1979 police killing of a protestor in London
Clement Blair Peach (25 March 1946 – 24 April 1979) was a New Zealand teacher who was killed during an anti-racism demonstration in Southall, London, England. A campaigner and activist against the far right, in April 1979 Peach took part in an Anti-Nazi League demonstration in Southall against a National Front election meeting in the town hall and was hit on the head, probably by a member of the Special Patrol Group (SPG), a specialist unit within the Metropolitan Police Service. He died in hospital that night.
An investigation by Commander John Cass of the Metropolitan Police's Complaints Investigation Bureau concluded that Peach had been killed by one of six SPG officers, and others had preserved their silence to obstruct his investigation. The report was not released to the public, but was available to John Burton, the coroner who conducted the inquest; excerpts from a leaked copy were also published in "The Leveller" and "The Sunday Times" in early 1980. In May 1980 the jury in the inquest arrived at a verdict of death by misadventure, although press and some pressure groups—notably the National Council for Civil Liberties—expressed concern that no clear answers had been provided, and at the way Burton conducted the inquest.
Celia Stubbs, Peach's partner, campaigned for the Cass report to be released and for a full public inquiry. An inquiry was rejected, but in 1988 the Metropolitan Police paid £75,000 compensation to Peach's family. In 2009 Ian Tomlinson died after he was struck from behind by a member of the Territorial Support Group, the SPG's successor organisation; the parallels in the deaths proved to be the catalyst in the release of the Cass report to the public. The Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, released the report and supporting documentation. He also offered an official apology to Peach's family.
The policing of the demonstration in Southall damaged community relations in the area. Since Peach's death the Metropolitan Police have been involved in a series of incidents and poorly conducted investigations—the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, the botched 2006 Forest Gate raid and the death of Tomlinson—all of which tarnished the image of the service. Peach's death has been remembered in the music of the Pop Group, Ralph McTell and Linton Kwesi Johnson; the National Union of Teachers set up the Blair Peach Award for work for equality and diversity issues and a school in Southall is named after him.
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Background.
Blair Peach.
Clement Blair Peach was born in Napier, New Zealand, on 25 March 1946, to Clement and Janet Peach. He was one of three brothers, the others being Roy and Philip; the former was a solicitor and led the family's legal campaign after Blair's death. Blair was schooled at Colenso College, then studied education and psychology at the Victoria University of Wellington, where he co-edited the "Argot" literary magazine with his flatmate Dennis List and David Rutherford. During his studies Peach visited Britain and liked the country. After graduating he was employed in several temporary jobs, but was turned down for compulsory military training for having an "unsuitable character". He emigrated to Britain in 1969 and was soon employed as a teacher at the Phoenix special needs school in Bow, east London. In 1970 he entered a long-term relationship with Celia Stubbs; they had first met in New Zealand in 1963 when she was visiting the country. Peach helped raise Stubbs's two daughters from her previous relationship, and the couple regarded each other as husband and wife.
Peach was politically active and joined the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP), Socialist Teachers' Association and the local branch of the National Union of Teachers. He was also a committed opponent of racism and was active in the Anti-Nazi League. He had been arrested previously when campaigning on political issues, and in 1974 he was charged with threatening behaviour after challenging a local publican's refusal to serve black customers; he was acquitted.
Southall.
As a result of the population transfers after the 1947 partition of India over ten million people were impoverished. From the late 1950s a significant number of them relocated. Many Sikhs and Hindus left the subcontinent to settle in Greater London, particularly Southall, where shortages of workers at factories, and the employment prospects at nearby Heathrow Airport meant jobs were easily obtainable. Some of the early arrivals found work at the R. Woolf and Co Rubber factory; by 1965 all the lower level workers were from Poland or the Indian subcontinent. Racial discrimination in the workplace was common; 85 per cent of those Asian workers who had been given entry into the UK on the basis of their education or training were employed only in unskilled or semi-skilled roles. Kennetta Hammond Perry, in her history of post-war immigration, identifies the reasons as being "in part because of perceptions about their level of competence and stereotypes about their ability to speak English". Indian workers also faced discrimination from the white-dominated trade unions, and so formed their own organisation, the Indian Workers' Association (IWA).
During local elections of the 1960s anti-immigration rhetoric was used by some candidates, successfully in many cases. Smaller right-wing parties used immigration as a platform on which to stand, including in Southall. In the local elections of May 1964, the anti-immigration British National Party (BNP) polled 15 per cent of the vote in Southall; in the general election that October the BNP leader, John Bean, received 9.1 per cent in the Southall constituency. Bean won 7.4 per cent of the vote at the 1966 general election. The BNP's successor, the National Front, recorded 4.4 per cent of the vote at the 1970 general election.
In June 1976 the racist murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in Southall—outside the offices of the IWA—led to the former chairman of the National Front, John Kingsley Read, stating "one down, a million to go". Chaggar's murder led to the formation of the Southall Youth Movement (SYM) to challenge the rise in racism and attacks from the National Front. Rioting in the area took place between police and Asian youths and members of Peoples Unite, a similar group to the SYM, but consisting of young Afro-Caribbeans.
