Family fury at secrecy over Britain's 'first race murder'

Access denied to file on 65-yr-old killing

- TOM PETTIFOR Crime Editor and MARK OLDEN

THE family of the victim of the "first racist murder in Britain" have criticised a decision to deny them access to police files on his unsolved killing.

The National Archives has inflicted a fresh blow on the family by refusing their request to release the files on the 65-year-old riddle, after the Metropolitan Police said the case remains open.

No one has been charged with the fatal stabbing of Kelso Cochrane, 32, in 1959 by a gang of five or six white youths in Notting Hill, West London.

The carpenter, from Antigua, was encircled, kicked and hit by the mob as he headed home.

Two Jamaican men saw the incident and ran to help. They got Kelso into a taxi and took him to hospital, where he died from a knife wound to the heart.

A newspaper reported that a young woman, Joy Okine, had seen the savage murder from a window. She asked for police protection in the following days.