UK: Inquiry into Blair Peach killing?
01 January 1999
Twenty years after Blair Peach was bludgeoned to death by a police Special Patrol Group unit following protests against a National Front (NF) election meeting at Southall town hall in west London, the Home Secretary Jack Straw has been urged to reopen the investigation into his death. The Blair Peach 20th Anniversary Committee and Blair's partner, Celia Stubbs, have also called on Straw to allow them to see the unpublished internal Metropolitan police report into the infamous events that saw hundreds of demonstrators arrested and injured.
The Conservative Home Secretary at the time, William Whitelaw, refused a public inquiry into Blair's killing and an inquest into the death was universally derided as an inept and blatant cover-up. It returned a verdict of death by misadventure despite eleven people witnessing Blair being battered by Special Patrol Group (SPG) officers and a police admission that he died after receiving a truncheon blow from an unknown police officer. Other eye-witness accounts described the SPG running amok in what has been described as a "police siege" of the town. They described how the elite SPG units indiscriminately charged demonstrators with flailing batons and other "unofficial" weapons, some of which were later recovered from police locker-rooms.
At the time Jack Straw was a backbench Labour MP who signed an early day motion calling for a judicial inquiry into the events in Southall, along with Robin Cook (now Foreign Secretary) and Michael Meacher (now Environment minister). Ms Stubbs has written to Straw complaining that she has never been allowed to see the police report and asking for a meeting: "After 20 years of very little, it would be nice to just have the courtesy of a meeting with the Home Secretary to discuss what has changed", she said. It would seem that Straw will at last be in a position to see his demands for an investigation met. Whether he will choose to act remains to be seen.
The Blair Peach 20th Anniversary Committee will be hosting events to commemorate Blair's death, including a march in Southall on Saturday April 24. They can be contacted at 86 Bow Road, London E3 4DL.