Blair Peach case LICENSE TO KIL
Socialist Press1979 1979-10-10Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
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After three one-day strikes followed by five two-day strikes together with an overtime ban, the engineering workers have won a breakthrough on hours of great importance.
In the middle of last week the engineering employers offered a 39 hour week in November 1981 and an extra ESS If the labour movement does not act against the cover-up of the police murder of Blair Peach in Southall last April, no demonstrators will ever be safe again.
The decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions to do nothing and prosecute nobody atter Peach was clubbed to death in a Special Patrol Group charge, gives any and every police thug effective license to kill with impunity.
Whitewash
The DPP, on behalf of the Tory government, gladly accepted a whitewash report on the killing by Commander John Cass, head of the police's own Complaints Investigation Bureau.
This decision has been attacked by a wide range of bodies including the National Council for Civil Liberties.
In a hypocritical display, the Labour Party NEC also: deplored the DPP decisionwork from threatened factor ies. forgetting that it was Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees who supervised and later defended the murderous truncheon attack by the SPG.
While Peach's killers walk off scott free, Barnet magistrates continue to demonstrate the real meaning of class justice maintaining their staggering 85% conviction rate as the 342 people arrested in the Southall events come up for "trial"
Defence evidence is being brushed aside with total abandon as savage sentences are meted out to youth and workers who in many cases have already endured beatings at the hands of the police in the course of their arrest.
The fight for a labour movement inquiry into the Southall events must be stepped up.
But solidarity with the 342 defendants is also vital. Union branches and Labour Parties should each adopt a defendant and raise money to pay fines and costs.
The Defence Campaign can be contacted c/o PO Box 151, London WC2. charge huge interest rates.
if the industry cannot defend workers' jobs then this proves the whole motor industry should be nationalised with-