The Qureshi Report

This weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the murder of Kelso Cochrane. Two commemorative events were held, an unofficial one at Kelso’s graveside in Kensal Green Cemetery and the other official one at the place where he was attacked, off Golborne Road.

On such a sober occasion, lessons of the past can enlighten the present and the future by comparing the events and context of 1958-59 with the present day, and by noting the struggle against racism since then and what it says to us about resisting racism now.

Kelso Cochrane was born in Antigua in 1927 and migrated to London in 1954, settling in Notting Hill. On 17 May 1959, while walking home from Paddington General Hospital where he had received treatment after a work accident, he was attacked by a group of white youths and stabbed to death. More than 1,200 people attended Kelso’s funeral.

Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement was active in Notting Hill at that time, and Colin Jordan’s White Defence League had its headquarters in Princedale Road. The previous year, a series of violent attacks on black people had culminated in the Notting Hill “race riots” in which white mobs of up to 400 people attacked the houses of West Indian residents.

In 1961 a local Mosleyite named Peter Dawson told the Sunday People that a Union Movement member was responsible for killing Kelso. However, the police denied that the attackers were motivated by racism and nobody has ever been charged with the murder.

Looking back on the terrible events of 1958-59 – the Notting Hill riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane – we are able to see how far we have come since then. Today, the sight of 400-strong mobs of white racists rampaging through North Kensington or indeed any multi-ethnic area of inner London, attacking the homes of minority communities, seems inconceivable.

Of course, racism and fascism remain a threat – the election of a fascist to the London Assembly last May bears witness to that. But the BNP’s support is mainly restricted to a few areas of outer London. In inner London, people are at ease with multiculturalism and diversity, and the far right are marginalised. In the West Central GLA constituency which includes Notting Hill, the BNP got a paltry 2.4% of the vote in last year’s Assembly elections.

This situation is a tribute to the activists who have fought racism and fascism during the half a century since Kelso’s death.

It was the whipping up of an atmosphere of violent racism by Mosley’s Union Movement and Jordan’s White Defence League that led directly to Kelso’s murder. Due to the subsequent campaigning by anti-racists, in 1965 the Race Relations Act criminalised incitement to racial hatred, so that racists and fascists are no longer free to behave like that today.

And the struggle against racism was conducted on a cultural level too. The 1958 riots and Kelso’s murder produced the train of events that led to the launch of the Notting Hill Carnival – a celebration of Caribbean culture that brings together hundreds of thousands of Londoners from all of our city’s diverse communities.

It is not accidental that since his election last year the BNP’s London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook has repeatedly used Mayor’s Question Time to attack the Notting Hill Carnival and call for its suspension.

In that context, I think it is a disgrace, and an act of appalling political irresponsibility, that the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has cancelled Rise, the biggest anti-racist festival in Europe. I am pleased to report that at the next meeting of the London Assembly my colleague Jennette Arnold will be presenting a mass petition calling on Boris to reinstate Rise.

Unless there is a continuous struggle against racism and fascism they will return again. The best way that we can commemorate the death of Kelso Cochrane is to continue that struggle today.

And we also need to get justice for Kelso’s family, who have to live with the thought that his killers may still be walking the streets. At the official unveiling of the plaque on Sunday the family made a plea for the individuals who committed the crime to be found and prosecuted – not because they are looking for revenge but simply because they want justice.

It is rare that l find myself in agreement with my fellow London Assembly Member, Brian Coleman. However, on the general approach to hate preachers from abroad peddling their vile views on UK soil, we find common ground. In my case I supported a ban on Geert Wilders, the far-right racist from Holland, while Brian Coleman backed the exclusion of the homophobic US pastor Fred Phelps. Moreover, both of us congratulated the home secretary on her decision to prevent these individuals from entering the country.

Freedom of expression is not absolute. We are rightly governed by laws and conventions when we speak. As the mayor has recently learnt when abusing an MP on the phone, the public don’t like us using foul language. And we are not free to slander anyone as we please, since they can have legal recourse. So it is right and proper that incitement to hatred, and by those from abroad in particular, is treated as unacceptable in our society.

Having leafleted against the British National Party with Unite Against Fascism during the recent by-election campaign in Hampstead Town, I was pleased to see that the BNP candidate received a derisory 29 votes, a mere 1% of the poll. You might have thought that after this humiliation the BNP would have got the message that they are not welcome in north London, yet they are contesting the Kentish Town by-election on October 30 in another attempt to gain a foothold there.

Since the election of Richard Barnbrook last May we have had direct experience of the BNP on the London Assembly. It would be easy to dismiss Barnbrook as a joke figure, and his rambling, incoherent contributions at Mayor’s Question Time have certainly reduced him to an object of ridicule. However, London Assembly members have also witnessed the poisonous, divisive politics of the BNP at first hand.

In a recent intervention, for example, Barnbrook called for the abolition of the Notting Hill Carnival, one of the most popular annual events in London, which attracted an estimated 2.5 million people this year from across our city’s diverse communities. But what else can you expect from a party whose constitution states that it is “wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples”?

In recent years the BNP has tried to hide its fascist politics from voters and fool them into thinking it is now a more moderate, mainstream party. The skinhead bootboys have been kept out of public view, to be replaced by “respectable” figures in suits. However, the adoption of a more voter-friendly image hasn’t changed the BNP’s fundamental character. In terms of its leadership, core membership, political ideology and ultimate objectives, the BNP remains the racist, fascist organisation it has always been.

One of the leaflets the BNP has been distributing in north London illustrates this point. It features a photograph of a wholesome-looking white family accompanied by the slogan “People like you voting BNP”. The smiling couple in the picture are unlikely to be voting in the Kentish Town by-election as they live in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. But if they were on the electoral register in London NW5 they would undoubtedly give their support to the BNP, because they are two of the party’s longstanding activists – Nick and Suzy Cass.

Both of the Casses appeared earlier this year in the television documentary BNP Wives. In one revealing scene Suzy Cass argued that in order to restore racial purity white people should have more children, while a “birth limit” should be imposed on non-white families. How the latter policy was to be implemented – forcible sterilisation? infanticide? – she didn’t say.

In another scene Nick Cass proudly revealed a “tree of life” tattoo prominently displayed on his right arm. The anti-fascist magazine Searchlight commented:

“This symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide, several of which have adopted it as their logo. Under Hitler it was the symbol of the SS Lebensborn project, which encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with ‘Aryan’ mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans. To white supremacists today the tree of life signifies the future of the ‘white race’. “

Nothing could better demonstrate the BNP’s cynical political methods than this fraudulent attempt to pass off two of its own hardline members as a normal family who just happen to vote BNP.

Resistance to the BNP transcends party politics. Supporters of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party and the Greens, whatever our other political differences, are at one in rejecting the racist ideology of the far right. It is crucial that this anti-fascist majority turns out to vote in Kentish Town on October 30, in order to ensure that the BNP once again receives a percentage of the vote that accurately represents their minuscule support in Camden.

The infliction of another humiliating defeat on the BNP will hopefully discourage them from making any further attempts to import their vile politics into the borough.