Lee Lawrence - The Louder I Will Sing

Id like to dedicate this book to my children, Brandon, Harmony and Ruby-Lee, who I love unconditionally and are my purpose and driving force for positive change.

To the following souls, who are no longer with us:

Jason, aka Fox, a dear friend with whom I shared many highs and lows. He will always remain close to my heart.

Dale, who was sadly taken away at a young age.

Madelina, a school bestie, who I loved dearly.

Mama Blackwood, who in the absence of my birth mother nurtured me as her own and whose faith in God never wavered.

Roger, aka Roger Ramjet. My ride or die cousin.

Uncle Mervin, my mothers brother. Who was a role model that I looked up to intelligent, kind and always smiling.

Ma, my maternal grandmother, the matriarch of the family.

My parents, who I honour, respect and love.

Id also like to thank:

Maureen, who first helped me to formulate my thoughts and memories for this book.

Tom, for his assistance, dedication and attention to detail.

The Blair Partnership, for giving me the opportunity to tell my story.

The team at Little, Brown, for their expertise, professionalism and commitment.

My friends and community for their continuous support.

Lastly, my family for trusting me to tell our story and believing in me to lead in our pursuit of justice.

Published by Sphere

ISBN: 978-0-7515-8102-7

Copyright Lee Lawrence 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Text by Tom Bromley

Someone Loves You Honey by Don Devaney. Lyrics Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC (Something Inside) So Strong by Labi Siffre. Lyrics BMG Rights Management

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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D ancing, always dancing.

It was always a special day when Mum brought home a new record. Music, especially reggae, was the soundtrack of my childhood. If the record player wasnt on, it was the pirate radio station. If it wasnt the pirate radio station, it was a cassette tape spooling round on a stereo or a ghetto blaster.

Mum was back from Brixton Market, the bulging plastic bags of food left forgotten by the front door. It was her new record that we all wanted to hear me, my sisters Lisa, Sharon and Rose. Mum slipped the single out of its sleeve, gave it a twirl in the sunlight streaming through the front sash of the living room. As she put the record on the player and lowered the needle, I heard the tell-tale crackle that the record was about to begin.

A short opening roll of drums. Then clipped stabs of guitar against an endless bass that seemed to rise and fall with hypnotic, laid-back precision. Floating over the top, the featherlight female vocals began: I want to share your life

I looked at my sisters and grinned. Someone Loves You Honey by J.C. Lodge was one of the records of the summer of 1982. Number one back in Jamaica, every time you turned on a radio in Brixton it seemed as though the same sweet lyrics and pulsating bass were there waiting for you. Transporting you for a few fleeting moments away from south London towards sunnier climes.

In front of the record player, Mum was starting to move. It was as though the richness of the reggae beat was rippling through her. Some people are born with a natural sense of rhythm. Mum was one of them. As she turned around, she gestured for the rest of us to join her. We didnt need a second invitation. Everyone was up on their feet, swaying and swinging in a circle around the coffee table.

As the song reached the chorus we all knew so well, everyone started to sing along. The louder I sang, the more Mum smiled.

I t was a few days after my mum passed away in 2011 that my life was turned on its head for a second time. The first time had been in 1985, when I was eleven, and a dawn raid on our house in Brixton left her shot by the police and fighting for her life. That incident had triggered the second Brixton uprising. After the debris and destruction of that weekend had been cleared away, my family were left to pick up the pieces of our lives. For my mum, Cherry Groce, it was coming to terms with the fact that the shooting had left her paralysed, and facing the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

The second time began not with a bang, but with a whisper. I was back at Kings College Hospital in south London, where Mum had passed away, to collect some paperwork. In a strange way, I was grateful for the bureaucracy that follows on from when somebody dies. It gave me something to do while I was still making sense of it all. I was thinking about the arrangements for the funeral and needed to get hold of the death certificate to set that up. There was a paper trail to follow get something from the hospital, take that to someone else at the council, and then get the death certificate.

I was in the early days of grief, still coming to terms with the fact that Mum was no longer around. It was odd being in the hospital without her there; it felt that little bit different, that little bit emptier. Id been so many times to visit Mum I knew the way to the ward by muscle memory. But this time, I headed in the opposite direction, downstairs, in search of a small office in the basement. I explained to the woman behind the desk who I was and what I needed. She gave me a small smile of sympathy and disappeared to look through the files. I waited. The fluorescent strip light hummed.

OK, she said, returning. Here you go. But she didnt hand anything over. Instead, she continued to read. Then she whispered, more to herself than to me: Oh, hang on.

She looked up. She said: Theres a comment here. The doctor has written something. Im sorry, but I cant give you these at the moment. He thinks this might need to go to an inquest.

An inquest? I didnt know what that was.

It looks like the doctor is asking for a post-mortem to be done, the woman explained. And then this will need to be referred to the coroners office to decide how to proceed. Im sorry. These sorts of complications are probably the last thing you want.

She tilted her head to one side and gave me another sympathetic smile.

There was plenty I had wanted to happen in my life; this really wasnt up there with them.

It turned out that my mums doctor wasnt certain about what the cause of death was. Or rather, he was clear on the medical reasons why Mum died, but wasnt completely certain about what had caused them. The post-mortem was done by a forensic pathologist called Dr Robert Chapman and took place a couple of weeks later. When I got sent the findings, I read it at my kitchen table in fits and starts; a paragraph or two, then flicking forward desperately, hoping that my brain would soak all the information up without me having to properly digest it. Mums arent bodies to be dissected. As part of the process, the pathologist removed a section of her spine to take away and analyse. As far as I know, thats still in a lab somewhere, gathering dust on a white shelf.

Reading the report was hard going. Chapman described how he found a succession of metallic fragments lodged in my mums spine. These were fragments from the bullet fired by DS Lovelock back in 1985, which had become embedded. That wasnt a surprise: from the start, the medical advice when Mum had gone to hospital was that it was simply too dangerous to try and remove them all any attempt to do so could cause further damage. The doctors took out what they could. The fragments that remained caused my mum pain throughout the rest of her life. A recurring, sharp, stabbing reminder of what had happened one September morning.