Stephen Lawrence Campaign

This orange ribbon was produced by supporters of the Stephen Lawrence Campaign for people to wear in his memory and to campaign to bring Stephen's killers to justice. Orange was the favourite colour of the teenager who was brutally murdered, aged 18, in a racist attack in Eltham, in spring 1993.

The orange ribbon campaign was launched by Stephen's family at the House of Commons in April 1996, almost three years after he was murdered and in the same month that a private prosecution brought by Stephen's family against three of the original five suspects collapsed. It was not until 2012 that two of the three suspects originally tried in 1996 were convicted of Stephen's murder.

The murder of Stephen by a racist gang forced Britain to confront an ugly truth. Despite decades of laws and campaigns, racism remained a fact of British life, even embedded into the police in the form of ‘insitutionalised racism’. The campaign ribbon was gifted to the Museum by a Londoner in 1998.