This video from the British parliament says about itself:
John Mann leads this ‘debate’ on the Wanless Review and Dickens File in Westminster Hall, 4 November 2015. As can be seen, he speaks to a near empty room.
From the Telegraph:
‘Mr Mann described the Dickens dossier as “intriguing to say the least”. He said that a former deputy director of MI6, George Kennedy Young, was involved in a right-wing Conservative group which gathered details on alleged paedophiles within the Commons.
Young, also known as ‘GK’ who died in 1990, was not named as a paedophile but Mr Mann described him as a “manipulator” who had been involved in “dubious” political activities, including a campaign to set up a private army.
“We need to know why the file disappeared,” Mr Mann said.’
From daily The Morning Star in Britain:
Senior spy linked to child abuse by top MPs
Thursday 5th November 2015
A TOP spy is “key” to allegations about a VIP paedophile ring in Westminster, Labour MP John Mann claimed last night.
Ex-MI6 deputy director George Kennedy Young was a “manipulator” who controlled groups of people within which there were paedophile rings in the 1970s or ’80s, the Bassetlaw MP said.
The late Mr Young, who later became involved in hard-right politics, also tried to form a private army known as Unison.
A review of the Home Office’s handling of child abuse allegations from the 1970s onwards reported that there was no evidence of an official cover-up, but warned it was impossible to draw firm conclusions.
In a Westminster Hall debate, Mr Mann suggested that Mr Young’s role may “give some reason” to the disappearance of a file handed by former MP Geoffrey Dickens to home secretary Leon Brittan in the 1980s.
He also said Mr Young may have played a role in industrial disputes too, adding: “I’ve seen a range of background documents that would be of interest to anyone campaigning on the Shrewsbury pickets and on infiltration of the miners’ strike.”
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MI5 and 6 are all part of a long established tradition of institutional crime, they are the fabric of depraved material and the way the y need to be seen by the uninitiated is to think they are the same as a type of criminal as the Mafia, in the extraction of money they live off the British taxpayer as opposed to the Mafia who live from money of stand over tactics, drugs, prostitution, noted the British taxation system extorts money by the same process extraction of money by local government and taxes imposed upon business, prostitution and drugs, also the trafficking of arms.
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Thursday 10th December 2015
posted by Luke James in Britain
Burnham reveals explosive secret files on 1972 strike
SECRET documents implicating a former Tory prime minister, spooks and senior cops in colluding to secure convictions against the Shrewsbury Pickets were sensationally revealed in Parliament yesterday.
The government has cited national security concerns as the reason it cannot release classified documents that could help overturn convictions against 24 builders, including jailed pair Ricky Tomlinson and Des Warren.
But shadow home secretary Andy Burnham blew the case wide open by exposing previously unseen documents in a parliamentary debate on the historic injustice.
The explosive contents could help clear the names of the 24, nine of whom have since died, over four decades after the 1972 strike over pay and safety.
Mr Burnham said: “The documents I have revealed can only lead us to one conclusion — the Shrewsbury 24 were the convenient scapegoats of a government campaign to undermine the trade unions and the victims of a politically orchestrated show trial.”
They include a memo, marked “secret,” which proves the security services helped make the infamous Reds Under the Bed TV documentary.
The programme, which linked the workers to supposed communist infiltration of the Labour Party, was shown on the very night that the prosecution concluded their case against the pickets.
The memo was sent to a senior Foreign and Commonwealth (FCO) official by the head of the Information Research Department, which Mr Burnham described as a “covert propaganda unit” operating within the department.
It said: “We had a discreet but considerable hand in this programme. Mr Wyatt was given a large dossier of our own background material. It is clear from internal evidence in the programme that he drew extensively on this.”
Another memo reveals that knowledge of this smear campaign went all the way to the top.
After the programme was shown, then PM Edward Heath was sent a transcript of Reds Under the Bed.
Mr Heath replied: “We want as much of this as possible.”
A further note from the PM’s parliamentary private secretary alludes to a “new unit” which Mr Heath hoped was “in being and actively producing.”
“There we have it,” Mr Burnham told stunned MPs.
“The security services were helping to make a TV programme that was not just nakedly political in its aims of damaging the Labour Party. But in the case of the Shrewsbury 24, a programme that was prejudicial to their trial.
“The government were complicit in making that happen.”
Other documents unearthed by the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign reveal how then Tory home secretary Robert Carr directed police evidence-gathering.
A note from a meeting between chief constables and the prosecutors shows some inconvenient witness statements were destroyed.
It said some were “destroyed after a fresh statement had been obtained” because the first statement was taken “before officers taking the statements knew what we were trying to prove.”
That could be connected to a letter from the attorney general to Carr in January 1973 advising him that there was “no evidence of violence of damage to property” at the pickets.
