Showing results by author "Lee Lawrence" in Politics & Social Sciences

On 28th September 1985, Lee Lawrence's mother, Cherry Groce, was wrongly shot by police during a raid on her Brixton home. The bullet shattered her spine, and she never walked again. In the chaos that followed, 11-year-old Lee watched in horror as the news falsely pronounced his mother dead. In Brixton, already a powder keg because of the deep racism that the community was experiencing, it was the spark needed to trigger two days of rioting that saw buildings brought down by petrol bombs, cars torched and shops looted.

Lawrence tells his story through a dozen core cases involving race-based criminal injustice, dating from 1919 - Charles Wotten, who having served in the Royal Navy during WW1 was murdered by a mob in Cardiff - to the present day. By incorporating societal, judicial and police services changes to add context to each of the cases, it shows that while progress has been made that large gaps remain.