But one side of the story has still be heard. The five young men accused of murdering Stephen Lawrence have said nothing. Neil and Jamie Acourt, David Norris, Luke Knight and Gary Dobson remained silent at the inquest.

They and their families have never spoken on the record to the media - until now. John Humphrys interviewed the mothers of the five men for Radio 4's Today programme.

Humphrys: "What effect has the past two years had on your sons?"

Mrs Knight: "They cannot get a job now, they have absolutely ruined their lives. Our sons were 16 and 17 years old when this started, and they've got no chance of getting a job because their names are so well known."

Mrs Acourt:"And faces"

Mrs Knight:"And their faces"

Mrs Acourt:"And everywhere they go people recognise them, and for the papers to say that they're swanning around doing this, that, and the other, is more allegations. They're not doing that at all."

Humphrys: "The bulk of the criticism - the loathing, has been directed at your sons. How much of it has come in your direction?"

Mrs Knight: "We've had death threats all of us. We've had to move a number of times. I've got a daughter that's anorexic because of this, another daughter suffers with her nerves because of this. What's happened to us I wouldn't have believed if I'd saw it on a film - I'd have said it was far fetched. Our sons are innocent and none of this is right. We need someone to help us. There's never been anyone to put our side of it."

Mrs Norris: "We think it's political."

Humphrys: "Political in what sense?"

Mrs Norris: "In every sense."

Mrs Knight: "We've been caught up in a political argument. That's what we think."

Humphrys: "Why is this political? I mean your sons have been accused of murdering a black ..."

Mrs Knight: "Because the word racist has been said, it's been said it's a racist murder, that's why. We're not racist any of us. We take people as we find them. Our sons aren't racist. We all take people as we find them."

Humphrys: "You say your sons aren't racist, but we've all seen the video that showed them using the most appalling racist language and behaving in the most appalling racist way."

Mrs Knight: "They were 17 or 18 years old at that time. It was bravado. They were hitting back in their own home with words after 18 months of persecution. It's now nearly six years. That's all it was."

Humphrys: "But even with bravado, that was very extreme language to use, and a very appalling way to behave don't you think?"

Mrs Knight: "I believe a lot of young boys that age say silly things, and that's all it was."

Mrs Norris: "In their own home, 'cos that's where it was. It was in their own home."

Humphrys: "But doesn't that in a sense make it more credible that they were behaving according to type if they were doing it in their own home. If they were doing it in front of a crowd of their mates for bravado, perhaps you could understand it, but this was in their own home when they didn't know anybody was watching them?"

Mrs Acourt: "Well they said they was. The police or whoever said that they did know that the house was bugged, so if they knew the house was bugged, why would they be doing this?"

Mrs Knight:"It was hitting back, just with words, no more. No one said they'd done any of those terrible things. They're not bad boys, they are good boys."

Mrs Norris:"Put a bug in every household in Britain, I should think most of them would say a racist word."

Mrs Knight: "Also that tape was made up of three weeks, with bits and pieces put together. They didn't show our sons doing the ordinary things that they was most of the time. It looks terrible because it's a bit here, a bit there, it's been cut, it's been connected together. The majority of the time they wasn't doing that, but the way the tape comes across it looks as if they was. They wasn't."

Humphrys: "Mrs Acourt, on that tape we saw one of your sons wielding a knife, showing somebody how to stab a black man. Well if that didn't suggest violence it's hard to imagine what might."

Mrs Acourt: "Well I don't think it did suggest violence at all."

Humphrys; "What wielding a knife like that?"

Mrs Acourt: "Yeah, wielding a knife. They were play acting. You could see that on that camera. I didn't like looking at my sons holding knives at all. It upset me terribly it did, and I feel. But what can I say any more about it? All I can say is they was just acting out, they wasn't there hurting anybody."

Humphrys: 'Did you know that they had knives?'

Mrs Acourt: "No I didn't."

Humphrys: "Because they had a lot of them didn't they?"

Mrs Acourt: "Well so they said, I've not seen them. Where are they? They said they had a gun. What did it turn out to be - a pellet gun which didn't even work. They said they had knives, most of them knives was kitchen knives. They said they had a sword, which come off the wall because we was decorating at the time. I mean what else can I say about that?"

Humphrys: "So when you saw that video, how did you feel? They were your sons."

Mrs Acourt: "Ill, it made me feel ill, yeah it did. I can't even watch it, it makes me feel ill. But the way I look at it, is what we've just said, it was bravado, they were play acting, messing around with each other."

