‘Uncontrolled clubbing’ by police at Southall

Press, 11 July 1979, Page 8

‘Uncontrolled clubbing’ by police at Southall

NZPA London Allegations of extensive police violence at the Southall, south London, race riot in which a New Zealander, Blair Peach, was killed, have been made by the Commission for Racial Equality. The allegations are made in an internal report prepared by three members of the commission's staff. Leaked to the Communist daily newspaper, the “Morning Star,” at the week-end, the report speaks of “very considerable violence” by the police towards anti-Nat-ional Front Demonstrators, and of “undisciplined and uncontrolled clubbing of fleeing civilians.” The premature publication of the report — designed as part of a fuller submission by the Government appointed commission to the Home Secretary (Mr Willie Whitelaw) — is seen by observers as a deliberate attempt to cause maximum

embarrassment to the British Government and to Scotland Yard, which is at present n.„king an internal review of the controversial Special Patrol Group. The report singles out the SPG for two “gross and inexcusable outbursts,” involving the clashes in which Mr Peach was fatally injured, and a raid, on a house where more than. 70 people were arrested — complained of last week by lawyers representing the more than 340 people facing charges over the April 23 demonstration. Scotland Yard has declined to comment on the report or on its recital of eyewitness accounts of the events leading up to the death of Mr Peach — a subject which is still the subject of a full internal investigation headed by Commander John Cass, officer in charge of the Yard’s permanent Complaints Investigation Bureau. The twice-adjourned inquest into Mr Peach’s death I

is scheduled to resume next week, but is again expected to be adjourned pending the completion of Commander Cass’s inquiry. Commentators say the growing gulf between the official version of the Southall demonstration which talks of the way in which the police were provoked, and the versions of eye witnesses and others including now the C.R.E., could make the continued refusal of the Government to launch a full public inquiry, more difficult to sustain. The public inquiry held under the auspices of the British National Council for Civil Liberties began at the v. eek-end, interviewing witnesses in the rundown, disused Dominion Cinema in Southall, — the site of an impassioned meeting on the day after the riot, and last month transformed into a shrine where the body of the New Zealander “lay in state” on the evening before his funeral.