Secret Met police inquiry into death of Blair Peach revealed

Family of teacher killed at protest unaware of review

Scotland Yard commander reopened file 10 years ago

Scotland Yard secretly reopened an inquiry into the death of Blair Peach two decades after its officers were widely believed to have killed the anti-fascist campaigner in one of the darkest incidents in the Metropolitan police force's history.

Relatives of Peach, the 33-year-old teacher from New Zealand whose skull was crushed at a demonstration against the far right in Southall in 1979, said tonight they had no idea the file into his death was "reviewed" in the late 1990s.

No officers were ever charged in connection with the death, although Commander John Cass, who investigated the case as the head of the Met's complaints bureau, was believed to have produced a report that identified several officers as possible suspects in the killing and accused others of thwarting his inquiries.

The Met has said it will release the Cass report before the end of the year, bringing to an end a 30-year-old mystery. However, the Guardian has established that a second Met commander in charge of the force's complaints bureau, Ian Quinn, reopened the Peach file around 10 years ago for a "review". As a result, he too produced a report on the death in 1999.

In a statement tonight, the Met confirmed that Quinn "carried out a review in 1999 of the case relating to the death of Blair Peach. A report was written following the review," it said, adding that the decision to reopen the file was taken "following correspondence with various parties, including those representing the family of Blair Peach, around the 20th anniversary of his death".

However, the existence of Quinn's report has shocked family and friends of Peach, who have campaigned for more than three decades for full disclosure of all documents relating to his death, and dispute the suggestion that they knew about the review. "I would certainly have expected to have been told that there was a review of the case," said Peach's brother, Philip. "But I was not. It's quite bizarre. The Met have kept this completely secret."

Peach's partner of 10 years, Celia Stubbs, said she too was shocked to learn that the Met had quietly revisited the case at the end of the 1990s.

"The question is, why?" she said. "The fact that a commander believed it necessary to look again at Blair's death begs the question, was there more evidence that we did not know about? This means a new layer of confusion and adds to the case for full and open disclosure of everything kept by the Met on Blair's death."

The death of Peach on 23 April 1979 came when Metropolitan police officers were accused of lashing out at protesters opposed to attempts by the National Front to hold a meeting at the heart of the largely Sikh community in Southall, west London.

Forensic pathologists said Peach's head injuries were unlikely to have been caused by a baton, but rather appeared to have been the result of a blow from an unauthorised weapon such as a lead-weighted rubber cosh, a hosepipe filled with lead shot, or possibly a police radio.

In the months after his death the spotlight fell on the Special Patrol Group (SPG), an elite group of officers trained to deal with riots. When Cass raided SPG headquarters, he uncovered a stash of weapons including a metal cosh – but not the weapon that killed Peach.

In June this year an investigation by the Guardian established disturbing parallels between the death of Peach and that of Ian Tomlinson, who died at the G20 protests in April, almost exactly 30 years later. Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper vendor, died shortly after being attacked by an officer from the Territorial Support Group (TSG), the successor unit to the SPG.

Cass, now 84, was traced to his home in Wales, where he said he was not opposed to disclosure of the document. The Peach case was brought up at the Metropolitan Police Authority, the force's watchdog, where the commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, said he would seek legal advice to establish how the report could be released before the end of this year. continues here

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