Posts Tagged ‘Blair Peach’

Yet More from Stoke Newington

Monday, September 30th, 2024

Yet More from Stoke Newington: This is the final post about my walk on 8th October 1989 going down Stoke Newington High St towards Dalston with some minor detours. The previous post on this walk was Cemetery, Synagogue & Snooker.

Shops, 77, Stoke Newington High St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-52
Shops, 77, Stoke Newington High St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-52

I wondered about the history of these three shops at 75-79 Stoke Newington History with the three-story Golden House Chinese takeaway at its centre. The first-floor brickwork on either side didn’t quite seem to match suggesting to me that the central building may have been a post-war addition to an existing building, or that these first floors may have been a later addition.

This central shop is still a Chinese takeaway but under a different name.

Hovis Bread, Batley Rd, Stoke Newington High St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989, 89-10f-55
Hovis Bread, Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington High St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-55

The Cinema Treasures site states that The Vogue Cinema at 38 Stoke Newington High St opened as The Majestic Electric Palace on 15th December 1910 and was closed on 21st June 1958 as a protest by Classic Cinemas against the landlord’s rent rise.

It remained shuttered and closed for 42 years until in November 2000 the foyer was converted into a Turkish restuarant with housing behind, described to me on Flickr as the “best Turkish restaurant ever.” The restaurant owners restored the Vogue sign.

My picture with the Hovis Bread ghost sign was taken from a few yards down Victorian Grove looking towards the cinema across the High Street. The block at right of the picture has now been replaced by a large building with a Tesco Extra on its ground floor.

House,  Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-56
House, Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-56

This street was originally called Victoria Grove, but its name was changed some time in the middle of the last century. Much of the area was redeveloped in the 1970s but these houses dating from the early years of Victoria’s reign in the 1840s or 1850s remain.

This Grade II listed pair with the unusual curved bays and balconies have the name ‘BRIGHTON VILLAS’ on a plaque between the first floor windows, hidden by the curvature of the nearer bay in my photograph. The nearer balcony roof has been replaced since I took this, matching the one on its neighbour.

Works entrance, Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-41
Works entrance, Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-41

The wall beside 3 Victorian Grove is still there, but now has only graffiti on it. There are still some industrial units behind the villas of Victorian Grove, though surely they will soon be replaced by expensive flats, but access to these is now thourgh a gated vehicle entrance further down the street.

Posters, Stoke Newington High St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989  89-10f-42
Posters, Stoke Newington High St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-42

Should you Google – as I did – ‘Trevor Moneville‘ – you will find he was a 33-year-old from Hackney, was found dead at HMP Lewes on April 18, 2021 from Sudden Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) because of insufficient and unacceptable management of his care.

But this was a case of history repeating itself. A copy of the poster at top right is also in the collection of Hackney Museum, where the web site notes:

“Trevor Monerville went missing from Stoke Newington police station after being taken into custody on New Year’s Eve, reappearing after several days on the other side of London in Brixton prison. He had multiple injuries and later underwent emergency surgery in Maudsley Hospital. The case highlighted existing concerns about alleged institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police and led to the formation of the Hackney Community Defence Association in 1988.”

And in the centre of the picture is a poster for another, better known case of police brutality. Blair Peach was a young teacher murdered by the police Special Patrol Group who went beserk when policing an anti-racist protest in Southall on 23 April 1979.

Andy's Fashions, 141, Stoke Newington Rd, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-43
Andy’s Fashions, 141, Stoke Newington Rd, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-43

Further south Stoke Newington High Street becomes Stoke Newington Road, and back in 1989 I found myself confusing the two. Andy’s Fashions was at 141 Stoke Newington Road. No longer Andy’s, the shop is now Stitch “N” Time offering tailoring, alterations, repairs. and no longer has its wares on the pavement outside or partly blocking the entry to the Stoke Newington Estate of the Industrial Dwellings Society (1885) Ltd.

The IDS was established as the Four Per Cent Dwellings Company in 1885 by “Jewish philanthropists to relieve the overcrowding in homes in the East End of London” and changed its name in 1952. They opened the Stoke Newington Estate in 1903.

Curtains,  Stoke Newington Rd, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-32
Curtains, Stoke Newington Rd, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-32

Another shop somewhere on Stoke Newington Road, with a fine formation of net curtains for sale, though in my book ‘1989’ I imagined them rather differently, perhaps as the front of a vast army of angels, “Or a phalanx of klansmen or some strange voodoo creatures about to burst out onto the streets of London.

The book is still available on Blurb, though at a silly price for the print version, but you can see over half of it on the preview there or the full set of pages on the web site where this image and its text is on page 19.

The texts in that book were intended to explore the question of why some scenes grabbed my attention enough to make me fix them as photographs, and why they continue to excite my imagination and I hope that of other viewers.

