Murder of Kelso Cochrane

In the wake of a 2021 petition by Cochrane's family demanding an apology for alleged failings in the investigation of the murder, the Metropolitan Police confirmed that it was assessing historical material in connection with the case.

Witnesses were likely to have seen the incident; however, they were reluctant to report what they saw to the police because they were concerned about possible reprisals. Although the killers were well known in local circles, they were not named publicly until 2011 and no one was ever charged with the murder. The police were believed to have been complacent in their investigation and there were some accusations of a cover-up. His murder was emblematic of the racial tensions that existed at the time but also a desire to unite a community. In his 2013 memoir This Boy, Alan Johnson writes that his mother witnessed the prelude to the murder and recognised one of the gang. More than 1200 people attended Cochrane's funeral from all sections of the Notting Hill community, white and black. Following on from the murder, the Home Secretary launched a public inquiry into race relations

On Sunday, 17 May 2009, to mark the 50th anniversary of Cochrane's death, a blue plaque organised by the Nubian Jak Community Trust was unveiled at the Golborne Bar & Restaurant, now "Cha Cha x Sister Jane" (36 Golborne Road, London W10), just opposite the place where he was attacked.

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 that 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".

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 heard from Kelso Cochrane's daughter in the U.S. and was able to put her in touch with her uncle.

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 at the junction of Golborne Road and Southam Street 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.

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.

Cochrane was born in Antigua, and had a failed marriage in the United States, following which he was deported back to Antigua on grounds of having over-stayed the period of time for which he was admitted. In 1954, he decided to migrate to England, arriving at the port of Plymouth, from where he took a train to Paddington, London, and settled in the Notting Hill area. He worked as a carpenter and had ambitions to save sufficient money to study law.

Kelso Cochrane (26 September 1926 – 17 May 1959) was an Antiguan expatriate to Britain whose unsolved murder led to racial tensions in London.