Remember Blair PeachNick GrantSecretary Ealing NUT and an NUT National Executive member for Outer London

April 23 1979 was a stormy Monday in west London. Schools were still on Easter holiday. By midday Ealing’s arterial Uxbridge Road was strangely quiet because the buses were on strike. So were many food and textile factories at the western end of the borough.

I met up for a lunch-time drink with Blair Peach and three others in The Castle pub, in central Ealing. We had got to know each other better at the National Union of Teachers Annual Conference in Scarborough ten days earlier, my first as a delegate.

I’d got stuck into union work as soon as I started teaching in Ealing. Blair was President of East London NUT branch, known for his passion and energy. We worked closely producing a Rank and File Teacher magazine.

So he had travelled over from east London to join a protest that evening outside the tiny Southall Town Hall. The dominant far-right group, the National Front, had been granted hire of the building for a ‘public’ meeting in support of their general election candidate Ernest Pendrous.

Photo: John Harris/Report Digital

Mass opposition to Nazi meeting

Thousands of us had marched over two miles to Ealing Town Hall the day before. A petition asked for the meeting to be banned. Local churches and the Ealing’s Community Relations Council led the campaign.

We were stunned to be met by ranks of mounted police, side by side, surrounding the whole building. Such an excessive display of power was a scary declaration of intent by the state.

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Tory Council leader Bob Hetherington confirmed that any party could hire local authority rooms during an election period. He echoed Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees’ advice to a community deputation on the 18 April.

Mainstream parties were incapable of understanding that no ethnic minority members of the public would be let in to this Nazi event. Nor could they see that it was a deliberate attempt to rub the noses of local people in the dirt of recent racist attacks. Gurdip Singh Chaggar’s fatal knifing in July 1976 was way off Tory and Labour political radars.

Kiwi ‘Paki’

That’s why the buses and factories were striking. This multi-ethnic, working-class community was disgusted. But we chatted with a sense of foreboding. The Nazis and, indirectly, the coppers had taken a pasting two days earlier in Leicester. Would either group seek revenge today?

Blair was called a ‘Paki’ as he waited at the bar. His full black beard and thick hair gave a stupid racist some encouragement to stereotype him as such.

But he just happened to be a relatively dark-skinned, 33 year-old Kiwi, with a day job teaching at Pheonix Special School in Bow, Tower Hamlets.

He suffered from a stuttering speech impediment himself. But no matter. He returned the comment with withering sarcasm.

Split Loyalties

We left the pub about 3 o’clock. But I had split loyalties.

Much as I wanted to be in Southall later on, there was also a parents’ lobby of an Ealing Council Education Committee meeting. My NUT branch had agreed to support it. North Acton Primary school was to be closed because of falling rolls. Jobs would go.

So we arranged to all meet up at 8pm in The Grosvenor pub in West Ealing.

The astonishing thing at the parents’ lobby was that the same Bob Hetherington who had sanctioned the NF meeting turned up for the schools meeting. We harangued him about letting Nazis meet as well as sacking teachers!

But them somebody shouted, “Look! It’s the Nazis.”

We all turned on our heels to see the frankly comical sight of NF leader Martin Webster strutting his burly stuff hastily westwards, with a gaggle of youngsters trailing behind him.

He was walking from Ealing Broadway tube station the few miles to Southall! Coppers soon mustered a protective column ensuring them safe passage in their last mile.

The Horrible Truth

I reached The Grosvenor just before 8pm. Regulars were gossiping about a huge ruck between police and protesters. Rumours were surfacing about arrests and casualties. Then the TV news came on. It looked awful.

A friend arrived. She’d heard that Blair had been injured and was at Ealing hospital. We quickly got in her car and drove towards Southall to find out the truth. No chance. Road blocks in place since midday were still manned by hard-faced coppers. So we retired to another mate’s flat.

There was about twelve of us there by then, sitting round trying to stay calm but scared shitless that Blair was seriously hurt.

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Three people were sure that he’d been hit on the head when police charged down Beachcroft Avenue, just off Southall Broadway.

One comrade found him after a local family, the Atwals, had taken him in and called an ambulance. Blair had been conscious but groggy. He’d handed over his car keys before leaving.

Blair walked from the ambulance into the emergency reception at Ealing hospital. But doctors said he would need to be admitted. Police already understood there was something to be worried about. They quizzed his companions who left with Blair’s belongings, advised to call back later for a medical bulletin.

