Stop Hate UK’s First Supper Night

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Treat yourself to a relaxing evening of delicious cuisine, music and entertainment at our Supper Night, in conjunction with HEART at the Headingley Heart Enterprise and Arts centre. Enjoy a night of professional African drumming with The Abatimbo Burundi Drummers, complimented by an appetising hot buffet and followed by the chance to win a prize in a raffle!

The food on offer includes a  Thai green curry or mixed bean chilli, both of which will be served with salad.

The event will be held on Friday 9th March at:

Heart Enterprise and Arts Centre

Bennett Road

Headingley

LS6 3HW

For more information or to reserve tickets please contact Rose Simkins on 0113 293 5100; rose@stophateuk.org.

So please join us for our memorable evening of socialising and merriment—we look forward to seeing you there!

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“Stephen Lawrence”: A moving poem by Carol Ann Duffy

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Cold pavement indeed
the night you died,
murdered;
but the airborne drop of blood
from your wound
was a seed
your mother sewed
into hard ground –
your life’s length doubled,
unlived, stilled,
till one flower, thorned,
bloomed
in her hand,
love’s just blade.

Source: London Festival Fringe, London Awards 2012.

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Stephen Lawrence killers to launch appeal.

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

“David Norris and Gary Dobson are to appeal against their convictions for the racist murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence in south-east London in 1993.

Norris will appeal on the basis that the use in evidence of a surveillance video was unfair, his lawyer confirms.

The video showed him and Dobson using violent racist language.

Papers have also been received at the Court of Appeal from Dobson’s solicitors, setting out his intention to appeal.

The pair were sentenced to life after being found guilty by an Old Bailey jury at the beginning of January.

Dobson was ordered to serve a minimum of 15 years and two months, and David Norris 14 years and three months.

Norris’ lawyer said the appeal will be based on the grounds that about two thirds of the way through the trial what had been a scientific case about forensic evidence became a case about a surveillance video of the men.

He told BBC home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds this was unfair, because the case was about scientific evidence and the video could not prove he was at the scene of Stephen Lawrence’s murder.

The police surveillance video, shot over several days in December 1994, showed the pair using racist language while they interacted with various friends and acquaintances.

During the Old Bailey trial, Dobson said he was “disgusted and embarrassed” by the language he had used as a teenager, while Norris apologised to the jury for having to listen to the comments, saying he was “ashamed”.

Meanwhile, the Attorney General is reviewing the minimum terms given to the pair following a request from a member of the public and is due to report back in the next few days.

Dobson, 36, and Norris, 35, were the first people convicted over the fatal attack on Mr Lawrence by a group of white youths near a bus stop in Eltham on 22 April 1993.”

Source: BBC News, Monday 30 January, 2012.

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Doreen Lawrence: ‘I don’t think I’ve got any more to give’

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

“Stephen Lawrence’s mother talks about her private and public struggles for justice, not just for her murdered son but for all ethnic minorities over the past two decades

For the family of Doreen Lawrence, the pain and challenges in dealing with the loss of her son Stephen 18 years ago continue, and change. They permeate even the imagination of her granddaughter Mia, aged seven, who was born years after his murder.

Mia has a child’s intense curiosity about “Uncle Stephen”, whom she knows only from photographs. Lawrence said: “She was asking me [the other day] if Stephen was an angel. I’m not sure how to answer that. How does she see what an angel is?”

During the recent court case that finally saw two people convicted of Stephen’s murder in April 1993, the adults in the Lawrence family had to be careful what they said about the case in front of Mia, and protected her innocence by hiding the fact they were going to court.

Lawrence said one decision she and Mia’s parents would have to make was when and how to tell her about the circumstances of her uncle’s violent death at the hands of a gang fuelled by racial hatred.

Lawrence, 59, has three grandchildren. Spending time with them lessens her pain, and reminds her that people are mostly good: “You can’t think about doom or gloom,” she says of the time spent with her grandchildren. “You can’t forget so you try to do things, put things in place, to lessen the pain.”
Injustice

For the two months of the trial she says she could not tell which way the jury was leaning and tried to avoid her emotions overwhelming her: “No one could ever convince me we would get to the point of getting a guilty verdict. It was having that faith in the system, which we never had.”

The verdicts have yet to sink in fully. Lawrence says she is often “away with the fairies”, sometimes thinking she has only dreamt that the British criminal justice system has finally found people guilty of her first-born child’s murder.

Lawrence is trying to move on, but says continuing racial injustice in Britain must be tackled. Wider society must improve its attitudes to British African-Caribbeans, who are still viewed as the face of crime and are near the bottom for jobs and housing despite promises of change after the 1999 Macpherson inquiry into her son’s death and racism in British society.

“They are pretty low down, I don’t think that has shifted much. You have to be better than your [white] contemporaries by three or four times” to get as far, she says.

“Even if you have the qualifications, if their name doesn’t sound English enough then they don’t get an interview, and if they do manage to get an interview they don’t get the job.”

To change society’s negative attitudes to ethnic minorities, educational establishments must do more and the media must tell positive stories, not just negative ones, she says.

Lawrence improved her life by returning to education as an adult, but she fears those opportunities for self-improvement are disappearing. She says that in the late 1980s there were opportunities for people to improve themselves, but now “university is for the elite as others are priced out of it”. She warns: “We’re at a standstill, we are going backwards.”

The Macpherson inquiry led to progress – “no doubt things have changed” – but she notes that other families who are suffering have nowhere to go. Now that other support groups have gone, desperate families come to her Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust for help and advice.

