Doreen Lawrence
Since winning the EMMA Award (Public Figure)
Doreen Lawrence is a British Jamaican Campaigner who received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2003 for her services to community relations. She was made a life peer in the House of Lords in 2013, where she currently sits on the Labour benches.
In 2010, two of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers were re-arrested, tried and found guilty in 2011-2012 after a review of the forensic and other evidence began in 2006.
In 2014, the BBC named Doreen the ‘Most Influential Woman in the UK’. In 2020, she was appointed as the Labour Party’s race relations advisor.
Doreen has been selected to sit on panels within the Home Office and the Police Service. She is a member of both the board and the council of the organisation Liberty and a patron for the anti-hate crime charity Stop Hate UK.
In 2018, Theresa May, the then-Prime Minister of the UK, announced that Stephen Lawrence Day would be celebrated each year on 22nd April to commemorate Stephen’s life and legacy and fight against racism and discrimination.
To this day, Doreen continues to fight in her son’s name for equality and inclusion and campaigns against hate crime for her son (Stephen Lawrence) and other victims of racist crime, using courage, leadership, and love throughout her long pursuit of justice.
Background (Before 1999)
Born in Clarendon, Jamaica, Doreen Lawrence travelled to the United Kingdom when she was 9 years old. She completed her education in South East London before working in a bank.
On the evening of 22nd April 1993, Doreen’s son, Stephen Lawrence, was tragically murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus on Well Hall Road, Eltham.
The case left the UK shocked, and its aftermath included changes in attitudes toward racism and the police, as well as the law and police practice in general. As a result, she and her then-husband, Neville Lawrence, founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust in 1998 to promote a positive community legacy in their son’s name.
That same year, she worked with the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Marco Goldschmied Foundation to establish the Stephen Lawrence Prize, an annual prize and bursary for younger architects.
In 1999, after years of campaigning by the Lawrence family, a wide-ranging judicial inquiry was established to investigate the circumstances of Stephen’s death. The conclusion was that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist, alongside many other organisations, one of the main causes of their failure to solve Stephen Lawrence’s case.
