A fine thing it would be if we could rely on paragons of virtue to administer just laws impartially at all times. But I reckon it's wiser to assume otherwise, as I and many others did after the killing of my good friend Blair Peach on St George's Day, 23 April 1979. At the time we were derided as paranoid extremists by public officials. The more time passes, however, the more the paranoid extremists seem to have been the public officials.Take the late Dr John Burton, the coroner who presided over the one feeble inquiry - the inquest - there has ever been into Blair's killing. I sat through most of the wretched thing. It was pretty clear to me that Dr Burton, a foolish and cadaverous old bat, had made up his own mind well before the inquest even started. Certainly, if Blair hadn't been an anti-fascist, and if he hadn't gone to Southall, West London, to resist the National Front, he would not have been killed there. But the fact that at least 10 eye-witnesses saw him struck by a police officer, and no-one saw him struck by anyone else, suggested to Dr John Burton not that Blair had been killed by a police officer, but that he, Dr John Burton, was the unfortunate victim of a plot.
A fine thing it would be if we could rely on paragons of virtue to administer just laws impartially at all times. But I reckon it's wiser to assume otherwise, as I and many others did after the killing of my good friend Blair Peach on St George's Day, 23 April 1979. At the time we were derided as paranoid extremists by public officials. The more time passes, however, the more the paranoid extremists seem to have been the public officials.
Take the late Dr John Burton, the coroner who presided over the one feeble inquiry - the inquest - there has ever been into Blair's killing. I sat through most of the wretched thing. It was pretty clear to me that Dr Burton, a foolish and cadaverous old bat, had made up his own mind well before the inquest even started.
Certainly, if Blair hadn't been an anti-fascist, and if he hadn't gone to Southall, West London, to resist the National Front, he would not have been killed there. But the fact that at least 10 eye-witnesses saw him struck by a police officer, and no-one saw him struck by anyone else, suggested to Dr John Burton not that Blair had been killed by a police officer, but that he, Dr John Burton, was the unfortunate victim of a plot.
There was never any chance that the police were going to be found in any way culpable, any more than any of the other bad things that have happened in the last 30 years. We have no Constitution, so the Executive aren't even breaking any laws with their exercise of power. They do what they like because they can, and grow ever more arrogant on such license.
The tories refer to the 60s as a liberal wasteland, when what they mean is that by and large the public were engaged enough to hold the ruling classes to account. Now we are distanced, disengaged and they can go back to the ruthless and unchecked control they prefer. keep to the Fen Causeway
