Murder of Kelso Cochrane


Kelso Cochrane was an Antiguan expatriate to Britain whose unsolved murder led to racial tensions in London.

Life

Cochrane was born in Antigua and after a failed marriage in the United States in 1954 had moved to London, where he settled in Notting Hill and worked as a carpenter. He aimed to save sufficient money to study law.

Death

After fracturing his thumb in a work accident, he attended Paddington General Hospital. While walking home, shortly after midnight on 17 May 1959, the 32-year-old Cochrane was set upon by a gang of white youths, who stabbed him with a stiletto knife. Three other men arrived on the scene, and the youths ran off. The three men took Cochrane to hospital, where he died an hour later.
His funeral procession on 6 June 1959, from St Michael and All Angels Church along Ladbroke Grove to Kensal Green Cemetery, was attended by more than 1,200 people.

Context

Notting Hill was at the time a stronghold for Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and Colin Jordan's White Defence League. The previous year, race riots had broken out in the area. The detective investigating the cases was initially convinced that the youths' motive was robbery, but Cochrane's lack of money was explained by his fiancée, as Cochrane himself had emptied his wallet that morning. Searchlight magazine claimed in 2006 that the police's public denial of any racist motive "was almost certainly a misguided attempt to ensure calm in the area".
Local Union Movement member Peter Dawson later claimed to the Sunday People that it had been a group member who was responsible for the murder. Mosley himself later held a public meeting on the spot where Cochrane had been murdered. Following the murder, the British Government organised an investigation into race relations, chaired by Amy Ashwood Garvey.

Aftermath

From 1959, activist Claudia Jones organised events to celebrate Caribbean culture "in the face of the hate from the white racists", which are seen as forerunners of the first Notting Hill Carnival in 1964.
A BBC Two television documentary broadcast on 8 April 2006 covered the first visit by Stanley Cochrane to England that year to try to find out more about his brother's death and ask for a police re-investigation. Steve Silver, who was in contact with the BBC researchers and wrote an article in Searchlight coinciding with the programme, later reported that he had been heard from Kelso Cochrane's daughter in the US and was able to put her in touch with her uncle.
Cochrane's murder is believed to have led to a decline in support for Oswald Mosley, who was planning a return to politics in the UK. Mosley polled under 3,000 votes in Kensington North in the general election in October.

Legacy

On Sunday, 17 May 2009, to mark the 50th anniversary of Cochrane's death, a blue plaque was unveiled at the Golborne Bar & Restaurant, now "West Thirty Six", just opposite the place where he was attacked.