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The five suspects were called to give evidence, but refused on grounds of self-incrimination. In February 1997, the formal coroner’s inquest into Stephen’s death took place.

They redoubled their campaign for justice and began a campaign for a public inquiry into the failures of the police investigations. Most bereaved families would have given up in the face of such appalling disappointments. Then a private prosecution brought by the Lawrences also failed. Charges against five suspects were dropped on the grounds of ‘insufficient evidence’. They knew their son’s murder was a racist killing and the police were failing to investigate it properly for one reason alone: the colour of Stephen’s skin. The police undertook what we now know to have been a flawed investigation, while the media moved on to the next story.Īnd there the matter would have stayed but for Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence. This was treated at the time as ‘just another murder’ of a black teenager. The single most important decision I made as Home Secretary was to set up an inquiry into the police’s handling of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, knifed to death in 1993 at a bus stop in South London, aged 18. Soon after he said that covering people's faces made community relations more difficult HOW MAIL CAMPAIGN HELPED INSPIRE ME TO SEEK JUSTICE FOR STEPHEN Jack Straw set up an inquiry into the police's handling of the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation

Straw canvassing in Blackburn for the election in 2005. Because of that, he was prepared to lean over backwards to take its side, even when it used excessive force against its neighbours. His oft-repeated mantra was that Israel was a democracy. He often seemed too willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt, even when nothing was in doubt.

Gradually, Tony and I came to a different place over Israel. I felt like making some sharp comment in equally pejorative terms about his ‘Jewish backers’, and about not judging me by his standards. And if I’d really been kowtowing to them, as he implied, I would hardly have taken the unpopular step of supporting the Iraq War - to the extent of my seat now being in greater jeopardy at an election than his was.