THE Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) today released the report of Commander Cass into the events surrounding the death of Blair Peach in Southall, west London, on April 23 1979, concluding that ‘a police officer is likely to have struck the fatal blow’.
The report comes 31 years too late and is an insult to Peach’s family, friends and to the working class as a whole. The capitalist state has not the slightest intention of ever putting on trial members of its paramilitary state forces.
Celia Stubbs, the partner of Blair Peach, said yesterday: ‘This report totally vindicates what we have always believed – that Blair was killed by one of six officers from Unit 1 of the Special Patrol Group whose names have been in the public domain over all these years: Inspector Murray, PC White, PC Richardson, PC Scottow, PC Freestone and PS Lake.
‘That serves only to emphasise that there can be no excuse for the way in which the writer of the report, like the police generally, sought to criminalise the many protesters, including Blair, at the demonstration against the National Front election meeting.’
Raju Bhatt of Bhatt Murphy Solicitors, Celia Stubb’s solicitor, added: ‘The mindset of Commander Cass and his approach to his investigation is betrayed by the following excerpt where he sought to define its terms of reference and context.’
Cass wrote: ‘My brief is to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death, so I do not propose to enlarge much further on the events of that day except to emphasise that it was an extremely violent, volatile and ugly situation where there was serious disturbance by what can be classed as a “rebellious crowd”.
‘The legal definition “unlawful assembly” is justified and the event should be viewed with that kind of atmosphere prevailing. Without condoning the death I refer to Archbold 38th edition para 2528: “In case of riot or rebellious assembly the officers endeavouring to disperse the riot are justified in killing them at common law if the riot cannot otherwise be suppressed.’
Cass’s report is not even an attempt to whitewash what happened. He is making the point that killing Peach was the correct thing to do ‘if the riot cannot otherwise be suppressed’. He had already categorised the ‘crowd’ as ‘rebellious’.
On this showing the killers did not need prosecuting, they needed decoration with a medal or promotion.
In fact, what happened on that day is that the Special Patrol Group – which shot dead two Pakistanis, who were holding toy pistols at India House in February 1973, and gained additional notoriety for the way that they attacked and assaulted workers at the Grunwick picket lines – were protecting the National Front and laying into anti-fascist demonstrators.
They were the thugs in blue of the ruling class, and did not shirk beating or injuring those that they were ordered to attack, and who had been categorised as being ‘rebellious’.
Deborah Coles of Inquest is now calling for the Met police chief Sir Paul Stephenson to ‘publicly acknowledge for the first time that a Metropolitan Police officer was responsible for the fatal truncheon blow that killed him.’
She added: ‘The whole police investigation into what happened on April 23 1979 was clearly designed as an exercise in managing the fallout from the events of that iconic day in Southall, to exonerate police violence in the face of legitimate public protest.’
Today the SPG lives on in the Territorial Support Group who now have a licence to kill after no police officer was charged with killing Ian Tomlinson.
Only a socialist revolution can solve the problem of the capitalist state by smashing it up completely and overthrowing the ruling class that uses it as its tool to beat and kill workers.