Labour MP Ian Lavery, chair of the party’s trade union group, said it proved the case was a “miscarriage of justice organised deliberately by the state.”
Even Policing Minister Mike Penning, who refused to reopen the case in October, was stunned by the evidence.
He congratulated the campaign for unearthing the documents, but bought time by saying:” I don’t make instant judgements.”
Builders’ union Ucatt acting general secretary Brian Rye said: “In the 21st century — if this is truly a democratic country — its citizens are entitled to know why innocent men were sent to prison more than 40 years ago, under a trumped up, 19th-century law.”
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-3915-Spies-Rigged-Shrewsbury-Pickets-Trial#.VmlIq7_TcdU
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Thursday 10th December 2015
posted by Morning Star in Editorial
OVER 40 years since building workers were fitted up by police, the judiciary and Tory politicians it is well past time for the truth about this conspiracy to come out.
Des Warren, Ricky Tomlinson, John McKinsie Jones and their comrades in the Shrewbury 24 were charged under archaic and draconian conspiracy laws against which it was virtually impossible to defend themselves.
Their real crime was to have organised successful flying pickets to visit isolated construction sites during the 1972 12-week official building workers’ strike that brought substantial negotiated benefits to the industry.
When they explained the issues to site meetings — many of those present being on the “lump” or labour-only subcontracting — workers joined appropriate unions and walked off the job.
Later allegations that pickets used violence and intimidation were fabrications pulled together by those employed to concoct charges against decent trade unionists.
Police attended many of the occasions on which the pickets turned up at sites to persuade their fellow workers to join the strike, often complimenting them on their good humour and conduct.
However, the 1970-74 Tory government led by Edward Heath was intent on breaking the strength of the unions which had membership numbers and an influence on pay and conditions, even for non-members, that are hard to imagine today.
Police forces in North Wales and West Mercia had investigated violence allegations and questioned 800 witnesses, deciding against opening proceedings, but this was not good enough for Heath and his home secretary Robert Carr.
Carr plotted with Tory politicians, senior police officers and construction companies to build up a conspiracy case against the workers.
Police, employers’ representatives and non-strikers suddenly “remembered” in the show trials of the striking building workers how frightened and intimidated they had been by the violent flying pickets shepherded by the communist “godfather” Des Warren.
Warren, Tomlinson and McKinsie Jones were found guilty of unlawful assembly, affray and conspiracy and sentenced to three years, two years and nine months respectively.
Warren told the court pre-sentence that “the real conspiracy was between the home secretary, the employers and the police,” which sparked a savage sentence and personal abuse from the judge who knew exactly where his class duty lay.
Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham’s determination to get to the bottom of the ruling-class conspiracy has separated him from other prominent New Labour people content to let sleeping dogs lie.
His threat to withdraw co-operation with the government over its Investigatory Powers Bill unless it releases withheld papers about the Shrewsbury fit-up is utterly justified.
Cabinet Minister Oliver Letwin ruled against release in October, deferring further review until 2021, citing national security, which is nonsense.
The overriding motivation behind the Tory government’s refusal to come clean over Shrewsbury is Establishment embarrassment.
They would like to put off open access to the documents related to the Tory conspiracy until such time as those involved — victims and perpetrators — are dead.
Observers will then witness the time-honoured Establishment ritual of the usual suspects from politics and the media recalling how sad it was back then, how desperate times called for desperate measures and isn’t it marvellous that nothing like that would happen in Britain today — so unlike all those other countries where political power influences legal decisions.
Warren went to his grave still bearing the “criminal” stigma imposed on him by the Establishment.
Tomlinson pledged then to campaign endlessly to erase the stain from his comrade’s good character and presented a petition with over 100,000 signatures to Downing Street two years ago.
Human decency demands that the unjust criminalisation of the Shrewsbury building workers be set aside finally.
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-35a5-Justice-is-long-overdue#.VmnnJ7_TcdU
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Human decency is a word having become a word bantered around by individuals such as Tony Abbott, stating and reiterating these two words of human decency? these words were used against the Islamic religion on a inference of this religion as inferior and the Western Allies religious alignment is superior? taking in account Christianity is a peculiar religion with its virgin births and the raising of the dead is peculiar language that many suspect as being incredible if not deceptive?
Considering Abbott has sent fighter jets to Syria and we are uncertain as to whether civilians are being killed but for many this is by circumstance a certainty.
Since when has Abbott become a high priest whom can make statements such as Christianity being superior? this is the propaganda that we should become suspicious of our leaders using and their credibility as leaders are not only suspect but possible are conditions of a insane mind?