Special Patrol Group.
The Special Patrol Group (SPG) was formed in 1961 as a specialist squad within the Metropolitan Police. It provided a mobile, centrally controlled reserve of uniformed officers which supported local areas, particularly when policing serious crime and civil disturbances. The SPG comprised police officers capable of working as disciplined teams preventing public disorder, targeting areas of serious crime, carrying out stop and searches, or providing a response to terrorist threats. In 1978 there were 1,347 SPG members in forces across the UK, 204 of them in the Metropolitan Police Service. They were divided into six units, each of which contained three sergeants and 30 constables. Each unit was commanded by an inspector.
The use of the SPG proved controversial to some. It was involved in the Red Lion Square disorders, when Kevin Gately, a student demonstrating against a National Front march, was killed from a blow to the head from a blunt instrument; the perpetrator was never identified. Accusations were made that the police were inappropriately violent towards those demonstrating. The former chief constable, Tim Brain, writes "their critics viewed them with suspicion as a force within a force"; the Metropolitan Police history observes that "their presence sometimes came to assume unwanted symbolic significance". The former chief constable Geoffrey Dear states that the SPG "might apparently solve one problem but in its wake create another of aggravated relationships between minority groups and the police in general".
The SPG was disbanded in 1986 and, replaced by District Support Units (DSU). After receiving bad press, the DSU were replaced by the Territorial Support Group in January 1987.
23 April 1979.
In the run-up to the 1979 general election, the National Front announced that it would hold a meeting at Southall Town Hall on 23 April 1979, St George's Day. Southall was to be one of 300 parliamentary seats for which the organisation put up candidates. Prior to the Southall meeting, similar events had resulted in clashes with anti-racist protesters, including in Islington, north London, on 22 April, and in Leicester the following day. At both events, police had been injured trying to keep the two sides separate.
A petition of 10,000 residents was raised to cancel the meeting, but to no effect. Ealing Council had blocked previous meetings by the National Front, but, under the Representation of the People Act 1969, they allowed the party to use the hall. The day before the meeting a march by the IWA was planned from central Southall, past the town hall, and ending at Ealing Town Hall. Approximately 1,200 police officers were on duty along the five-mile (eight-kilometre) route; 19 people were arrested. Two counter-demonstrations for the day of the meeting were planned: a picket on the pavement opposite the hall, and a seated demonstration outside it. To deal with the potential violence, 2,876 police officers were drafted in, 94 of whom were on horseback; they arrived at 11:30am and demonstrators began gathering at 1:00pm in preparation for the 7:30pm National Front meeting.
The number of demonstrators at the town hall rose, and included some whom the police considered militant elements. There were some clashes between police and protesters and a small number of arrests ensued. The police decided to establish a sterile cordon around the town hall, although they still allowed a small, contained demonstration in the High Street. Cordons were set up on Lady Margaret Road, the Broadway, High Street and South Road. Between 2:30 and 3:15pm, at the High Street cordon, missiles were thrown at the police, who used riot shields to contain the crowd.
According to the official police report, between 5:30 and 6:30pm the level of violence rose as the crowd at the High Street cordon again began to throw missiles and at about 6:20pm between 500 and 2,000 protesters tried to breach the police lines. In response, mounted officers were brought in to disperse the crowd. The author Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who was present at the demonstration, thought the mood changed when the police tactics changed from containment to dispersement, which triggered the missile-throwing reaction from the crowd.
A house on Park View Road, the headquarters of Peoples Unite, was used as a first aid post. The official police report states that the residents were "a group of mainly Rastafarians" who were squatting at the premises, and that these occupants threw missiles from the house at police in the street. SPG officers entered the house and an altercation broke out in which two officers were stabbed. Those in the house—including those manning the first aid post and those receiving treatment—were beaten with truncheons, and an estimated £10,000 of damage was done to the contents of the house, including the equipment for the band Misty in Roots; the group's manager, Clarence Baker, went into a coma for five months after his skull was fractured by a police truncheon. All those inside were removed from the property, regardless of what they were doing, and there were subsequent complaints by the inhabitants of racist and sexist abuse by the police. Seventy people were arrested either at or near the address. At the trial of one of those arrested, one of the SPG officers involved reported "there was no overall direction of the police forces at this time" and the situation was "a free for all".
National Front members began arriving from 7:00pm. At its scheduled time their meeting took place. During the assembly, one of the organisation's speakers called for "the bulldozing of Southall and its replacement by a 'peaceful English hamlet'". Four members of the public were allowed into the hall to fulfil the requirements of the Representation of the People Act, but a journalist from "The Daily Mirror" was stopped from entering because the newspaper was considered to be "nigger loving". When the meeting ended at about 10:00pm, some of the attendees gave Nazi salutes on the steps of the town hall before being escorted to safety by the police.
Once the meeting was underway, the police decided to clear the area of demonstrators and allowed them to pass along the Broadway towards the crossroads with Northcote Avenue and Beachcroft Avenue. At