Home Office could not get rid of notorious Rachman

Police and Home Office officials wanted to trap the notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman in the United States in 1960 as the chances of prosecuting him in Britain faded.

They considered allowing the Polish-born businessman out of the country to visit the US and refusing to let him return, but ruled it out because it would mean breaking international agreements.

The plan is revealed in a document from the Public Record Office that details Rachman's activities in Notting Hill, where he rented scores of flats to immigrants at exorbitant rents and was linked with intimidation and prostitution. His activities provoked a parliamentary question and a deputation from local people and MP George Rogers.

The authorities decided a successful prosecution was unlikely because most witnesses were unreliable, and reluctant to make statements against Rachman, then 41, who had also started selling many of his properties in Notting Hill.

He had been accepted in Britain as a refugee after the Second World War and worked as a tailor then as a clerk. He used a loan to buy four flats in Notting Hill in 1954. By 1959 he controlled 144 homes through 23 companies.

The Home Office considered sending him back but thought the Polish were unlikely to accept him, and the deportation would be difficult because he had been given refugee status. But in February 1960 police discovered that Rachman was planning to visit the US and suggested the Home Office used the trip to keep him out of Britain.

In Home Office notes sent to police, an official said the idea was "attractive'' but "not, alas, a practical proposition''. He said the Home Office would have to give the US assurances that Rachman could return to Britain before they would give him a visa, and the Home Office would "feel obliged'' to honour an "implied undertaking'' to readmit him.

"We might, I suppose, refuse to issue Rachman with any documentation but the only effect of this would be to prevent [him] leaving the country and our action could be represented as a breach of the 1951 convention under which we issue documents to refugee Poles and under which Rachman obtained a document in 1954,'' the note said.

A Home Office minister, Davie Renton, wrote to Mr Rogers saying a deportation would not be attempted. He said police were still scrutinising Rachman's activities, although the file shows police were little more than "keeping an eye'' on him.

Rachman's name is so synonymous with bad housing that it is included in dictionaries as Rachmanism: "Landlords buying up slums to fill with immigrants at extortionate rents." He died in 1962.