We are seeing work of a subversive group the government who knowingly took a stand against truth with regard to the Shrewsbury workers? as this article states the judge whom we would like to think is committed to justice is and has become a political tool? here we seen authority having a agenda of oppression and a long history of this process, seeing Britain having a long history of foreigners having been at the helm the Monarchy of Britain and as recently within living memory the Royal family at least in part have been sympathetic to Hitler taking over Britain? this situation of a foreign power infiltrating British traditions of at least some noble traditions such as reforms as The Magna Carta a significant document of at least pointing the way for a nobler society? however some where we have lost our way? in particular to the repression of the lower classes, it is to be expected that Britain having oppressed the lower classes for some centuries that some part of this class is bred and become perverse and depraved? having said this it is not so surprising that depravity is endemic and permeates all classes of the social spectrum.
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Friday, 11 December 2015
The government refuses to release the Shrewsbury 24 trial secret papers
THE ruling class state machinations that secured the jailing of a number of Shrewsbury pickets after the first national building workers strike in 1972 is to remain a secret of the ruling class state apparatus.
This was made clear by Home Office Minister Penning on Wednesday as the issue was being debated in Westminster Hall. The reason that this conspiracy remains a state secret is that the ruling class and the capitalist state are getting ready to use the same techniques and measures against the working class, once its new anti- trade union legislation becomes law.
The issues at the centre of the Shrewsbury jailings are not just historical, they are topical and contemporary. In 1971, Tory Prime Minister Heath brought in his anti-union laws, complete with industrial courts, to illegalise the right to strike.
Heath was at war with the working class, particularly with the dockers and the miners, to force through the kind of changes that he thought would save British capitalism. The first national building workers’ strike in 1972 against the Lump, casual labour system, was taken as both a direct challenge by the ruling class and also as an opportunity to show who was the boss!
Heath resolved to crush the strike’s rank-and-file leaders, as a lesson to the working class as a whole. This is the reason why the trial was set up as a state conspiracy to secure convictions by any means that were necessary, so as to teach the working class a lesson in class rule.
The leader of the building workers, Des Warren, was impervious to such tactics. He was a real fighter. He knew no fear. They could not break his spirit, that was indomitable, so they broke his health with the use of the ‘liquid cosh’ while he served his full term in prison, less a few months.
Also in 1972, the Heath government used its anti-union laws to jail five striking dockers, but they were released when the dockers organised mass strikes throughout industry, forcing the TUC to call a one-day general strike for Monday 31 July. The five dockers were released on July 26th.
The TUC leaders however did not take up the fight for Warren, they called no strike action. The TUC leaders were preparing for a Wilson government, and therefore let Warren rot in jail. It was the Wigan Building Workers Action Committee and the SLL, then WRP, that organised the national march that put the freeing of the Shrewsbury Two, Warren and Tomlinson, right out in front.
The Tories were brought down in 1974. Wilson took office but Warren was not freed. He served his full term bar a few months. The Tories put Warren behind bars and Wilson kept him there. In fact, the Labour Home Secretary Jenkins went on to organise an armed police raid on the WRP’s education centre in Derbyshire. Wilson and Jenkins kept the Shrewsbury conspiracy documents under lock and key as did Blair and then Brown.
On Wednesday, Burnham revealed his essential position when he took back his pledge that Labour would not vote for the next set of Tory spying legislation if the Shrewsbury trial documents were not released by the government. He dumped this position explaining that it was just a posture.
The truth is that the Shrewsbury secret papers remain political dynamite because they are just as much about the future under either a Tory or a Labour government as about the past. The big issue is that directly ahead there are going to be the greatest attacks ever on the working class.
http://wrp.org.uk/news/11655
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Friday, 11 December 2015
Shrewsbury trial and jailing ‘a conspiracy at the very heart of government!’
THE government has rejected calls to release confidential files relating to the Shrewsbury 24, who were charged with various offences after the first national building workers’ strike in 1972.
MPs voted ‘overwhelmingly’ for the release of government documents related to the case to be released in January 2014. But on Wednesday, Home Office Minister Mike Penning said the files could not be released on the grounds of national security. Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham said it amounted to ‘a cover up’.
Prior to the Westminster Hall debate, Burnham indicated that a failure to release all documents about the Shrewsbury 24 case could jeopardise Labour support for the government’s plans to extend spying powers. Addressing MPs during the debate, Burnham backed down saying support ‘was not conditional upon that’.
The Shrewsbury 24, included Ricky Tomlinson and Des Warren, picketed building sites in Shrewsbury in the first national building workers’ strike in 1972. They were later charged under the 1875 Conspiracy Act. Six were sent to prison.
Tomlinson served 16 months in jail. Des Warren served two years and eight months. His death in 2004 from Parkinson’s Disease has been linked to his time in prison, in particular to the use of a ‘liquid cosh’, a cocktail of tranquillisers that was administered to inmates at the time.
