Remember Blair Peach: Anti-fascist fighter killed by British state

April 23 marked 30 years since the British state killed anti-fascist activist Blair Peach during a demonstration against the National Front (NF) in Southall. He was killed by cops unleashed that day by the James Callaghan Labour government to defend the fascist NF who were staging a provocation in an area heavily populated by Asian working-class families. Hundreds of anti-fascists were arrested; dozens were injured by the police. Blair Peach’s skull was fractured by vicious blows from the notorious Special Patrol Group (SPG), the police unit that spearheaded the bloody assault.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing the SPG pour out of two vans and wade into the fleeing demonstrators. No fewer than ten witnesses reported seeing Blair Peach attacked by one of these SPG thugs. But no cop was ever charged with any crime. When the coroner’s inquest 13 months after the killing announced its verdict of death by “misadventure”, we wrote: “But it was not a ‘misadventure’ which cracked Blair Peach’s skull in half. It was a police truncheon, or similar weapon, wielded with fatal effect by one or several of the more than 3000 cops who rioted outside Southall Town Hall to protect the future would-be guardians of gas chambers and concentration camps from the wrath of their intended victims” (Spartacist Britain no 22, June 1980).

In the late 1970s, when the NF was carrying out racist terror on the streets, the Asian community of Southall became a symbol of resistance to these attacks. The racist murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in 1976 called forth a militant youth revolt which took up the Sikh battle cry, “We shall fight like lions”. Militant trade union struggle in the area including at Heathrow Airport drew support from the local population. Blair Peach, a member of the Socialist Workers Party, was respected as a dedicated teacher and anti-racist. Five days after he was killed, some 10,000 marched in defiant tribute, raising clenched fists as they passed the spot where he was killed.

The findings of a police enquiry into Peach’s death were never published, but a few facts did get exposed. As we wrote in the 1980 article, “When the CID team did a search of SPG lockers for ‘unauthorised weapons’, they were diverted long enough for the lockers to be sanitised. Even so, the array of ‘unauthorised’ weapons discovered included metal truncheons, lead-weighted coshes, crowbars, axe-handles and a rhino whip. One locker contained Nazi regalia.” In fact, the doctor who carried out the second post-mortem on behalf of the Peach family suggested that the weapon used had been “a lead weighted rubber ‘cosh’ or hosepipe filled with lead shot”.

The capitalist state protects and covers for its hired thugs. Repeated efforts to press for an enquiry into the cop killing of Blair Peach — which the state would certainly whitewash — have failed. Twenty years after Peach was killed, in again ruling out an investigation, Labour minister Paul Boateng said, “Lessons have been learned from the circumstances of his death about the policing of public order incidents and the importance of good police-community relations” (bbc.co.uk, 13 April 1999). Fast forward ten years: Ian Tomlinson was killed at the hands of the Territorial Support Group, which in 1987 replaced the SPG as a Metropolitan Police special unit for “disorder” as well as “anti-terrorism” policing.

We remember and honour Blair Peach. Nine years after his death we wrote (Workers Hammer no 98, May/June 1988): “Vengeance for his death will only come with victorious socialist revolution. Along the road to that revolution, the workers movement will honour its martyrs and its heroes. And Blair Peach was certainly both of these.”