Blair Peach died on 24 April 1979 after an anti-racism demonstration in
Southall, London, England. Peach, a New Zealand teacher and activist
born in 1946, had taken part in an Anti-Nazi League demonstration
against a National Front election meeting in Southall Town Hall. An
investigation by Commander John Cass of the Metropolitan Police Service
concluded that Peach had been fatally hit on the head by an officer of
the service's Special Patrol Group, and that other officers had
obstructed the investigation. Excerpts from a leaked copy of the report
were published in early 1980. In 1988 the Metropolitan Police paid
£75,000 compensation to Peach's family. The full report was not
released to the public until 2009, after a newspaper vendor died from
being struck from behind by a member of the Territorial Support Group,
the Special Patrol Group's successor organisation. An award in Peach's
honour was set up by the National Union of Teachers, and a school in
Southall is named after him.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Blair_Peach>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1916:
Irish republicans led by Patrick Pearse began the Easter Rising
against British rule in Ireland, and proclaimed the Irish Republic an
independent state.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising>
1990:
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard STS-31 by Space
Shuttle Discovery.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope>
1993:
The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a truck bomb in
London's financial district in Bishopsgate, killing one person, injuring
forty-four others, and causing damage that cost £350 million to repair.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Bishopsgate_bombing>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
slings and arrows:
1. Hardships or adverse circumstances.
2. Harsh criticism or personal attacks.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slings_and_arrows>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Poetry is more than fantasy and is committed to the obligation of
trying to say something, however obliquely, about the human condition.
Therefore, a poem dealing with history is no more at liberty to violate
what the writer takes to be the spirit of his history than it is at
liberty to violate what he takes to be the nature of the human heart.
What he takes those things to be is, of course, his ultimate gamble.
--Robert Penn Warren
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Penn_Warren>
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