(the yellow and red contrast on the cover didn’t scan at all well, so here is a photo)
Update January 2020: you can now view this issue (and others) as a complete PDF at the Sparrows Nest Archive.
Who Killed Aseta Simms?
Readers of the Gutter Press No. 2 will have seen the article on Stephen McCarthy who died at the hands of the Upper Street Police in Islington. They may not be aware that there are also a number of murderers in blue uniforms wandering freely round the streets of Hackney.
On 13th May 1971 a black woman, Mrs Aseta Simms of 47 Brighton Road, Stoke Newington was taken to Stoke Newington police station. She never came out alive.
This is what her cousin Faye remembers of the incident:
“I was with Aseta most of the day and till the time she left me she was perfectly healthy and normal. Mrs Simms was the landlady of Brighton Road and I went with her to a rent tribunal in Archway in the afternoon. She had been taken to the tribunal by Mrs Archer, the tenant upstairs – they never had very good relations.
“After that we went to my home. We didn’t have anything to drink but when Aseta left about 9:00pm she took with her a bottle of whiskey three quarters full which she’d bought the previous day. She went home to look after her kids..
“The next thing I heard about my cousin was about 2 o’clock in the morning when two policemen knocked on my door. They asked me a lot of questions about Aseta – how many kids? Who was looking after them? Where was her husband? But they wouldn’t tell me why they were asking. They said I had to come to the police station. They told me she was dead. The sergeant said they’d found her lying on the pavement near Stamford Hill. P.C King said she couldn’t sit up or stand up on her own and she had to lie down in the police station. He also said she was struggling and fighting and screaming. How could she do that if she was nearly unconscious? I have never seen Aseta drunk.”
Inquest Whitewash
AT THE INQUEST
Mrs Archer, the tenant who had taken Mrs Simms to the rent tribunal and had been given a week to get out said she had seen Mrs Simms very drunk earlier in the evening. Mrs Archer who admitted “Mrs Simms and I never did get on”, was taken to and from the coroners court in a police car.
PIG SWILL
G. 196 P.C. King testifies:
“I saw a coloured woman lying on a forecourt in Manor Road N16. I went to pick her up; she became terribly violent, grabbed my belt and began twisting it. After a struggle we got her into the van. We lifted her into the van and laid her out onto the floor. I then held her, both her wrists and P.C. 277 held her ankles.
AT THE STATION
“She was not capable of standing, her knees were badly bruised. I didn’t see any bruising over her eyes; come to think of it, I did see bruising over her head. We then put her on the floor in the cell. She was calm and snoring quite loudly. While in there the snoring began to diminish, I thought she was asleep.”
Where did all the bruises come from?
Pig G. 277
“She was lying between cars and swearing, she appeared to be drunk even from a distance… Two hours later I went back to where we had picked her up and found a whiskey bottle leaning against a wall with some whiskey in it.”The pig says there was some whiskey left in the bottle therefore Mrs Simms drank less than three quarters of a bottle.
Sergeants 6.81 and 6.78 duly testified that they saw her struggling and shouting when taken into the van and into the police station, where she suddenly became semi-conscious presumably as a result of usual police pacifying tactics. As 6.78 says when they got her into the cell “Mrs Simms was incapable of doing anything – I returned later and saw G196 sitting outside on the stairs with head in hands and he told me that Mrs Simms had stopped breathing.”
Police Doctor
“There was swelling above the right eye and bruising below. There was deep bruising over her head but no fracture, but the brain was swollen. There was alcohol in the blood stream. It is arguable that some people might die with this level of alcohol in the blood stream but we have had people with much higher levels who are still alive today. The bruising was consistent with someone falling about or with someone who had been beaten. I cannot truthfully say what was the cause of her death.”
If she didn’t die from alcohol presumably it was from a beating.
The coroner, Douglas Chambers said “The Home Office says that the coroner has a choice to sit or not sit with the jury in special circumstances. There are special circumstances in this hearing, therefore under the Home Office rules for coroner’s courts, I shall sit with the jury.”
What the special circumstances were he didn’t say but they were presumably that the police might have been accused of murder. The verdict of the judge and the jury was Death by Misadventure. What WAS the coroner doing by going with the jury?
As far as we know the pigs involved with the death of Aseta Simms, G.196.G, G227, G.81 and G.78, are still wandering round Stoke Newington. They’ve probably been promoted.
Why no Inquiry?
Mrs Simms family and friends and the Black Unity and Freedom Party have been trying to get a public inquiry into the affair for over a year without success. It seems that the verdict of Death by Misadventure was true in a way. The pigs probably didn’t intend to kill Mrs Simms. It seems like the usual form of police harassment of black people and any others they don’t like. Black people, young people, longhaired people, are regularly stopped by the pigs at night, questioned, abused, pushed around, and if there is any reaction dragged into a van to be charged with assaulting the police or some such crap. On the way the pigs pass the time bashing them around. With Mrs Simms they made a mistake. She died. Remember Oluwale in Leeds?
[the Black Unity and Freedom Party published a pamphlet entitled “Who Killed Aseta Simms” which is available elsewhere on this site]
Also in this issue:
Dockers Still Picketing Hackney Depot – more on the picket of Midland Cold Storage co, Waterden Lane.
Islington Squatters, the story so far (cartoon)
Hackney Squatters Union Demands Free Housing For All – “…Houses are money. With house prices rising 40% a year, the bosses are investing their ill-gained loot in property. Whether there are tenants or not is not really important. Either way they make money.
We are occupying an increasingly large number of empty homes in Hackney and are rebuilding them in the way we want. Our only chance of winning is when there are so many of us that it is physically impossible to remove us. If you are sick of paying high rents for poky little rooms. If they won’t even give you a poky little room. THEN COME AND JOIN US.
We are going to stand by each other and help each other in more ways than one. We plan to have play groups for our kids, food co-ops, transport available to us all and to share skills like knowledge of electrics, plumbing etc.
We are not a social service and we don’t plan to solve Hackney Borough Council’s housing policy for them. We are taking back what is rightfully ours. We are a union and we will help each other…”
[includes five contact addresses at the end – four in E8 and one in N1]
Hackney Gay Liberation Front:
[click the image to enlarge]
Campaigning against the Rents Bill:
Mad McElligott Gives In – more on Hackney Claimants Union members occupying Lower Clapton dole office as part of a campaign to get an old man a payment for slippers and a dressing gown so he could go into hospital. Two female HCU members were charged with threatening behaviour (knocking on the dole office door after they were removed) and assault. They both defended themselves in court in front of Magistrate McElligott. Laughter in the gallery and blustering from the police lawyers. One case dismissed, one adjourned.
The Best Form of Defence is Attack – on representing yourself in court, what to do when arrested, etc.
And: poems, classified ads, letters, brief news item about social security snoopers spying on women to see if they have boyfriends (so that their dole can be cut off!)
The Radical History of Hackney 