When the Macpherson report was published in 1999, I was working on a storytelling project in Greenwich, Teaching as Storytelling, for the University of Cambridge School of Education. One of the participating schools was near Well Hall Road, where a memorial stone marks the site of Stephen Lawrence’s murder (Residents reflect on events in Eltham, 21 April). The stone had already been vandalised several times, and when the report came out it was doused with white paint. Several of the six-year-olds with whom I was storymaking told me, unprompted: “We know who put the paint on the stone.”
In each school we found a local starting point for a story which would belong to the children. To try to show them that this boy, who died before they were born, was not as different from them as some of their parents would have them believe, I asked Doreen Lawrence to tell me anecdotes about Stephen when he was the age of the children in the class. Ever generous with her time and energy, she did so, and I shared the story of how Stephen ran a mini-marathon to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
Stephen was just an ordinary boy, doing ordinary things. His were the kind of stories everybody has. But Stephen is famous now, because of the story of his death. This should be the kind of story nobody has. Twenty five years on, it seems that even those in power have not learned the lesson his story teaches us.
Fiona Collins
Carrog, Denbighshire
• “Whatever it takes”? Isn’t Theresa May’s promise to the victims of the Home Office (May: we will compensate Windrush generation, 21 April) a word-for-word replica of her party’s promise, all those months ago, to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire?
Francis Prideaux
London
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