The National Emergency Briefing outlines the need for urgent action to address environmental crisis, says PAUL DONOVAN, warning that there’s no time to indulge the arguments of the fossil-fuel-funded climate-change deniers
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A window into the campaign for justice for Blair Peach
The murder of an anti-racist protester in 1979 by a special unit of the Met Police was followed by a gruelling battle to win answers about what happened on that tragic day. Now material related to that campaign is available to the public and researchers for the first time at the Bishopsgate Institute. INDIANNA PURCELL reports
INTO THE ARCHIVES: (Left) an newspaper clipping about Peach from the East London Advertiser
Campaigners say criticism of Labour MP Stephen Morgan’s position on Gaza has been met with police intervention and cancelled opportunities for debate. HESTER WOLFE reports
The Committee for the Defence of Iranian People’s Rights warns of escalation danger in Iran war
Claudia Webbe pays tribute tribute to KANYA KING CBE, February 12 1964 to June 3 2026
The Milburn review presents itself as a plan to help young people into work, but Dr DYLAN MURPHY argues it is laying the groundwork for a harsher benefits regime
Campaigners from across the continent will gather in Brussels on June 14 to oppose Europe’s accelerating militarisation and cuts to public services, write MAGGIE SIMPSON and BOB ORAM of No Cold War Britain
THIS YEAR, March 25 would’ve been Blair Peach’s 79th birthday. Except on April 24 1979 he was killed by a police officer with what was then called the Special Patrol Group (SPG) in south London’s Southall after returning from an anti-racist demonstration.
Peach’s story is unfortunately not an isolated one — he wasn’t the first young anti-racist demonstrator killed “for a simple gesture of solidarity,” as one Southall resident put it, and he is by no means the last.
But Peach’s story is a remarkable one, because it is one that has left such an extraordinary legacy, one which finally opened up conversations about police brutality — especially within the excessively violent SPG — and the lack of accountability from a police force when their officers abused their power.
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