Humphrys: "Can't you understand that people would react by looking at that and saying 'well it shows what kind of boys they were, doesn't it?'?"

Mrs Knight: "But do people understand that that was taken over three weeks, and they've come out with about 15 minutes of video over three weeks?"

Humphrys: "But wouldn't you say 15 minutes of damning video?"

Mrs Knight: "Oh yes, certainly, but it was bravado and no more."

Mrs Acourt: "And that's why they've used it. That's why they've used this to keep them as the murderers."

Mrs Knight: "That video is a product of what has happened to them boys. They was hitting back with words, only in their own home after 18 months of persecution."

Humphrys: "When the Daily Mail pronounced them guilty - used their names and pictures for the first time - and it was in every home effectively in the land, because every newspaper after that leapt on it, as did the broadcasters and said these are the guilty young men. Why did you not instantly sue the Daily Mail? Because if it was not true then it was the most awful libel."

Mrs Knight: "We tried. It was a terrible thing to do to our sons and their families. We tried to sue. We was told we needed half a million pounds. We'd never had anyone to help us. When the law changed recently, we consulted a large libel firm to sue, and they said to us - not because of any evidence, but because of the publicity and the extraordinary emotion in the case - that we wouldn't win because a jury would be prejudiced. We have tried, we would love to sue the Mail."

Humphrys: "But shouldn't you have sued anyway and made the effort, even if it bankrupted you because your sons were being called murderers? Shouldn't you have just said: 'to hell with what the lawyers are saying, we will do it'?"

Mrs Knight:"Half a million pound to us is a fortune, as it is to most working class families in this land. We just couldn't do it, there was nobody there that would help us."

Mrs Norris: "Every week I pray to win the lottery and it's a rollover, because I want to sue every single one of them, every single one of them I'd sue."

Humphrys: "There have been other occasions when your sons could have spoken out in their own defence. The most obvious one was the inquiry, when they stood in the witness box and in one case refused even to give his name. Now people looked at that and said, well if anything proves they're guilty, that does."

Mrs Knight: "I think you'll find you're talking about the inquest, where they claimed privilege. They done that on legal advice. We go in a court room, we don't understand everything that's going on, we're normal people. We take out legal advice as advice, it's as simple as that. Now after six years, enough is enough. We the mothers have decided to speak out and try to help our sons."

Humphrys: "I was referring to the inquiry into the handling of the case?"

Mrs Knight: "At the inquiry they answered all the questions they was able to the best of their ability. If they hadn't of done, they'd have been held in contempt of court. Anyone could ask themselves why haven't they been, because they did answer the questions they was asked. And while they was trying to answer those questions there was chanting and shouting. The parent that was allowed in there with them at the time was abused verbally, I was called a white whore."

Humphrys: "Mrs Norris, at the inquest, we've already mentioned the inquest, the boys answered every question with 'I can't answer that, I claim privilege.' In your son's case, David, those were the words he used, even when asked his name. That struck people at the time and still strikes them as most extraordinary if he was innocent."

Mrs Norris: "He claimed privilege because his right is to claim privilege legally."

Humphrys: "But why would you do that if you were innocent. Why wouldn't you say 'Here's my name and I am innocent of the charges against me'? There were at that stage no charges against them of course."

Mrs Norris: "They haven't had the time, they haven't had the proper time to put over their case."

Humphrys: "Six years"

Mrs Norris: "Six years, six years that's right they still haven't. We've been told by legal advice not to talk, hold privilege, which you do. What happened to them boys, anyone in their place would hold privilege."

Mrs Knight: "You don't go to a builder and tell him how to build a wall, you take advice. We went to legal people obviously when all this happened and we took their advice. But now we've just had enough. We took their advice for six years: 'Don't say anything, you mustn't say anything, you claim privilege, you do this, you do that'. It hasn't helped us, we wish we'd spoken out the first day they was arrested."

Humphrys: "Well, this was what I was going to ask you. Even if you accept that your boys themselves were advised to keep quiet for legal reasons, you yourselves, the four of you, articulate women, could have insisted on their innocence every waking hour."

Mrs Knight: "There's never been one court room that we have been called as witnesses."

Humphrys: "Newspapers, television, radio?"

Mrs Knight: "We've been told not to, we've seen the programmes the TV have put across, it's all one sided, all unfounded allegations."

Humphrys: "But it's one sided because the other side has not been presented. And the assumption people have made is that the other side has not been presented because there is no defence."

Mrs Knight: "No, we believe, we've seen it on the television, these people have been in the court rooms. They know there's no evidence. They've been made scapegoats, they're sacrificial lambs for a political cause."

