First UFFC procession
At midday on Saturday 30 October 1999, a group of bereaved families and friends gathered at Trafalgar Square. Dressed in black, they marched with candles, banners and photographs of their loved ones to Downing Street to deliver a card and letter to Tony Blair, prime minister at the time.
On the card were the names of 78 Black people who died in custody since the death of David Oluwale after contact with police in Leeds in 1969. The letter demanded an independent public inquiry into how all of these people had died, as a means to ‘stop the killings’ by confronting the racism that connected their deaths.
This marked the first annual procession organised by the United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC), a coalition of Black bereaved families that was established in 1998 with the support of INQUEST, the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) and Migrant Media.
Since then, families and supporters have gathered on the last Saturday in October to collectively remember those who have died at the hands of the state and to hand-deliver a letter demanding accountability and change to the prime minister.
You can read more about the 25th anniversary procession here.
Click below to learn more about the origins of the UFFC.












































