Is there no room at the inn for Blair Peach?
Matrin Doyle
PEACH is the Kiwi teacher who was bashed to death by a London policeman during an anti-fascist demonstration in April 1979.
It was shortly before the General Election in which Maggie Thatcher first came to power.
At the time, I think most New Zealanders pictured Blair Peach as your average Kiwi doing his OE who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Blair’s British girlfriend, Celia Stubbs, immediately demanded action from the police to investigate what had happened.
They did so, but refused to reveal their findings. So year after year, on the anniversary of Blair’s death, the young woman returned, asking for the documents to be released.
No matter how many times they turned her down, she didn’t go away. And neither did a persistent sense of cover-up.
Finally, last week, 31 years down the track, the Metropolitan Police in London released the report: 3000 pages.
The Pathologist says Peach suffered a blow “shattering the left side of the skull, causing extensive uncontrollable...” bleeding round the brain; the likely type of weapon being “a lead-weighted rubber cosh”.
Fourteen witnesses saw an officer strike Blair Peach while he was sitting on the ground. The investigation narrows the likely offenders to six Special Patrol Group officers from one van, and seems to finger one man in particular.
Investigators who checked their lockers afterwards found “non-authorised weapons” like coshes, as well as “Nazi regalia”. Most of the relevant officers left the Police not long after Peach’s death.
The report is thorough and meticulous. However, its gobsmacking conclusion that there was not enough evidence to mount a prosecution is hard to accept. On that basis, Attila the Hun would have got off.
On TV, a drawn, grey-haired Celia Stubbs, said she felt “vindicated”. It’s been a long haul. She’s now 69. Her Blair will forever be the dashing 33-year-old Kiwi from Wellington (where he’d gone to Vic, edited an arts magazine, and been a fireman and hospital orderly).
They had lived together for ten years, and for all of that time he had worked as a teacher at Phoenix School for special-needs children in Bow, East London. He would stay behind after school to coach football, and was President of the East London Teachers’ Association.
He was an anti-racist and had once been charged with “threatening behaviour” for standing up to an hotelier who refused to serve customers who happened to be black. Peach was acquitted.
10,000 Londoners attended his funeral. He is buried in the East London cemetery at Plaistow. A Council plaque honours him at Phoenix School. And in Southall, where he was fatally assaulted, you’ll find Blair Peach Primary School.
So, Celia Stubbs was right when, at the close of an article last year, she said: “Your family and all your friends still miss you, Blair. You are not forgotten.”
Given all that, why is he so forgotten in Wellington?
It was shortly before the General Election in which Maggie Thatcher first came to power.
At the time, I think most New Zealanders pictured Blair Peach as your average Kiwi doing his OE who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Blair’s British girlfriend, Celia Stubbs, immediately demanded action from the police to investigate what had happened.
They did so, but refused to reveal their findings. So year after year, on the anniversary of Blair’s death, the young woman returned, asking for the documents to be released.
No matter how many times they turned her down, she didn’t go away. And neither did a persistent sense of cover-up.
Finally, last week, 31 years down the track, the Metropolitan Police in London released the report: 3000 pages.
The Pathologist says Peach suffered a blow “shattering the left side of the skull, causing extensive uncontrollable...” bleeding round the brain; the likely type of weapon being “a lead-weighted rubber cosh”.
Fourteen witnesses saw an officer strike Blair Peach while he was sitting on the ground. The investigation narrows the likely offenders to six Special Patrol Group officers from one van, and seems to finger one man in particular.
Investigators who checked their lockers afterwards found “non-authorised weapons” like coshes, as well as “Nazi regalia”. Most of the relevant officers left the Police not long after Peach’s death.
The report is thorough and meticulous. However, its gobsmacking conclusion that there was not enough evidence to mount a prosecution is hard to accept. On that basis, Attila the Hun would have got off.
On TV, a drawn, grey-haired Celia Stubbs, said she felt “vindicated”. It’s been a long haul. She’s now 69. Her Blair will forever be the dashing 33-year-old Kiwi from Wellington (where he’d gone to Vic, edited an arts magazine, and been a fireman and hospital orderly).
They had lived together for ten years, and for all of that time he had worked as a teacher at Phoenix School for special-needs children in Bow, East London. He would stay behind after school to coach football, and was President of the East London Teachers’ Association.
He was an anti-racist and had once been charged with “threatening behaviour” for standing up to an hotelier who refused to serve customers who happened to be black. Peach was acquitted.
10,000 Londoners attended his funeral. He is buried in the East London cemetery at Plaistow. A Council plaque honours him at Phoenix School. And in Southall, where he was fatally assaulted, you’ll find Blair Peach Primary School.
So, Celia Stubbs was right when, at the close of an article last year, she said: “Your family and all your friends still miss you, Blair. You are not forgotten.”
Given all that, why is he so forgotten in Wellington?
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