Humphrys: "But I'm puzzled by what you mean 'a political cause'. This is not obviously a party political issue. No party stands to gain anything, no politician stands to gain anything politically against the other, no politician has stood up in the last six years, not one and said well perhaps these boys are innocent, not one."

Mrs Knight: "We know that. We don't know why."

Mrs Acourt: "Our children got arrested the day after Nelson Mandela visited this country. That's when their first arrest was."

Mrs Knight: "The police was under pressure to arrest, and they were arrested on no evidence, which was why it was dropped by the CPS. The CPS don't drop cases for no reason."

Humphrys: "Well what they said of course was that the police hadn't given them enough evidence, hadn't produced enough evidence? But later the police said given more time they could have done so and would have done so."

Mrs Knight: "So why haven't they done so. Because there isn't any evidence. Our sons are innocent."

Humphrys: "There was identification."

Mrs Knight: "The identification was by Dwayne Brooks who spoke to DS Crowley, and he told DS Crowley that he picked two of the boys out. The first son he picked out because his trousers were baggy and he looked like he'd been in a cell all night. The second son he picked out because he looked like the first boy. That is his words not mine."

Humphrys: "But he wasn't the only one to say that the boys had been in the area at the time. A lot of people in the area identified each of your sons at some stage or another."

Mrs Knight: "No they haven't, there's not any other witnesses."

Humphrys: "No direct witnesses of the actual stabbing, but witnesses that your sons were in the area at the time, who gave names to the police subsequently."

Mrs Knight: "All anonymous, unfounded allegations. We know where our sons were that night. We know. For legal reasons two of the boys haven't been into court. We can't go into detail, but we know, I would stake my life where all our sons were that night. We know where they were. They've got nothing to do with the murder to Stephen Lawrence."

Humphrys: "There is no way that their name is going to be cleared legally now. Technically of course they've been convicted of nothing. Though as you say in the eyes of the nation they are all guilty. They could, each one of them, stand in front of microphones, go into television studios, appear at new conferences and take every question thrown at them. And if they're innocent they could at least make an effort to clear their name, and be totally straight forward in dealing with everything that is thrown at them. Couldn't they do that?"

Mrs Knight : "They intended to do that on Panorama with Martin Bashir. It was stopped."

Humphrys: "But could they not have used those opportunities, fully and frankly to volunteer information about where they were that night, who they were with and all the rest of it?"

Mrs Knight: "Yes they could, but there again they took legal advice."

Humphrys: "But how can legal advice, if you're innocent, and your lawyer says to you: 'I don't' want to give you the opportunity to clear your name', surely you'd say 'to hell with that, I want to clear my name if I possibly can', that's what you'd do isn't it? That's what I'd do."

Mrs Knight: "But they don't say that. It's the most terrible thing when your son gets arrested for a murder. I can't explain how it feels. You are frightened. We was frightened. We got lawyers, and we listened to them, and they said to us you mustn't say anything so we didn't."

Humphrys: "If there were any lawyers listening to this programme who said well we will give you some help with libel actions."

Mrs Knight: "Please get in touch, please get in touch with us because we have never had any help from anybody."

Humphrys: "So you would sue, even though it meant your sons appearing in a witness box in a libel action. You would take that action and you could guarantee that your sons would appear in that witness box?"

Mrs Knight: "If our sons' safety was guaranteed. Not like the inquiry. I would never put my son through that again, none of us would. They could have been killed."

Humphrys: "But given that they have been convicted by the nation, because that is what has happened. I doubt there is anybody listening to this programme who doesn't believe your sons are guilty of murder. Given that fact, would you say to them appear in a witness box in a libel action, and would they say yes because that might clear our names?"

Mrs Knight: "If they got a fair hearing and their safety was guaranteed, yes, we would all do it tomorrow. Our sons have been tried and convicted and condemned by the media."

Humphrys: "And if Mrs Lawrence, Stephen's mother, were to walk into this room now, what would you say to her?"

Mrs Knight: "I feel for her, being a mother myself, but I know she also knows this case as we do. There's no evidence on our sons, our sons are innocent."

Mrs Norris: "It's terrible for anyone to lose a child. It's terrible for our children to get blamed for something they haven't done."

Humphrys: "But you have sympathy for her?"

All: "Yes, of course."

Mrs Knight: "Any mother would, it's the most terrible thing in the world to think of losing a child, but our sons are innocent, they can't keep persecuting our sons for something they haven't done."