Street Market, Shoreditch High St, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-33
Street Market, Shoreditch High St, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-33

My walk had ended and I got on the bus to take me to Waterloo for the train home. I almost always sit on the upper deck on double-decker buses and enjoy the views from the windows. As the bus went slowly along Shoreditch High Street close to the junction with Commercial Street it passed the informal market on the pavement where I had time to take three frames through the window. The area looks a little different now, but the last time I went past on a Sunday there was still a rather similar market there.

This is the final post about my walk on 8th October 1989. You can find more pictures from London and elsewhere on Flickr, with both black and white and colour images in albums mainly arranged by the year I took them, such as 1989 London Photos and 1989 London Colour.


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Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism – 2019

Saturday, April 27th, 2024

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism – On Saturday 27th April 2019 I joined with several thousand others to march through Southall, a town ten miles west of Central London callling for unity against racism. The date marked 40 years after the racist murder of New Zealand born East London teacher Blair Peach on St George’s Day, April 23rd 1979, 40 years before.

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism

Peach had come to Southall with many others to protest against a National Front rally being held at Southall Town Hall, the venue chosen deliberately to inflame racial tensions in the area which had become the centre of a large Punjabi community, attracted by work in local factories and nearby Heathrow airport. Well over half of Southall’s roughly 70,000 inhabitants were of Asian origin and two thirds of the children were non-white.

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism

I’d grown up in the local area though we didn’t go to Southall much as the bus route there was probably the least reliable in London, though I occasionally cycled there to watch the steam trains thundering through on the Great Western main line. My older sister taught at a school in the area and we had seen the population change over the years; our Irish neighbours were replaced by Indians and we got on well with both. The new immigrants to the area were hard working, revitalised many local businesses and generally improved the area, making it a more interesting and exciting place to live.

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism

I wasn’t there in 1979 when Blair Peach was murdered, but the accounts published of the event were horrific, with several thousand police apparently running amok trying to disperse the protesters who fought back. Members of the specialist Special Patrol Group were reported by eye-witnesses as hitting everybody down Beachcroft Avenue where Peach and his companions had gone thinking wrongly it would enable them to leave the area. Wikipedia has a long article, The Death of Blair Peach.

Southall Rally For Unity Against Racism

Peach was badly injured by a severe blow to the head, almost certainly by an officer using wielding “not a police truncheon, but a “rubber ‘cosh’ or hosepipe filled with lead shot, or some like weapon“, and died a few hours later in hospital. Police in the squad which killed him made great attempts to avoid detection, one shaving off his moustache and another refusing to take part in identity parades; some uniforms were dry-cleaned before being offered for inspection and others withheld, and various attempts were made by police to obstruct justice and prevent the subsequent inquest establishing the truth.

Peach’s was not the only racist murder in Southall. Three years earlier Gurdip Singh Chaggar, an 18-year old Sikh student had been murdered by racist skinheads in June 1976 shortly after he left the Dominion Cinema, and the marchers gathered in a parking area close to there. His family had requested that the event begin with a karate display there, after which the march set off, halting for a minute’s silence on the street outside the cinema where Chaggar was murdered.

From there we marched to the Ramgarhia Sabha Gurdwara in Oswald Road which Chaggar and his family attended and prayers were said outside before the march moved on.

As we walked along the Broadway, red and white roses were handed out to the marchers, and the march turned off down Beechcroft Road to the corner of Orchard Ave, where they were laid at the spot where Blair Peach was murdered by an officer of the police Special Patrol Group.

The march moved on to Southall Town Hall on the corner of High Street and Lady Margaret Road. Blue plaques were put up here in 2019 honouring the deaths of Blair Peach and Gurdip Singh Chaggar, with a third in tribute to Southall’s prominent reggae band, Misty ‘n Roots. These plaques were stolen in June 2020, but were replaced the following year.

Speakers at the rally there included a number of people who had been there when the police rioted 40 years ago, as well as John McDonnell MP, Pragna Patel who was inspired by the event to form Southall Black Sisters, trade unionists, Anti Nazi league founder Paul Holborow, and local councillor Jaskiran Chohan. Notable by his absence was the local Labour MP.

You can seem many more pictures from the march and of the rally on My London Diary at Southall rally for unity against racism.


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25 Years Ago – April 1999

Wednesday, April 17th, 2024

25 Years Ago – April 1999. When I began posting on my web site My London Diary I decided that the posts would begin from the start of 1999, and there are still image files I created in January of that year on line, though I think they probably only went live on the web a few months later.

25 Years Ago - April 1999
The Millennium Dome seen across the River Thames from Blackwall DLR station, one of a series of medium format urban landscape images.

In those early days of the site there was very little writing on it (and relatively few pictures) with most pictures just posted with minimal captions if any.