Headlines and Heartbreak

The first call at around 10pm was not good news. Blair was undergoing surgery to address his head injuries.

The next news around 11.40 was far worse. Blair had died in theatre.

It’s bad enough coping with the sudden murder of a mate. Emotions race fast and deep in all directions.

But when that also becomes the headline news on all media for the next 48-hours, private grief becomes secondary to the need for a swift political response.

With only one phone we set about letting as many people as possible know the truth as we saw it. The initially unidentified fatality was murdered by a Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Group (SPG) officer, we told Radio 4, The Times and BBC TV.

We rightly predicted that politicians led by Prime Minister James Callaghan and media would spout rubbish about “outside agitators” being to blame for the night’s clashes, despite the facts that local residents formed the vast majority of participants and victims, and local warnings had been totally ignored in the preceding weeks.

Blair’s nearest and dearest had to be woken by phone to be told of his death before they heard it from their morning radio or tabloid. Not the easiest job and heartbreaking for all concerned.

But would the coppers come for us?

Sure enough, within an hour of Blair’s death, plain clothes were banging on our door. They clearly knew where we were and what they’d done. They were desperately covering their tracks, demanding his clothes.

A Commander Cass insisted on talking to us. We hurriedly agreed to let just one person answer him. Cass was called away quite quickly so we got on with drafting press releases and leaflets by hand. We let them have the clothes but not Blair’s address book.

They returned to arrest those of us still there at about 9am. They took statements from the comrades who were actually with Blair in Beachcroft Avenue. These were eventually aired at the Coroner’s Inquest.

The Full Picture

Within 24 hours I had got the full picture of what had happened.

From midday all traffic had been cut off by police barriers. All roads near the junction of Uxbridge and Lady Margaret Roads were full of thousands of local protesters by late afternoon. Thousands more sympathisers arrived on foot.

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2,756 police were determined to both allow the handful of NF supporters into their meeting and spare no measure to keep back the enraged protesters. Their brutality resulted in over 700 arrests with 344 court cases. Hundreds were hurt.

The offices and recording studio of community group Peoples Unite at 6 Park Place was trashed. Legal and medical support staff were based there that day. Cops forced everyone to run a gauntlet of truncheon blows to get out of the building. One of their victims was Misty singer Clarence Baker who only came out of a coma some five months later.

We did find out that all sorts of dodgy weapons were found in police lockers. Because Blair died from a blow inflicted by something strong enough to cave the left-side of his skull into his brain, but malleable enough not to cause any external bleeding, lead-filled plastic hose was the most likely tool.

But the Coroner returned a Death by Misadventure verdict eventually, letting the Met off the hook.

Tony Benn led Blair’s 10,000-strong funeral march to a burial service in East London cemetery.

As the Thatcher era got underway in the early eighties Labour gained control of Ealing Council. To their credit its Education Committee chaired by Councillor Hilary Benn decided to name a brand new Southall primary school after Blair. A touching tribute for any teacher.

Thirty Years On

One of six SPG Unit One coppers that drove at protesters in Beachcroft Avenue probably hit Blair the fatal blow. If they are still alive one of Messrs Freestone, Lake, Scottow, Richardson, White or their leader Alan Murray knows the truth of their actions.

They were transferred out of service before any action could have been taken against them – just as happened with officers involved in the Jean Charles de Menezes case in 2007.

Ealing NUT commemorates Blair on its branch banner. You can guarantee someone will come up to pay their respects every time we take it on demonstrations.

One Afro-Caribbean teacher recently told me how fundamentally affecting Blair’s death had been for him. It changed his previous belief that it was only black people that were routinely done over by the state.

Blair was certainly no martyr but paid the highest price any of us can pay for a conscious act of solidarity.

The saddest part of all is that thirty years on we need to mobilise that kind of solidarity more than ever before. The Nazis, and ruthless capitalist state forces, threaten a decent future for workers in our new century.

We need millions of new Blair Peaches to win that battle once and for all.

It is worth searching for the only two publications telling this story in full:The Blair Peach Case: Licence To Kill (ISBN 0 906224 04 7) was written by David Ransom for the Friends of Blair Peach Committee.

The National Council for Civil Liberties, now known as Liberty, held an Unofficial Committee of Enquiry in 1980 chaired by Sir Michael Dummett, then an Oxford Professor of Logic. It was published by NCCL as ‘Southall 23 April 1979’ (ISBN 0 901108 85 5)

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