CHARACTER ASSASSINATION
By Ronnie Williams
In recent years, a number of miscarriages
of justice have come to light and been successfully challenged after campaigns on
behalf of those wrongly convicted on falsified confessions, or on the evidence of
police informers. Anyone who has followed such cases, even from a distance, will
be aware of dark mutterings from the State and it's allies in the press against those
who have successfully had their convictions overturned. Even those no longer alive
to speak for themselves have had doubt cast upon their character by those in no position
to moralise in any way. The popular myths that police corruption is a modern phenomenon
and that most policemen/women are honest, simply does not hold up under closer scrutiny.
People
look back through rose tinted spectacles to a bygone age when every copper was a
'Dixon of Dock Green'. The urban myth of a clip round the ear and 'chased off home'
for playing football in the street persists. There was a clear line between right
and wrong and the police, thanks to such film classics as 'The Blue Lamp', or T.V.
series such as 'Lockhart' and 'Z Cars' that were never wrong. So it naturally follows,
that if the police 'lifted' someone, then that someone must have been a baddy.
In
1949 a double murder took place at the 'Cameo' cinema in Liverpool. A man shot both
the manager and his assistant in a bungled attempt at stealing the nights takings.
The murder had the Liverpool City Police baffled for some months and rumour spread
that there must have been an American serviceman involved, as guns were in a different
league to the local criminals. Eventually, one name entered the frame. That of George
Kelly, a frequenter of city centre pubs and known to the police as a suspected dealer
in black market goods. Kelly was also known as someone who would not walk away from
a fight, but he was never known to have possessed a gun. Kelly had an alibi for the
night of the murder in that he was seen drinking in a pub owned by a retired policeman
at the time the murder was being committed. However, on the strength of evidence
given by people who were police informers, one of whom claimed Kelly confessed to
him while in Preston prison, Kelly was hanged.
The prime mover behind securing the
conviction was one Chief Inspector Herbert Balmer. In the years following the death
of George Kelly, more and more irregularities came to light throwing doubt upon the
conviction. Two books and a Radio 4 drama-documentary appeared and it is now almost
impossible to find anyone who thinks George Kelly killed the two men at the 'Cameo'
cinema all those years ago. However, there is a school of thought that believes that
as Kelly was a dealer in black market goods, he deserved everything that came his
way. Who put the story out that Kelly was a petty thief? The Liverpool & Bootle Constabulary.
How did they know? One of Kelly's best customers was none other than Chief Inspector
Balmer. Balmer was also having a relationship with Kelly's partner while Kelly was
touring the city centre pubs. So, the family and friends of George Kelly have lived
all these years with the knowledge of George's innocence of having been a murderer,
but, still having the finger of suspicion pointed at him by those who have not bothered
to find out the details of the case and chose to believe the police.
Shortly after
the 'Cameo' case came, arguably, the most blatant fit-up ever. In 1951, Derek Bentley
and his companion Christopher Craig decided to break into a warehouse in Croydon.
They were spotted on the roof by a child who alerted her parents. The police promptly
arrived and made their way onto the roof. Detective Sergeant Frederick Fairfax arrested
Bentley and restrained him behind a stairway entrance to the roof. Craig produced
a revolver and began firing. P.C. Sydney Miles was killed by a single shot to the
head. Craig then threw himself from the roof in an attempt at suicide. He failed
and was brought to trial. Craig was then sixteen years old and too young to hang
for the killing. Bentley was nineteen and just old enough. Derek Bentley had fallen
from a lorry at the age of four and had landed on his head. At seven, he had been
buried when a bomb had hit the air raid shelter in which the family had taken cover.
At eleven, a V1 missile had hit the flat in which the Bentley's had been staying,
covering Derek in roofing tiles. Derek was what we would now refer to as a 'special
needs' pupil, in these more enlightened times he would receive help from an understanding
teacher. He had epilepsy and had a mental age of eleven. Derek was also working class
while Craig's family were middle class.
At the trial, Derek was alleged to have shouted
encouragement to his co-accused and this was enough to see him taken to the gallows.
Pleas for clemency were ignored and the Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, refused
to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment. Every subsequent Home Secretary
refused to grant a posthumous pardon to Derek until somewhat paradoxically the right-wing
Jack Straw did so. Ken Clarke, when he was Home Secretary in the early nineties stated
that Derek should not have hanged, but that he should not have been on the roof of
the warehouse either. So, there we have it. He must have been up to no good, and
he would have still been alive if he had only stayed on the straight and narrow.
The whispering campaign by the state continues into the fifth decade after the trial.
Derek's sister, Iris and his nine year old niece, gave talks to youngsters in a South
London theatre about the case until 1973 when two Tory councillors had the theatre
closed down. One, Norman Tebbit stated, "I can think of nothing more undesirable
than sending people with an axe to grind, to lecture to impressionable people on
that particular subject." The other, Michael Brotherton was a little more open with
his remarks, "It is disgusting that public money should be used to provide a platform
for one who seeks to justify a convicted murderer of a policeman." So, Derek Bentley,
unarmed, under arrest and with the mental age of a child was hanged to satisfy the
bloodlust of the British State. Not content with his death, the whispering campaign
that Derek was a 'bad un' continued to haunt Iris until her own death.
In the sixties,
the case of James Hanratty shook the public. He was accused of killing a man and
of raping his paramour just off the A40 in Bedfordshire. Hanratty told the police
he had travelled from Liverpool to Rhyl in North Wales on the day the murder took
place. He was even able to give the exact location of a one armed railway porter
and the time he had seen him at Lime Street station to the police. He was able to
describe in detail the bathroom suite in the guest house in Rhyl's Kinmel Street.
Peter Alphon later confessed to the murder and rape but by then James Hanratty had
been hanged. The police let it be known that Hanratty was a petty thief, thereby
casting a shadow over any idea that he might not have carried out the murder and
rape.
The eighties and nineties was when the chickens really began to come home to
roost for the boys in blue. A string of miscarriages of justice came to light dating
back to the seventies. The West Midlands crime squad was so corrupt, it was disbanded.
The cases of the Maguire Seven, The Guildford Four, The Birmingham Six, Stefan Kizsco,
Judith Ward, the Bridgewater Four, The Tottenham Three and a host of other fit-ups
all helped dispel any idea of a police force interested in serving the public. On
the evening of the release of the three surviving members of the Bridgewater Four,
a senior policeman appeared along with Gerry Conlon on a programme to discuss the
case. The policeman remarked that Gerry Conlon found himself in the position of having
been gaoled because he had been a member of 'certain organisations'. Conlon challenged
the policeman to name any organisations, which of course he couldn't, and to retract
the remark or he would take legal action. The policeman visibly wilted and kept quiet.
But the exchange showed once again the state's reluctance to admit total failure.
How
many more cases are waiting to be exposed? Who will be next to walk free and then
have the State pass moral judgment on them and imply that "they must have done something"?
Eddie Gilfoyle? John Taft? Mark Barnsley? Rana Khalifa? Satpal Ram? Winston Silcott?
Gary Mills & Tony Poole? You name them, the State will make sure the rest of their
lives are spent under a cloud of concocted suspicion.
Law and Order! A bit of justice
would do for a start.
www.slimeylimeyjustice.org