Putting Feet on the Ground- BLMUK at the UFFC Annual Procession
Written by Kojo Kyerewaa
On Saturday 31st October 2026, around 500 people in total, including stewards, legal observers and community therapists walked with families from Trafalgar Square to 10 Downing Street. Shouting outside Peckham Rye train station while handing out flyers to commuters seemed to be worthwhile. Like many other acts by the outreach team, it ensured that this year’s United Families and Friends Campaign against deaths in custody procession was bigger than last year.
UFFC procession happens on the last Saturday of October of each year. Falling on Halloween just underlined that this event was led by families who were compelled to attend because their governments had put them through a living nightmare. Dignified and dressed in black, almost exclusively led by women, they carried with them pictures and memories of their loved ones. While accompanied by supporters, they were cloaked with grief combined with the injustice of not being told the truth about their loved ones’ deaths and having to campaign for accountability from the state.
2026 is the year that Martyn Blake, the officer who shot and killed Chris Kaba, learned that gross misconduct proceedings were dropped. Instead of facing accountability, he was promoted for killing an unarmed Black man. Chris Kaba’s family spoke to the gathered crowd about how they had to listen to the Metropolitan Police argue in court, that an public inquest into Chris’ death should not be resumed. The Police, unsatisfied with getting away with murder, want to bury any further examination of their fatal actions. Sheeda, Chris’ cousin, told us that the family demand an inquest happen without any further delay. The only consequence that the Metropolitan Police has received since killing Chris Kaba, is that the law has changed to make accountability for their decisions less likely.
We had several Manchester families who spoke about the End Police Pursuits campaign, how particularly in the North, young people are being killed as a result of reckless police driving and chases with total police impunity.
Many of the families passionately spoke about their treasured memories of their stolen sibling, child or parent. Often through tears, I listened to beautiful articulations from formidable women stating how their son, brother, father should be remembered. Though they had lost so much and endured pain that most of us will never know, they were on the streets, in the cold, demanding that this government make changes that would save other families from this grief.
It was an international event, there were families from Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland. As well as Scottish and Welsh families. This was not just self-interest, it was collective care that only those who have buried, someone they cared for due to premature death, could deeply understand.
These families each have been robbed of a life, then robbed them once more by being denied any semblance of justice. Mothers, sisters, and other loved ones should not be expected to describe their loss and trauma perpetrated by the state, year after year after year. Yet some do, without fail. Their efforts need to be upheld by those of us who identify with them. I can only see a greater march being sustained by the development of a real social movement against police violence.
Focusing on the demonstration itself though necessary is not sufficient. The more of us engaged with considerable commitment will indicate an increase of those who will turn up for an annual event. A social movement based on greater numbers would be established. This must be developed through much more than stating a collective will. Tangible efforts must go beyond speaking with our friends and associates. Our ambitions must be tempered with patience, as though our sincerity to make each demo bigger than before is without doubt, it can be no more passionate, nor keener than the bereaved families who have waded through many bitter rivers to attend and build these demonstrations.
I have little faith that this social movement will be achieved through the wonders of social media. The struggle against deaths in custody is laden with too much sorrow to be summed up in catchy video reels. The families who form its core are overburdened with grief and tragedy, sharing a hashtag or a gripping image could not do justice to laying the path ahead. I fear that relying primarily on the easy, loose connectivity that is constructed on social media reduces rather than underlines the emotional power which is the basis of this currently fledging movement. Communication and retweets alone do not alter power structures.
Mental abstraction in this instance is our enemy, the thousands who died to misquote Stalin are merely a statistic, an inconvenient detail listed in a few articles dotted across the mainstream media. What has become abstract and dead, must become concrete and alive once more. There is no real achievement in asking people to attend a march, to experience a communion of anger and frustration which has no end in sight. These families demand more, those present in the grave deserve more. What has been hoped for must be made flesh, what was loose must become more tightly bound together, what was vague must give way to precision. A social movement with a concrete goal, with answers to the questions that plagues all of us. How do we end their violence?
This is what UFFC is dedicated to address, as ever they will have the support of Black Lives Matter UK, Copwatch Network, Harm To Healing, INQUEST, Sisters Uncut, Network for Police Monitoring and many many more.
