The killing shocked the country and focused attention on violence in schools and the safety of teachers. It led to an amnesty on knives and new restrictions on their sale.. The teenage gang leader who stabbed to death the London headmaster Philip Lawrence outside his school nearly two years ago is appealing against his conviction today. Learco Chindamo, 17, was ordered to be detained indefinitely after a jury at the Old Bailey found him guilty of the murder. Chindamo, who was 15 when he knifed Mr Lawrence, puncturing his lung and piercing his heart, was a member of the Wo-Sing-Wo gang, which aspired to be the juvenile equivalent of the Triads. Just days before the murder, he was named in court as an accomplice in the near fatal knife attack on the husband of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Dame Barbara Mills.
On 8 December 1995, up to 12 youths in the gang led by Chindamo went to St George’s Roman Catholic School in Maida Vale, west London, to attack a boy who had quarrelled with a pupil of Filipino origin.

When Mr Lawrence tried to protect one of his pupils he was punched and stabbed by Chindamo and died the same evening. Then we want to know whether all sports had equal access to [ministers] … I’m not making any specific allegations about individuals … but we do need to know how they came to this decision, who influenced whom and why, and did everybody have a fair crack of the whip?”.Mr Blair was dragged into the row yesterday after claims that it was his decision to exempt Formula One from the ban on tobacco sponsorship.

Tessa Jowell, the Public Health Minister, whose husband, David Mills, was a legal adviser and former director of the Formula One company, Benetton Formula, had in fact wanted the sport included in a sponsorship ban.According to Labour sources, Mr Blair’s decision on exemption was guided by a meeting on 16 October at Downing Street with Mr Mosley, president of the Federation Internationale d’Automobile, and Mr Ward, director-general of the organisation and Mr Eccleston.. We are pursuing actions that will”.For the Tories, this was the first real scent of blood after five months of frustration. But it was Paddy Ashdown who took the lead yesterday in demanding an official inquiry by Lord Nolan’s committee on standards in public life.The Liberal Democrat leader said on LWT’s Jonathan Dimbleby Programme: “This is a serious issue … the core question is: what are the facts behind this? There is now a mechanism for getting that out. It’s the Nolan mechanism”.John Redwood, the Tory industry spokesman, said: “Why have they broken their promise? They clearly stated they were going to rule out this sponsorship …they haven’t and we want to know why. Kim Sengupta and Colin Brown examine the Government’s attempts to fend off allegations of sleaze

Allegations of sleaze have inflicted the first scratch on the shiny teflon premiership of Tony Blair. The row over Formula One and tobacco sponsorship moved up another gear yesterday with the Liberal Democrat leader’s demand that the Parliamentary standards watchdog investigate financial links between senior figures in motor racing and the Labour Party.
It came after revelations that a leading lobbyist for Formula One fighting a ban on tobacco sponsorship, Max Mosley, was a member of the Labour-supporting Thousand Club, and had donated “between pounds 1,000 to pounds 5,000″ to the party coffers.

There was also uncorroborated reports that Bernie Ecclestone, owner of Formula One Holdings, the television company which owns the rights to the sport, had paid money into a “blind trust” funding Mr Blair’s office in opposition. A third leading figure in the sport, David Ward was a once a researcher for the deceased Labour leader John Smith.If anyone had any doubts about how seriously Labour was taking this, the Prime Minister’s closest adviser, Peter Mandelson, himself intervenes in the affair with an article in this newspaper today.Mr Mandelson maintains that Formula One is in a unique position with tobacco sponsorship representing 90 per cent of all the industry’s sponsorship A ban would have led to the sport moving to the Far East. He said: “We decided therefore that we would take the best practical step to secure our objectives The EU directive on this simply will not work. The controversy over the Government’s decision to exempt Formula One from a ban on tobacco advertising grew with Paddy Ashdown demanding an investigation. He added that a suicide note has been passed to the coroner.”Police officers are in contact with the family and supporting them as much as they can, but obviously this is a tragic incident,” the spokesman said.. “This is not the end but another chapter in a terrible nightmare,” she said.”We cannot look forward to the future with any confidence There have been threats since my son died. The harassment has not stopped.”She said Ian had been told: “You will be dead.