Within a day of Peach's death, Commander John Cass of the Metropolitan Police's
Complaints Investigation Bureau began an investigation of the events and statements were taken from members of the SPG that day.
Sir David McNee, then the
Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, also undertook his own eight-day review of the demonstrations, although he did not include Peach's death as part of his analysis. The
inquest opened on 26 April 1979; John Burton, the
coroner for West London, oversaw the proceedings. On the opening day he allowed Peach's family to have a second
post-mortem examination undertaken by an independent
pathologist; the inquest was then adjourned for a month. It reconvened on 25 May 1979 and was again adjourned after Cass appeared as a witness and said that his investigation would take between two and three months more. By that time, he and his team had interviewed 400 people. Burton said that the inquiry would reconvene after
Sir Tony Hetherington, the
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), had been given the report. Despite statements by the police and the
incumbent government that the trouble at Southall was caused by outsiders to the area, only 2 of the 342 charged were non-residents of Southall. Instead of holding the trials locally, they were held away in
Barnet. Lalith de Kauwe, writing for
Bulletin—the publication of the
Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers—writes that while initially 90 per cent of the defendants were found guilty, this dropped to 70 per cent once the press began to publicise the matter. On 12 June 1979 Peach's body was laid out at the Dominion Cinema in Southall; 8,000 people filed past it. The following day he was buried at
East London Cemetery, where between 5,000 and 10,000 people were in attendance. Three days after the funeral, McNee defended the actions of the SPG and 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."
Cass investigation One member of SPG Unit 1-1 was questioned by Cass's team in early June 1979 after the forensic report stated that Peach was probably not killed by a police truncheon, but by a lead-filled cosh or pipe. A search of the unit's lockers found 26 weapons—including police truncheons—many of which were unauthorised, including coshes and knives, as well as sets of keys and a stolen driving licence. Cass's team raided the home of PC Grenville Bint, where weapons and Nazi memorabilia were found. Bint stated he collected the memorabilia as a hobby. During his investigation Cass held several identification parades, including for Officer F, Officer G and Officer I. These were identified by the barrister and historian
David Renton from the inquest as PCs Raymond White, James Scottow and Anthony Richardson, respectively. No witness managed to identify the man they saw hitting Peach. It later transpired that one officer present at the riots shaved off the moustache which he had that day, while Inspector Murray grew a beard and refused to take part in the identity parades. Many of the uniforms that the police wore that day had been dry-cleaned before they were inspected. Cass ran up against misleading stories from the members of Unit 1-1 and in his report he stated "The attitude and untruthfulness of some of the officers involved is a contributory factor." He continued "The action of these officers clearly obstructed the police officers carrying out their duty of investigating this serious matter." Cass decided that he had identified the individual whom he considered most likely to have hit Peach, but that there was "no evidence of a conclusive nature": The officers in that carrier after disembarking, who could have assaulted Clement Blair PEACH were Officer E, Officer H, Officer G, Officer I, Officer J and Officer F, and I give them in that order of possibility. Renton identified these officers as Murray, Bint, Scottow, Richardson, Freestone and White, respectively. Cass's report was accepted by the police as being accurate, and in his 1983 autobiography McNee wrote "when all the evidence was assembled it showed that Blair Peach had died from a blow to his skull. The evidence pointed to the fact that the blow had been struck by a police officer."
Coroner's inquest Cass finished the investigation in February 1980; 30 investigators had worked for 31,000 man-hours during his enquiries. He finished his initial report on 12 July 1979, which was sent to the DPP, who, while praising the work he had done, stated that "there was insufficient evidence to justify a prosecution". The inquest reopened a week later. Both Burton and the lawyers representing the Metropolitan Police were given copies of Cass's report, but refused to provide copies to the lawyers representing the Peach family or those representing the Anti-Nazi League. Burton used Cass's report to determine which witnesses to call and which to ignore.
Michael Dummett,
Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University, examining the case for the
National Council for Civil Liberties, observes that as only the coroner and police lawyers had copies of the report, "it was impossible for anyone ... [else] to obtain a complete picture of the evidence". The question of whether the family were allowed to view the reports was taken to a Divisional Court, who ruled that as the report was the property of the police, they had the right to withhold it. Legal counsel for the Peach family requested that the inquest be held in front of a jury, which Burton rejected; the inquest was again adjourned. The
High Court rejected a challenge to overturn Burton's decision, which then went to the
Court of Appeal where
Lord Denning stated that the inquest should reconvene in front of a jury. In early 1980 sections of the Cass report were published in
The Leveller (January 1980) and
The Sunday Times (March 1980). Details included in both publications were the names of Murray, White, Freestone, Richardson and Scottow. The latter publication indicated that the decision by the DPP not to prosecute the policemen "left the investigating officers in the invidious position of appearing party to a cover-up, should their report ever become public". In April 1980—the one-year anniversary of Peach's death—members of the group "Friends of Blair Peach Committee" picketed outside police stations holding posters that named the six members of SPG Unit 1-1 and the words "Wanted for the murder of Blair Peach". The inquest reconvened on 28 April 1980 and was expected to last several weeks. Both pathologists—
David Bowen for the coroner and
Keith Mant acting for the family—came to the same conclusions: that death was from a single blow, not a police truncheon, but a "rubber 'cosh' or hosepipe filled with lead shot, or some like weapon". Both stated that Peach had a thin skull, but not, as Mant observed, "pathologically thin". He described the action that caused the injury as "a very severe, single blow". The inquest closed on 27 May 1980 during which time 83 witnesses were called. A verdict of
death by misadventure was given. The
criminologists Phil Scraton and Paul Gordon consider that, given the conclusions of the Cass report,
unlawful killing would have been a more appropriate verdict. In its
leader the following day,
The Times said that "the Peach inquest failed to provide a clear and believable explanation of the events in question"; it also stated that Peach's death should continue to be investigated. The
National Council for Civil Liberties expressed concern at the way Burton conducted the inquest. The organisation felt uneasy with a theory that he put to the jury: that Peach was killed by "some political fanatic" in order to make him a martyr against the police. During the course of the inquest, Burton wrote to ministers to say that the question of whether Peach was killed by a police officer was a "political 'fabrication. He also wrote to the home secretary, lord chancellor and attorney general, claiming that there was a conspiracy to spread false information about Peach's death; he accused several media outlets, including the
BBC, of producing what he described as "biased propaganda". In 2010
The Daily Telegraph considered that Burton had shown a "lack of sympathy ... towards Mr Peach's death". After the inquest Burton wrote a seven-page article entitled "The Blair Peach Inquest – the Unpublished Story", which he wanted to publish in the
Coroners' Society annual report. In the article, he said that some civilian witnesses lied and were "totally politically committed to the Socialist Workers Party", and he thought that some of the Sikh witnesses "did not have experience of the English system" to give reliable evidence. He was persuaded not to publish the account by civil servants, who considered that the report would "discredit the impartiality of coroners in general and Dr Burton in particular". ==Subsequent events==