POLICE “planned to clamp down on protesters” at an infamous demonstration in Southall in 1979, when riot officers’ violence led to the death of campaigner Blair Peach, an inquiry heard today.

Peach, a teacher and anti-racism activist, was killed by a blow to the head at the protest, which was held to prevent the National Front holding a march in one of London’s most racially diverse areas. 

A 1979 Metropolitan Police internal investigation concluded he was “almost certainly” killed by a police officer. However, the force sat on this report for the next 30 years, while Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs campaigned to uncover the truth. 

Hundreds of anti-fascist protesters were also injured at Southall when riot police charged into crowds. 

Many elements of the police’s operation at Southall still remain shrouded in secrecy 40 years on, with a Special Branch report on the demo having gone “missing.” 

However, new details of the police’s approach to the event were revealed this week at the Undercover Policing inquiry.

The details came from an undercover officer, present at the Southall demo and later sent to spy on Ms Stubbs’s campaign for justice. 

He told a closed hearing of the inquiry that his managers did not want him to attend the demo because uniformed officers were planning to “clamp down on demonstrators” and dangers were “more than normal.”

Sam Jacobs, representing Ms Stubbs, told the inquiry: “That offers a glimpse into the information likely within the [missing] report that may have been profoundly important in exposing the approach of the police to the rally, and the violence which resulted in the death of Blair Peach.

“It reinforces the belief of Celia Stubbs that the reasonable inference from such reports going missing is that they were considered damaging to the police and have been deliberately destroyed.”

Rajiv Menon QC, representing veteran anti-war activist Tariq Ali who was beaten by police in Southall, told the inquiry that the officer’s evidence suggests uniformed officers may have been “under secret orders to use violence against anti-fascist demonstrators.” 

The officer, referred to as HN41, was among dozens of officers who served in the Special Demonstration Squad, a secret Met unit that infiltrated protest groups and is under investigation by the ongoing inquiry. 

Mr Menon added that it was “fundamentally wrong and unfair” that police officers were permitted to give evidence in closed hearings excluding the public, campaigners, and their lawyers.

“On any sensible view, closed hearings should have no place in a public inquiry into secret, political policing — particularly when the evidence concerns events that took place 40 or more years ago.”