Ten thousand people crowded into the East End cemetery on a warm June morning to see his pine coffin lowered into the ground, 30 years ago today.
Blair Peach had been dead for 51 days. By the time the Metropolitan police released the body for burial the anger about what happened to him had spread across the world.
A 33-year-old teacher from New Zealand, he had almost certainly been killed by a police officer, his skull crushed with an unauthorised weapon as he tried to walk home from an anti-fascist demonstration.
The death had transformed Peach, an activist in the Anti-Nazi League, into a political martyr. "I wanted privacy, but in the end I was glad it had become a public event," said Celia Stubbs, his partner of 10 years. Now 68 and living in Brighton, her recollections of that day still bring tears.
Today, coinciding with the anniversary of the funeral, Stubbs will launch a campaign to release a secret police document produced by the Met commander who investigated Peach's death. She is sure it holds the answer to the 30-year mystery surrounding events on a surburban street in Southall, west London, on the evening of 23 April 1979.
John Cass, who retired to live in Wales 20 years ago, has told the Guardian he is not opposed to his findings being made public. Disclosure of the document would finally reveal the names of the officers he considered suspects.
The Peach case was a seminal moment and, like the deaths decades later of Stephen Lawrence and Jean Charles de Menezes, triggered a crisis in policing.
However, it was the death at the G20 protests in April of Ian Tomlinson, the only person since Peach to have died at a demonstration after being attacked by police, that compelled Stubbs to agree to a campaign run by Inquest, the group that advises families of people who die in police custody.
Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper vendor, died of internal bleeding after being hit and shoved to the ground by an officer who has been questioned under caution for manslaughter. He was cremated at the same cemetery where Peach was buried.
"When I saw that footage [of the Tomlinson attack], I instantly drew comparisons," said Stubbs, a former social worker. "Then I thought: aren't police supposed to have changed? It was like history repeating itself. But in 30 years technology has changed everything. Suddenly there it was, on film. That would have changed everything in Blair Peach's case. The parallels with Tomlinson make a public interest case for releasing the report."
The night he died
Peach had been attending a demonstration against the far-right National Front, which had staged a controversial meeting in the heart of Southall's Sikh community, the night he died. Like Tomlinson, he was trying to get home when clashes broke out between police and protesters. Stubbs also attended the protest, but amid the mayhem they never made contact.
Peach was alone after being separated from his friends at the moment he is thought to have been attacked by a member of Special Patrol Group (SPG), whose officers had spilled out on to the streets from parked vans. Eleven witnesses said they saw Peach hit by at least one officer, and gave consistent accounts of the attacks.
"There were two policemen, one with a shield, one without," one resident, Parminder Atwal, told the inquest. He watched in horror as lines of police chased demonstrators down his street and into his back garden. "As they ran after people, Blair fell; I think he was pushed with the shield, as he was overbalancing the other hit him on the head."
Police left a clearly disorientated Peach on the pavement, and it was left to Atwal and other residents to get him to his feet and offer him water. "He couldn't hold the glass," Atwal said. "His eyes were rolled up and his tongue stuck up. He couldn't speak. He was deteriorating by the minute."
By the time Stubbs arrived at Ealing general hospital, around midnight, Peach was dead. Devastated and in shock, Stubbs was taken to a police station, where she was interrogated. "I was in such a dazed state and the police were really bullying," she said. "I felt they were on the offensive, treating me like a suspect. What was Blair's politics? Why was I at the protest? At the back of my mind I already knew they had killed him."
Peach's death sparked an outcry, and national outpouring of grief. Thousands marched past the spot where he died. The night before his funeral 8,000 Sikhs attended his open coffin that lay in state at the Dominion Theatre.
The Met's then commissioner, Sir David McNee, was steadfast in the defence of his officers. At a press conference the day after Peach's funeral, McNee told a black reporter: "I understand the concern of your people. But if you keep off the streets of London and behave yourselves you won't have the SPG to worry about." Stubbs said the failure of the Met's current commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, to acknowledge problems with the Territorial Support Group – the successor to the SPG, now under investigation over Tomlinson's death – is one of a number of disturbing parallels.
Peach and Tomlinson died after being confronted by police forming cordons, or "kettles", before nightfall. In both cases, police were suspected of leaving their victims on the floor.