The trust, based in south London, exists so people can achieve despite discrimination and deprivation. Lawrence wants young black people not to give up and instead ask themselves: “‘How can I achieve, what can I do?’ – not just get hung up on colour.” She now wants to step out of the limelight to concentrate on the trust, which is in a worrying financial situation, after spending nearly two decades fighting some of the country’s most powerful institutions to find the evidence to bring suspects before a jury.

If she is now revered and praised by the establishment, Lawrence remembers how she and her family were treated when they were most in need, just after the murder: “In the early stages they were trying to prove that Stephen more or less caused this to himself, because of who he was, he belonged to a gang, and we as a family were not law abiding citizens, so whatever happened was down to us.”

During the trial Lawrence and her family were seated by the dock housing the accused, Gary Dobson and David Norris. She sat and listened to horrific detail of her son’s murder. How the gang racially abused him, smothered him and plunged a large knife so deep into him as he lay on the ground that major arteries were severed.

She describes Norris and Dobson as “pure evil”, but as a church-going Christian can she see herself forgiving the racists she put her last measure of devotion into pursuing?

“You can only forgive somebody, something, who asks for forgiveness, who admits their wrongs, and they have never done that. You have to seek forgiveness … it would mean nothing if I say I forgive them.”

She admits her faith wavered over the years. “It’s a lot stronger now. Just after Stephen’s death, there were so many questions. Why was he not being protected? I’ve moved on quite a bit. His death taught me everything happens for a reason.”

It was not just God she sought answers from, it was from herself. Even now, her peace of mind is threatened by questions of regret if not guilt.

“From the time they [my children] were born, I had to protect them. The fact I could not protect Stephen that night is something that will live with me forever.”

She talks of her regret at “not [being] able to answer his questions, not able to be the person to hear his last words.”

Lawrence says she tried to battle for Stephen while ensuring that his brother Stuart, a teacher, and sister Georgina, a fashion designer, were fully nurtured and felt they had her full attention. She seems to have some doubt as to whether she achieved that.

Stephen’s memory is ever-present and she still has conversations with him in her head. “Not that I’m worshipping him, but I think of him all the time. I go to bed and sleep and wake up and it’s there constantly. He has had such an impact. His name will live on for a long time yet. It’s difficult for me to let it go completely. It turned my life upside down, I’m struggling to be the person I was then.”
Next generation

Lawrence was talking three weeks after the conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris, yet one curious effect since the verdicts has been the worsening of her health, with pain so bad she has been barely able to walk.

“I think it’s all the stress that builds up over time, and stress … can start attacking the body. People say, ‘You look really good’, but on the inside, I don’t feel good.”

Lawrence would now like to concentrate on the next generations of her family. That means spending time with the grandchildren. And buying them black dolls instead of white, to give them a positive image of themselves as early as possible. “It means a lot. I bought my granddaughter a black doll because she needs to see a reflection of herself.”

Lawrence fears racism may still affect her grandchildren’s life chances and she hopes for, and needs, others to help fight to stop that happening: “There is no such thing as normality for me. I don’t think I’ve got any more to give.”

• Donations to the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust can be given:

• By credit card or paypal at the trust’s JustGiving web page click here justgiving.com/slct/donate

• By texting SLCT18 followed by the £ symbol, then the amount to 70070

• By bank deposit to the following account: sort code 30-94-08 account number 02963035

• By cheque, made payable to Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust and sent to 39 Brookmill Road, Deptford, London SE8 4HU.”

Source: The Guardian, Friday 27 January, 2012.

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London 2012 Recruitment Event

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

7 February 10-3pm

Stadium Suite, John Lewis 3rd Floor, Westfield Stratford City, Stratford, E15

We would like to invite you to attend a recruitment event to find out about paid roles available to be involved in the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

You will have the opportunity to find out about roles in catering, retail, security and cleaning as well as working within the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG).

The University of East London will be on hand to provide information about learning and training opportunities and the local borough job brokerages will be providing information and support on getting people into work.

This is a free event which is open to all, we would however like to encourage enthusiastic and hard-working women living in East London to attend this event.

Attached is a promotional PDF poster which we’d be grateful if you could use to promote the event and send onto your networks, local groups and/ or individuals. If you would like hard copies of the poster please contact Shanaz.Begum@london2012.com

For more information about the event and to register your place call –  0845 2668707.

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Show Racism the Red Card

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Conveying a powerful anti-racist message through the medium of professional footballers Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand and many others.

http://bit.ly/wSqxS1

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Listen to Andrew on TalkSport radio show

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Our New Business Manager featured on Talk Sport radio on Sunday morning discussing Stephen Lawrence verdict. Listen again on the 5-5:30am section, 16minutes - http://www.talksport.co.uk/radio/listen-again/episode/64405

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70′s night starring Vegas Elvis!

Monday, January 9th, 2012

http://calderdalepride.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/70s-night-featuring-vegas-elvis/

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Man arrested over alleged abuse of Oldham footballer Tom Adeyemi

Monday, January 9th, 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-16458267

Source: BBC News Liverpool

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Wine Tasting Evening – Thursday 2 February, 6pm

Friday, January 6th, 2012

The Rotary Club of Leeds White Rose has organised a Wine Tasting Evening. Hosted by Ford & Warren Solicitors on Thursday 2 February at 6pm. £15 and all donations go to Stop Hate UK.

Please RSVP by e-mail to leicia.feare@forwarn.com by Friday 27 January.

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