27.02.1997

More frame-up powers

The appeal court judges last week granted unconditional bail to the Bridgewater three - Michael Hickey, his cousin Vincent Hickey and James Robinson - pending the official appeal hearing which will rubber-stamp their release.

The three were convicted of the 1978 murder of paper boy Carl Bridgewater in November 1979, after a fourth man, Patrick Molloy, ‘confessed’ to involvement and implicated the other three. Molloy was found guilty of manslaughter, although he consistently stressed that the ‘confession’ had been beaten out of him by the police. There was no other significant evidence against the four.

Molloy died in prison, still protesting his innocence, in 1981, while Michael Hickey has spent more than half his life as a Category A prisoner. He was just 17 when he was convicted.

It was widely known, including at the very top of British political and legal circles, that the four were innocent, probably even before they were convicted. New evidence, throwing fresh doubt on their guilt, was discovered at regular intervals throughout their incarceration.

The police who took the fabricated confession were members of the discredited West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, which made a practice of ‘arranging’ evidence, leading to several convictions later quashed by the Court of Appeal. Michael Hickey spent 48 bitterly cold days on the roof of Gartree Prison protesting his innocence over Christmas 1983.

The jury foreman at the original trial, Tim O’Malley, has long since repudiated the verdict. He said the fabricated confession

“held the ragbag of evidence together. And forensic evidence in their favour was withheld from us. It is a disgrace.”

The Bridgewater Three’s release follows similar high-profile police frame-ups, the most notable being those of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six. At last Friday’s hearing John McGranaghan, whose conviction for rape was eventually quashed after 11 years in jail, was warned by the judge to keep quiet: “This is a court of justice ... You are asked to behave with dignity and restraint.”

Mr McGranaghan commented:

“There’s people who have been inside 18 years and they’re talking about dignity. How can I respect a court like this? What do they know about dignity?”

So why, despite all the overwhelming evidence, despite a BBC documentary and Paul Foot’s excellent book, published as long ago as 1986, has it taken so long for the establishment to admit the truth? Unlike in the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six cases, there was no political urgency to secure a conviction - any conviction - from the point of view of the ruling class.

Yet the ruling class must continually reinforce the notion that its system of ‘justice’ and law enforcement is above question. The police as an institution is beyond reproach, completely impartial from any class or sectional interest - or so we are led to believe. If there is corruption, or even the most extreme form of abuse committed by the police, the immediate instinct of the establishment is to cover it up.

It is better that innocent people spend their life in jail than the people’s faith in the British legal system be called into question. If capital punishment had still been in effect, there can be little doubt that Vincent Hickey and James Robinson would have been hanged, just like James Hanratty.

Of course, when our rulers are finally forced to admit their ‘error’ and innocent people are released, this is hypocritically portrayed as proof that the ‘few’ miscarriages of justice will, at the end of the day, be rectified. Where were all the leader writers and politicians who now shed crocodile tears over the Bridgewater Three a decade ago? With the honourable exception of Socialist Worker Party member Paul Foot, most journalists have been content to go along with the myth that, despite it all, the ‘justice’ system is basically fair.

Despite the continuing reactionary campaign to make the securing of convictions easier, bourgeois commentators continue to state that such blatant examples of injustice could not happen today. Yet the attack on the right to silence and the legitimisation of the police right to withhold evidence from the defence, along with increased powers in the Police Bill, point to the opposite conclusion.

Alan Fox