society.”
Whilst it may be difficult to believe that individuals think they escape justice for a crime as heinous as the one spotlighted in this drama, Stephen highlights how this can happen. As the drama comes to a close, we are told that undercover police officers infiltrated the Lawrence family campaign, there were reasonable grounds to suspect former Detective Sergeant John Davidson (who worked on Operation Fishpool) of corruption, and that the Met closed the investigation into Stephen’s murder before the rest of the gang who killed him were brought to justice. As we see the final shot of Mr and Mrs Lawrence laying flowers at Stephen’s memorial, we are asked to consider how far the country’s justice system will go to truly protect all members of society, and whether the right lessons will be learnt from the inadequacies demonstrated in the investigation to find justice for Stephen.
The Metropolitan Police’s website states ‘we want Londoners to be proud of their police’. They claim to practise professionalism, integrity, courage and compassion. Regardless of the eventual success of Driscoll’s team, this dramatisation showcases the significant amount of work the institution has yet to do to protect their people if it is to become ‘the most trusted police service in the world.’ The panorama of London’s skyline in the final episode not only provides a portrait of the setting of Stephen’s death, but simultaneously reflects the fact that such tragic events continue to happen today, both across the city and beyond. In April 2021, the charity Action on Armed Violence shared that, despite making up 13% of the city’s population, nearly half of all murder victims in London in 2019 were Black. The Metropolitan Police claim to ‘protect [London’s] unique reputation as an open and welcoming city’, yet the fact that Black people are three times more likely to be killed on London’s streets than other ethnic groups highlights that more must and should be done to ensure the so-called ‘open and welcoming‘ reputation of the city is upheld.
Stephen is not only a dramatisation of true events, but a three-part recapitulation of the reality behind the Lawrence investigation and the journey to finding justice for Stephen, a journey that took far too long, and one that remains ongoing.
Featured image courtesy of Tadas Petrokas on Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
Isabelle Osborne
Isabelle Osborne is currently reading English at University College London. She is an active member of the UCL student journalist community, and has experience in marketing and communications, blogging, copywriting and content creation and radio broadcasting.