25 Years Ago - April 1999
Burnt out cars at Feltham on the edge of London, stolen and wrecked on waste land by youths.

A single text on the introductory page for the year 1999 explained my rather diffuse intentions for the site as follows (I’ve updated the layout and capitalisation.)

What is My London Diary? A record of my day to day wanderings in and around London, camera in hand and some of my comments which may be related to these – or not

Things I’ve found and perhaps things people tell me. If I really knew what this site was I wouldn’t bother to write it. It’s London, it’s part of my life, but mainly pictures, arranged day by day, ordered by month and year.

My London Diary 1999

25 Years Ago - April 1999
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster (left) takes part with Anglican and Methodist clergy in the annual Good Friday Procession of Witness on Victoria St, Westminster.
25 Years Ago - April 1999

In the years following My London Diary expanded considerably, gradually adding more text about the events I was covering but retaining the same basic structure. Had I begun it a few years later it would have used a blogging platform – such as WordPress on which this blog runs, but in 1999 blogging was still in its infancy and My London Diary was handcoded html – with help from Dreamweaver and more recently BlueGriffon, now sadly no longer.

25 Years Ago - April 1999
Man holding a placard at a protest against Monsanto’s genetically modified crops.

My London Diary continued until Covid brought much of my new photography to a standstill and stuttered briefly back to life after we came out of purdah. But by then my priorities had changed, and although I am still taking some new photographs and covering rather more carefully selected events my emphasis has switched to bringing to light the many thousands of largely unseen pictures taken on film in my archives, particularly through posting on Flickr. Since March 2020 I’ve uploaded around 32,000 pictures and have had over 12 million views there, mainly of pictures I made between 1975 and 1994. The images are at higher resolution than those on my various web sites.

121 Street Party, Railton Rd, Brixton. 10th April 1999 121 was a squatted self-managed anarchist social centre on Railton Road in Brixton from 1981 until 1999.

Since I moved to digital photography My London Diary has put much of my work online, though more recent work goes into Facebook albums (and much onto Alamy.) My London Diary remains online as a low resolution archive of my work.

Sikhs celebrate 300 Years of Khalsa – Southall. 11th April 1999

April 1999 was an interesting month and all the pictures in this post come from it. I’ve added some brief captions to the pictures.

No War on Iraq protest – Hyde Park, 17 April 1999 President Bill Clinton was threatening to attack Iraq to destroy its capability to produce nuclear weapons. Operation Desert Fox, a four day air attack, came in December 1999
Southall Remembers Blair Peach – Southall. 24th April 1999. Blair Peach, a teacher in East London was murdered by police while protesting a National Front meeting in Southall in 1979.

Stockley Park – one of a series of panoramic landscapes of developments in London – this is a major office park with some outstanding architecture

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Unite Against Racism

Tuesday, April 27th, 2021

Two years ago today, 27 April 2019, I joined with a large crowd in Southall remembering the murders there of Gurdip Singh Chaggar and Blair Peach, calling for unity against racism.

The march took place on the Saturday after St George’s Day, and marked the 40th anniversary of Blair Peach’s murder by police officers. Several thousand police had packed the town to defend the National Front who were holding a meeting at Southall Town Hall. A large group of the local community and supporters from across London had come to oppose the meeting, and and police rioted and attacked what had been a determined but largely peaceful protest. Wikipedia has a long and well referenced article on the murder from which many of the facts below are taken, though speeches at the 2019 protest also included some eye-witness accounts. Peach was a member of my own union at the time, the NUT, which also made me very aware of the events and was prominent in the fight to see justice.

Blair Peach was in a group of friends who tried to escape the violent police attacks on Southall Broadway and make their way home down a side street, but unfortunately this led nowhere and the police Special Patrol Group drove up in several vans and began attacking the crowd there, who responded with bricks and bottles. Witnesses, including residents on the street say the police were hitting everybody and fourteen saw a police officer hitting Peach on the head.

People obseve a minute of silence where Gurdip Singh Chaggar was killed

Forensic evidence found he had been hit with an illegal weapon, probably a lead-filled cosh or pipe, and searches of the lockers of the SPG unit involved found 26 illegal weapons. None of the witnesses were able to identify the police officer involved – perhaps because one officer had shaved off his moustache and another grew a beard and refused to take part in the identity parades. Many also had their uniforms dry-cleaned before the police investigation inspected them.

Although the police investigation had produced a great deal of evidence against the SPG, the DPP decided it was insufficient to justify a prosecution. The report was kept secret, though parts appeared in the press early in 1980, and the inquest was hampered as the legal team acting for the Peach family were not allowed access to it. The verdict of the inquest, ‘death by misadventure’ was widely considered – even by The Times – to have been inappropriate. The coroner afterwards wrote an article including his comments that some of the civilian witnesses had lied as they were “politically committed to the Socialist Workers Party” of which Peach was a member and that some Sikh witnesses “did not have experience of the English system” to enable them to give reliable evidence but was persuaded not to publish it.

