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Kelso Cochrane: Police should release files on unsolved racist murder [1]

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Date: 2023-08

Cochrane’s cousin in London, Millicent Christian, supported by his daughters Josephine and Karen in New York, submitted a vast body of evidence to the National Archives requesting immediate access to the files. She is being represented by the renowned civil liberties lawyer Daniel Machover, who says there is a “profound public interest” in opening the files.

Unanswered questions

I investigated Cochrane’s murder over four years, first for a BBC documentary, then for a book. Three things were clear.

First, Cochrane’s murder – coming just eight months after some of the worst racial rioting of the last century occurred in the same district, and at a time when the death penalty was still on the statutes – sparked intense political debate at the highest level. The few documents on the case which are publicly available show that Special Branch were spying on the activists pushing for justice for Cochrane, including Claudia Jones, who founded the forerunner to the Notting Hill carnival.

Second, the police investigation was tainted by failings. For example, one of the two suspects who the police placed near the scene of the crime at the relevant time, told me many years later that he was put in an adjacent cell to the other main suspect. This enabled them to straighten out the contradictory statements they’d given to the police earlier.

Third, the identity of the man who stabbed Cochrane was widely known; “the worst kept secret in Notting Hill” in fact. Three people with direct knowledge of the crime alleged that Cochrane’s killer was Patrick Digby, a local man who spent time in the merchant navy, and who died in 2007.

One of the last surviving police officers on the inquiry, who has since died, told me that the failure to charge anyone for the murder lay in the gap between the police knowing who did it, and having evidence strong enough to stand up in court to prove it.

Opening the files might show if this was true, and answer countless other questions, including whether racism marred the investigation.

Rebuffed

The arguments for keeping the files closed have been rehearsed for many years, with the archives, apparently at the behest of the Met Police, rebuffing multiple Freedom of Information requests, including my own.

A central plank of their case is that releasing the files “may prejudice a future investigation and prosecution”, particularly in light of recent advances in forensic science.

This doesn’t stack up. No forensic opportunities exist, since the Met destroyed Cochrane’s clothes (“with the proper authority”, they say) in 1968. And in 2003 the police said that there was no realistic prospect of any conviction in the case, after Cochrane’s brother Stanley got them to re-open the investigation. Furthermore, Digby, along with the other main suspect in the case, as well as many others questioned about the attack, are now dead.

One reason that Cochrane’s murder case files have been closed until 2054, is because of the general guidance that such files should only be opened up to 100 years after the youngest person named in them was born. In this case, it is Josephine Cochrane, who was six at the time of her father’s murder – and who’s now among the family members calling for them to be opened.

Another plank in the argument for keeping the files closed, is to protect the identities of third parties named in them – including informants who gave evidence in confidence.

In 2015, the Met and the Home Office showed how far they might be prepared to go in defending this, when they successfully resisted a legal challenge by an Irish historian who was trying to get files opened which named Irish informants between 1880 and 1910. He was refused on grounds that doing so could imperil their descendants.

The trend appears towards greater secrecy, with some files, such as that concerning the murder of 12-year-old Welsh schoolgirl Muriel Drinkwater in 1946, being closed after previously being opened to the public.

For Cochrane’s family though, opening these files is not simply about increasing public understanding of an historic racist murder. It’s about providing answers about an injustice that has endured for more than 60 years.

“What have they got to hide?” says Millicent Christian.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/kelso-cochrane-racist-murder-1959-police-family-legal-action/

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