[Bedhead]

XXII - Blair Peach

London has always needed immigrants, ever since it was founded by immigrants – for trade, for cheap labour, for expert labour, and for many centuries simply to sustain the city’s population. However, this has not always been readily accepted by the English: as early as 1185 one chronicler wrote: ‘All sorts of men crowd there from every country under the heavens. Each brings its own vices and its own customs to the city.’

In the 1970s and 1980s, race relations reached one of the lowest points in London’s history. In April 1979, during a general election campaign, the far-right National Front held a meeting in the centre of Southall, which then - as now - was home to a large Sikh community.

The meeting was marked by violent anti-fascist demonstrations in which Blair Peach, a teacher from the East End of London, was killed. A coroner’s inquest recorded a verdict of death by misadventure, but an internal police report written in 1979 and released in 2010 said, ‘it can reasonably be concluded that a police officer struck the fatal blow’. It went on to say that there was not enough evidence to charge anyone, partly because of ‘the attitude and untruthfulness of some of the officers involved’.

Before his funeral, 8,000 Sikhs visited Blair Peach’s open coffin, which lay in state in a local cinema; 10,000 people attended his funeral in the East End.

Today, a primary school near where Blair Peach died bears his name. An even better memorial to him is the wider neighbourhood, which exhibits all the characteristics of a safe, healthy multicultural town. Shops sell row upon row of colourful clothing, which help to brighten up a dowdy mixture of fading Victorian brick and 1960s concrete.

London’s complicated relationship with immigration remains, however. Nowadays, established Punjabi Sikhs in Southall discuss how their neighbourhood is changing with a new influx of refugees from Somalia and Afghanistan. Some now see the troubled times of the '80s as a golden age. As one poster on a local forum puts it:

'Even in 1997, Southall had undergone serious changes and, sadly, was far removed from the positive and joyful 1980s Punjabis' Southall which I remember in minute detail. Those days were great. These days are more ... suspicious, it seems to me. And Southall has less of that auspicious glow I remember it had, when EVERYONE got together.. Even the energy in the air seemed to change - it became superficial, loud and self-conscious and not rootsman. I don't understand how this pseudo-"bhangra" and Bollywood rubbish became so influential around the mid-90s.'