Background

Laurie and I wrote this some time ago but I'd always felt our first recording of it could have been better - so here it is in 2008, with a lot more recording knowledge behind me and now doing the subject justice, I feel.   It concerns the tragic death in 1995 of Philip Lawrence, the talented headmaster of a ‘difficult’ London school.  He went to the aid of one of his pupils, William Njoh, 13, who was being attacked by a 15 year old from another school, Learco Chindamo outside the school gates.  Chindamo stabbed the headmaster to death in front of the terrified pupils.  Philip Lawrence’s family were utterly shattered of course, and will never recover from their dreadful loss.

Chindamo was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996 with a minimum of 12 years.  He is already in an open prison and will almost certainly be released soon, after serving the 12 years ‘life’ sentence.  The British government took steps in 2007 to make sure he would be deported at the end of his sentence back to Italy where he was born, but the civil rights lawyers swung into action and the court ruled he can stay permanently – the Government ironically snared in its own human rights legislation.  Philip Lawrence’s widow, Frances was devastated saying: "I feel as if I can't fight any more - I feel I can't survive this."

And what became of the 13 year old boy that Philip Lawrence gave his life for? Well, when William Njoh was 21 in 2003 he was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for carrying a gun at the Notting Hill Carnival.  And the school? Deprived of Philip Lawrence’s leadership it declined into violence and failure and in 2000 was closed for a week after the then head was attacked going to help a fellow teacher.  A new, inspired head teacher then took over for a year and pulled it round; afterwards writing a book about her travails which was made into a TV film. I don’t know how the school is faring now.

Like all real-life tragedies, there’s no happy ending. The only solace is that Philip Lawrence’s spirit survives in the work of the Philip Lawrence Awards which recognises outstanding achievements in good citizenship by young people aged 11 to 20.

Sorry for the over-long explanation, but this is an important song, as we took the tragedy of Philip Lawrence to express sadness over the malaise in our society.