Doreen Lawrence has said Tory cuts to youth services have led to the rise in violence among young people.
The mum of Stephen Lawrence criticised the slashing of funding as she warned children are ending up on the streets and in gangs.
Speaking at an event with Keir Starmer to mark the 30th anniversary of her son’s murder next Saturday, Baroness Lawrence said she wants to see “more young people survive” as she declared “change really needs to happen”.
“Since youth centres have been closed, young people have nowhere to go. They end up on the streets and then they get picked up by police and they get into gangs.
"That’s one of the big things that the Conservative government did was cut all these youth centres that young people used to go to,” she said.
Asked whether funding cuts to youth services and closures of centres were “significant” when looking at the rise of youth violence in the last 13 years, Baroness Lawrence said: “Definitely so.”
She called on Labour to “bring back a lot of the youth services and centres to help young people” if it gets into Government.
“There are many creative things they can do there and use their time productively and I think that is what the question is all about,” she added.
Some 760 youth centres have been closed over the last 13 years due to Tory cuts to public spending.
Branding the cuts as “savage”, Mr Starmer said: “What they did to our public service was shameful, absolutely shameful. they’ve broken something fundamental in our country and they should rightly never be forgiven for it.”
“What do the young people who might have gone to that youth centre or youth services do with their time.
“They end up in the streets…That's a tough place for a 12, 13, 14 year old child to try and navigate and always make the right decision.”
Looking back on the 30 years since the racist and unprovoked murder of her son, Baroness Lawrence said “life has been a struggle” but she believed it had provoked positive changes in this country.
“I think people look at me and they say ‘you’ve done really really well’. You’re just so strong, but not really because I give the impression of being strong,” she said.
“I think we all as individuals when something like what happened to Stephen happened, and there's so many parents out there that this has happened to and is still happening to them, how do you cope with that?
“And so you need to have a close family around you and also members of the public because I think without them always meeting me and saying ‘I’ve been praying for you’ and having those things being said to me all the time that I'm not certain I’d be up to it here today.
“Life has been a struggle, but at the same time, there's been positive things that have happened. I think Stephen’s name has managed to change so much stuff in this country. “Double jeopardy, Stephen’s case changed that and if it wasn't for that, we would never have had the two convictions that we had.”
Stephen’s case led to the partial scrapping of the double jeopardy legal principle which says a person cannot be trialled for the same crime twice.
Two of Stephen’s murderers, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were finally convicted in 2012, almost 20 years after they killed him.
An inquiry into the Met ruled the police service was “institutionally racist” after its botched handling of the investigation in 1999.
Baroness Lawrence added: “I think when we look around and see our society now, we talk about the amount of children and young people who are dying in our streets - it took such a long time for people to look at it and say, you know, this is really really bad.”
She said in 1999, just after the inquiry into Stephen’s death, youth murders were seen as “black on black crime”.
The race equality campaigner said it took a “long time” for people to start “accepting that this is a death of a young person”.
“The minute they begin to change that - that you're looking at a murder - it's a completely different thing.
“You’re beginning to see a lot more where the police are beginning to take their work a little bit more seriously, although it is still not taken seriously enough.”
Mr Starmer, who as director of public prosecutions put away some of Britain's most prolific criminals, praised Baroness Lawrence as an “inspiration”.
“The struggles and the challenges were so huge at every twist and turn,” the Labour leader said. “The awful murder in the first place, the complete failure of the criminal justice system and every time, you had a challenge.
“It was a massive challenge to get through and to persevere and to get justice.
“Sometimes when you spin forward 30 years, you can now see those achievements, but at the time, it must have seemed almost impossible.
“Even when it got to that stage of could we ever bring another conviction, it was no, the law doesn't allow it. So you said, ‘well, let's change the law’.
“Every time, in your own really brilliant, resilient way you just bashed every barrier out of the way.”
A Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spokesman said: “We recognise the essential role youth centres play in our communities.
“While councils are responsible for youth services, last month we announced our Youth Investment Fund which will improve facilities at up to 300 centres - transforming the lives of tens of thousands of young people.
"Together with new funding to provide one million extra hours of youth services in anti-social behaviour hotspots and our wider investment in the National Youth Guarantee, our plans will give young people access to life-changing activities and support from trusted adults."
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