The Rise and Fall of the Lawrence Family

AUDIO CONTENT WARNING: description of extreme racist violence

In 1993, Black British teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack that sparked a long fight for justice and led the UK to ask questions of itself and its institutions. Three decades on – with The Runnymede Trust’s Shabna Begum, and Suresh Grover of The Monitoring Group – Karis Campion of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre hosts this special episode to ask: who are we now? What happened to anti-racist solidarity and how can it progress?

Karis and guests reflect on the fragmentation of “political blackness”, “monitoring” as a radical act inspired by The Black Panther Party, and the importance of showing systemic racism while doing justice to individual lives. Plus: what does social media offer to anti-racism when the internet provides fertile ground for prejudice? And what are the costs of fighting for change in an unjust world?

A collaboration between the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre and The Sociological Review.

Guests: Suresh Grover, Shabna Begum
Host: Karis Campion
Executive Producer: Alice Bloch
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Joe Gardner
Artwork: Erin Aniker

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Episode Resources

From Karis, Shabna and Suresh

• Karis’ work at The Stephen Lawrence Research Centre
• Shabna’s book “From Sylhet to Spitalfields”
• Suresh in conversation with Paul Gilroy

Further reading

• “Abolition Geography” – Ruth Wilson Gilmore
• “Another Day in the Death of America” – Gary Younge
• “Here to Stay, Here to Fight” – Paul Field, et al. (eds)
• “I Write What I Like” – Steve Biko
• “Policing the Crisis” – Stuart Hall, et al.
• “Race and Resistance” – Ambalavaner Sivanandan
• “The Uses of Anger” – Audre Lorde

Online

• Over-policed and under-protected: the road to Safer Schools – The Runnymede Trust
• The Baroness Casey Review (this episode was recorded prior to this publication)
• The Black Panther Party – US National Archives
• The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry – Sir William Macpherson
• The Monitoring Group
• The Runnymede Trust
• The Stephen Lawrence Centre Archive

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