`We may not get justice for Stephen'

Lawrence aftermath: Racists are only a small, but loud, minority within the British system, says victim's mother

THE MOTHER of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager murdered by a racist gang, said yesterday that she held out little hope of obtaining justice for her son unless fresh evidence emerged.

Appearing on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme with her husband, Neville, Doreen Lawrence said that the media attention directed towards the five main suspects would make any future trial difficult.

"Unless some new evidence has come forward, we will never, ever get that justice," she said. "But I think what has happened is that they [the suspects] can no longer hide behind their doors [so that]nobody knows who they are."

She dismissed the view that people in Britain were generally racist, but called for the 70 recommendations of last week's Lawrence report to be fully implemented.

"There's only a small minority within the British system who you could say is racist," said Mrs Lawrence. "But it seems as if those racists have a louder voice at the moment. They're the ones that seem to be shouting loudest and who seem to be coming forward."

The new report should not be treated the same way as the Scarman report of the early Eighties which, she said, contained recommendations that were never implemented.

"This time I do not just want lip-service paid to the report, I want to see some action taken," she said.

Mr Lawrence agreed that time-limits should be imposed on the police and other institutions to make sure that the latest recommendations were carried forward.

"I would like the recommendations to be monitored so that we can see exactly what's happening," he said.

"Say we give the Met two or three months to do certain things and then go and look to see if it's happening - and if it's not happening, make sure it does."

He said that his family was considering what action to take in the wake of the Lawrence report, which criticised the police's bungling and "institutional racism". The options included suing the police, but he would not confirm whether a decision on this had been taken.

Speaking about the accuracy of the report in addressing the way the family had been treated by the police, Mr Lawrence gave it a guarded welcome.

He said: "It's gone a little way into some of the things that we felt in the early days of the inquiry - which was that when the officers came to my house, I got the impression that they thought we were involved in the murder of our own child. They came to the house looking for information, instead of coming to give us information."

On the same programme Paul Boateng, a Home Office minister, refused to accept that his department bore any responsibility for the mistaken inclusion in the appendix to the Lawrence report of details identifying some of the people who had given information to police investigating Stephen's murder.

Mr Boateng also denied he had been behind the leaking of details from the report to the press last weekend, and rejected calls for the resignation of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon.

"We are not in the business of symbols, of ritual sacrifice. We are in the business of strategy, of making a real change, root-and-branch reform. We don't believe as a government you achieve that by lopping off the head of an institution."

On the row over Home Office leaks and bungles he said: "All of that is a diversion from the real issue, and the real issue is racism and how as a society we combat racism."

Downing Street confirmed last night that the parents of the suspects had written to Tony Blair about the case.

The Sunday Telegraph yesterday suggested that the letter appealed for the "human rights" of Jamie and Neil Acourt, Luke Knight, David Norris and Gary Dobson to be respected.

Officials were said to have sent back, at Mr Blair's request, a terse two-paragraph response to the letter.

Downing Street said that the letter had been sent last month, but refused to discuss the original letter or the Government's reply.