"Public concerns about police tactics at the G20 demonstration reflect the concerns we had after the Southall demonstration when Blair was killed," said Stubbs. "I hope that lessons have been learnt from Blair's death and that the Tomlinson family do not come up against the blank wall that we did. There must not be a cover-up this time."
Now, as then, the Met stands accused of misleading the public over the actions of its officers. As well as the criminal inquiry into Tomlinson's death, the Independent Police Complaints Commission recently announced a separate investigation into whether police withheld crucial suspicions surrounding his death from the public.
"We've been requesting the report for 30 years," she said. "Perhaps now is the time to help a democratic debate about police powers."
In 1979 the investigation was left to Commander Cass, who said his team of 30 investigators exhausted 30,000 man hours on the Peach case. A pathologist report into Peach's death said his broken skull was not likely to have been caused by a truncheon. Instead, he indicated he had been struck with a lead weighted rubber cosh or hosepipe filled with lead shot.
When Cass raided lockers at the SPG headquarters he uncovered a stash of unauthorised weapons, including illegal truncheons, knives, two crowbars, a whip, a 3ft wooden stave and a lead-weighted leather stick. One officer was caught trying to hide a metal cosh, although it was not the weapon that killed Peach. Another officer was found with a collection of Nazi regalia.
Months later details of Cass's key findings were leaked. He was reported to have identified a team of six SPG officers, at least one of whom he believed must have struck the fatal blow. Recommending charges against the officers, his report was also said to include details of how officers lied to his investigators to cover up the attack.
However, no charges were ever brought, and the following year the coroner at Peach's inquest controversially suppressed the Cass report. The coroner relied heavily on Cass's findings to call and cross-examine police officers, but refused to allow Peach's family lawyers access to the details.
"Our counsel were incredibly hampered because they didn't have the report," said Stubbs. "That contained all the police statements – all the important inside information. So our counsel were cross-examining the police witnesses blind."
The coroner was criticised for inappropriately guiding the jury, discouraging them from being critical of the police. They returned a verdict of misadventure.
For Stubbs the outcome of the inquest was the ultimate betrayal. "Blair's inquest amounted to a posthumous sentence of death upon a man who was on his way home from a demonstration against the National Front and found himself in a trap," she said. "Police chose to go berserk."
Settlement
Months after the inquest an independent committee of lawyers and academics on the National Council of Civil Liberties delivered its own conclusions on the available evidence. It said: "The inescapable conclusion which follows from the medical and the eyewitness evidence is that Blair Peach was killed by a single blow deliberately inflicted by a member of Unit 1 or Unit 3 of the SPG."
However, the closest the Met came ever to admitting its involvement in Peach's killing was in 1989, when the force paid £75,000 to his family in an out-of-court settlement. Around the same time, lawyers were permitted to view SPG officers' notebooks, which have since gone missing.
Last year the Met refused a request from a member of the public under the Freedom of Information Act for the Cass report, claiming that releasing it could jeopardise future prosecutions and "cause distress" to Peach's family. Neither Stubbs nor Peach's two surviving brothers, however, were asked their opinion.
"They must know we've been after that report for years and we are not seeking prosecution of officers – just the truth," said Peach's brother Philip, 67. "I was led to believe the Cass report was quite fair and robust, so surely now is the time for it to be made public."
Support for Peach's family seems to be mounting. Last month a Home Office minister told Stubbs the government had "sympathy" with her campaign, but the decision remained with the Met.
On Thursday parliament's joint committee on human rights added its weight in calling for full disclosure of the report, arguing that it would assist its inquiry into policing tactics at the G20 demonstration.
"If Peach's family are willing to see it published, that should be paramount," said Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon, the committee's chair. "In our view, our understanding of the background to the policing of protest in London would be assisted if we were able to study this report."
Thirty years on, the six officers said to have been named in the Cass report as possible suspects are unlikely to want details of the investigation unearthed. If they are still with the Met those officers will be nearing retirement and, very possibly, senior ranking officers. There were no responses to attempts by the Guardian to contact them this week.
However, contacted by telephone, former commander Cass, now 84, said he was not opposed to his report being made public, and acknowledged Peach's relatives had been "thinking about this for a lifetime".
"A lot of time has gone by," he said. "But if it was released now I've got no qualms about it."
He added that he had "no animosity" toward the late Sir Thomas Hetherington, who as Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to press charges against SPG officers.
"I suppose I am sitting on the fence. You know, I've still got my loyalties to the Metropolitan police."