As tens of thousands return to the streets for the first national Palestine march of 2026, this movement refuses to be sidelined or silenced, says PETER LEARY
A void in all our lives – remembering Roger Sylvester and one family’s fight for justice
LOUISE RAW pays tribute to a ‘caring and thoughtful’ black council worker whose life was tragically cut short after he was restrained face down in the street by police outside his Tottenham home 20 years ago
ON Saturday 22 July last year, a police officer chased 20-year-old Rashan Charles into a shop in Hackney. Charles was allegedly acting suspiciously.
Grabbing Charles from behind, the officer threw him face down and jumped on him, holding him down. The dangers of face-down restraint are well known to police: it can cause positional asphyxia, and is supposed to be avoided.
By the time he was handcuffed, Charles was limp and unresponsive. He died there, on the tiled floor of a convenience store on Hackney’s Kingsland Road.
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The murder of an anti-racist protester in 1979 by a special unit of the Met Police was followed by a gruelling battle to win answers about what happened on that tragic day. Now material related to that campaign is available to the public and researchers for the first time at the Bishopsgate Institute. INDIANNA PURCELL reports



