On this day, 23 April 1979, Aotearoa/New Zealand born teacher and socialist Clement Blair Peach was hit by police on an anti-Nazi demonstration in Southall, Middlesex, possibly with an illegal weapon, and later died.
Peach had joined thousands of people in an area with a large south Asian and Sikh population to protest against a meeting of the far-right National Front in the town hall. After he was hit he was taken into a nearby house which an ambulance was called. He was then taken to Ealing Hospital with an extradural haematoma, and died shortly after midnight.
A subsequent police investigation found that one of six members of the notoriously violent Special Patrol Group was responsible. The officers’ lockers were searched, and illegal weapons discovered like a lead cosh. The officers also quickly cleaned their uniforms and changed their appearances after the attack, and several of them lied to investigators. As a result of the deception, the guilty party could not be identified. The investigator did recommend that three officers who had conspired and lied should be charged with obstruction and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, but the director of public prosecutions appointed by the Labour government declined to prosecute them.
Officials refused to hold the inquest into Peach’s death in front of a jury, and despite multiple witnesses testifying to the police attack, the inquest returned a verdict of “death by misadventure”. The coroner disregarded witness testimony which he deemed to be from people who were socialist, or who were Sikh, and according to him “did not have experience of the English system” to be reliable.
It took decades to force the police to eventually release the results of their investigations which they did in 2010.
Police in the UK routinely help neo-Nazis organise meetings and demonstrations, attacking and arresting anti-fascists who protest against them. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1970898386428635/?type=3