At Ramgarhia Sabha Gurdwara


The fight to get justice over the murder continued, but none of the officers involved was ever brought to trial. Apparently all left the police force shortly after the investigaton. Peach’s family were awarded £75,000 compensation in a tacit admission of police guilt by the Metropolitan Police in 1988, but requests for a public inquiry were turned down by the Home Office. The SPG was disbanded in 1987, but replaced by a very similar Territorial Support Group. It was only following a member of the TSG killing newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson as he was walking home past the G20 protests at Bank in 2009 that the report of the police investigation into Blair Peach’s death was finally made public.

The 2019 march and rally in Southall convened close to where Gurdip Singh Chaggar, an 18 year old student, was murdered by racist skinheads in June 1976 as he left the Dominion Cinema and began, at the request of his family with a karate display. It paused for a minute of silence where his was killed before moving on to stop at the Ramgarhia Sabha Gurdwara which the Chaggar family attend, where prayers were said.

Flowers were handed out which were then laid at the street corner where Blair Peach was murdered before we moved on to a rally outside Southall Town Hall where the National Front held their meeting. Peach’s murder inspired the formation of both the anti-racist grassroots group The Monitoring Group, whose founder and director Suresh Grover introduced the event and of Southall Black Sisters, whose founder Pragna Patel who was one of the speakers, along with other community leaders and anti-racists.

Perhaps surprisingly absent was the local Labour MP, Virendra Sharma, who in 2019 lost a vote of no-cofidence by the local party apparently due to his low attendance at party meetings, slow responses to constituents and failure to campaign over local redevelopment issues. John McDonnell, Labour MP for a neighbouring constituency and then Shadow Chancellor was there from the start of the march and made a powerful speech.

More about the event and many more pictures: Southall rally for unity against racism

Gurdip Singh Chaggar & Blair Peach

Saturday, August 24th, 2019

This wasn’t the first time I’d been to Southall for a rally remembering the murder there of Blair Peach by the police Special Patrol Group in 1979, though I don’t remember if Gurdip Singh Chaggar’s murder was also remembered at those earlier events.

Blair Peach had come to the UK from New Zealand in 1969 and he was roughly my age. He was working as a teacher in the East End, and like me was an active member of the National Union of Teachers, though I didn’t come across him as I was working around 40 miles away and only involved at a local level.

I suspect we went to some of the same protests agains apartheid in South Africa and against racism, but I was not at the Anti-Nazi League demonstration in Southall on the day he was murdered, probably because although it was not far from where I was living, it was a week after Easter Monday and I was probably working and could not have arrived until it was due to finish.

The racist National Front had called a meeting in Southall Town Hall for 7.30pm, and because it was in the run-up to the forthcoming General Election on 3rd May in which the NF had a candidate (he got 1545 votes, 3.0% of the vote) Ealing Council were unable to refuse them the use of the hall, despite a petition from 10,000 local residents.

Several local groups as well as the Anti-Nazi League organised protests across the day, including the Indian Workers’ Association, outside whose offices Gurdip Singh Chaggar, coming home from the Dominion Cinema, had been set upon and murdered by skinheads in June 1976, and Peoples Unite, a largely Afro-Carribean group who along with others had been involved in disturbances which followed Chaggar’s murder.

Although there had been some reports of bricks and bottles being thrown, the real violence began when the police Special Patrol Group decided to raid a squat being used by People’s Unite as a first aid post. Two officers were reported as wounded and the SPG took out vengeance on all those in the house, and Clarence Baker was hit on the head by a police truncheon, fracturing his skull and putting him in a coma for five months.

Police had kept a cordon around the Town Hall, and escorted the fascists in. Once the meeting had begun they decided to clear the area, allowing protesters to move away westwards along Southall Broadway. Peach and a group of friends were leaving, going back to where they had parked, and turned off south down Beachcroft Road. Unfortunately for them, this road stops short, running into Orchard Rd and then going back towards the Broadway. As they approached Orchard Rd they were met by the SPG, who jumped out of their vans and were now rioting out of control and lashing out at everyone on the road. It’s unclear whether the baton wielded by the officer who killed Peach was standard police issue or as some report soemthing rather heavier. Conscious but in obvious difficulties he was taken into a nearby house and an ambulance called, but he died in hospital four hours later.

Today’s protest started close to where Gurdip Singh Chaggar was murdered and the march halted there for a minute’s silence before going on to stop outside the Gurdwara where he and his family worhsipped. Later it took Peach’s route from Broadway down Beechcroft Road and people laid flowers on the corner of Orchard Road where he received the fatal blow, before going on to a rally outside the Town Hall.

More about the protest at Southall rally for unity against racism.



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