In Wednesday’s Westminster Hall debate, mover Steve Rotheram, the Liverpool Walton Labour MP said: ‘It might be asked why we are here again to raise the matter with the Minister. The answer is quite simple: not only have the government not kept their promise to release the documents kept secret from the public for 43 years because of a fallacious threat to national security, but there is now compelling evidence, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and I have had access, that undeniably proves that the whole saga is a conspiracy at the very heart of government.’
Rotheram added: ‘As John Platts-Mills QC said: “The trial of the Shrewsbury Pickets is the only case I know of where the government has ordered a prosecution in defiance of the advice of senior police and prosecution authorities.”
‘The campaign team’s researcher, the redoubtable Eileen Turnbull, trawled through documentation archived at Kew and uncovered a letter dated 25 January 1973 from the then Attorney General, Peter Rawlinson, the highest legal adviser in the land, to the then Home Secretary, Robert Carr. Rawlinson advised the Home Secretary that, in his view, having discussed the case with Treasury counsel and the Director of Public Prosecutions, no less, “proceedings should not be instituted”.’
He said: ‘The government say that they have withheld only three letters and a security services report. We believe that there is much, much more than that on file and we would ask, in the first instance, for the following documents to be released.
‘First, there is the report of West Mercia police and the report of Gwynedd police, which were sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions by Chief Constable John Williams on 18 December 1972. The campaign believes that these documents demonstrate that the police considered that there was no evidence to bring charges against the Shrewsbury pickets.
‘Second, there is the communication between the Home Secretary and other Departments, and West Mercia and Gwynedd police forces, including Assistant Chief Constable Alex Rennie, after 6 September 1972 about their large-scale investigations into picketing in north Wales and the Shropshire area during the strike. The campaign believes that these documents reveal the process of decision making that occurred at Cabinet and security services level to bring about charges against the building workers. As we all know, there were no complaints by the police or the public on 6 September 1972. No pickets were cautioned or arrested, even though there was a large-scale police presence at sites in Shropshire that day.
‘Thirdly, there are the communications between the Home Secretary and the Attorney General in December 1972 and January 1973 about the prosecution of the pickets. Campaigners have long believed that these documents will reveal who made the decision to proceed with charges against the building workers five months after the dispute ended.
‘Fourthly, there is the note of the phone call from a Government Department to Desmond Fennell, the junior prosecution counsel at Shrewsbury Crown court, that according to Maurice Drake QC, chief prosecuting counsel, was a request to inform the judge that they did not want him to pass custodial sentences. The campaign believes that this document further highlights evidence of the Government’s direct interference with the trial.
‘Fifthly, there are the MI5 files held on Des Warren, Ricky Tomlinson and any of the other pickets. The relevance of this request is obvious, as campaigners believe that these files will reveal the monitoring of the pickets during the 1972 building workers strike by the security services, as well as the security services’ activities in manipulating the Shrewsbury trials.
‘Sixthly, a full copy of a letter from Robert McAlpine and Sons Ltd dated 26 February 1973 to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis should be released. Campaigners believe that this letter confirms the role of this construction company in intensifying pressure on the police to bring about charges against the pickets. Just for reference, I point out that the Brookside site in Telford was, by coincidence, a McAlpine site, and Sir Robert was, of course, a senior member of the Conservative party. That site was where the evidence was assembled by the police to bring about charges of conspiracy to intimidate, affray and unlawful assembly.
‘The Cabinet Office maintains that it would not be in the public interest for the files to be released. That is absolute nonsense, which most reasonable people would categorically reject as an argument. For the Government to resist requests to disclose documents actually brings about distrust and suspicion, which is not in the public interest. However, central to my request for the release of these files is the desire for justice for these men while they are still able to see justice being done. Many of the lives of the Shrewsbury 24 were blighted by the events 43 years ago. The youngest of the Shrewsbury 24 is 68 and the oldest is 90. At least five have passed away since the trials in 1973-74, so time is of the essence. It is inconceivable that a building workers strike in 1972 could throw up issues of national security in 2015.’
In the debate, shadow home secretary Andy Burnham declared: ‘I want to pay tribute, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton did, to Eileen Turnbull, the researcher to the Shrewsbury 24 campaign, whose diligence and utter dedication to the cause has brought the documents to light.
‘I have her dossier here today, and it reveals three things: first, how the trial was politically driven by the then Home Secretary, from the gathering of evidence to the commencement of proceedings; secondly, how there was an abuse of process by police in the taking of statements; and thirdly, how there was an attempt at the highest levels of government, supported by the security services, to influence the outcome of the trial …
‘Confirmation of the political interest in legal proceedings comes from the second document that I have: a page from the case file of the Director of Public Prosecutions on the Shrewsbury pickets. An entry on 29 December 1972 reads as follows: “The Home Secretary is interested in this case. 2 counsel to be nominated.”
‘That, by the way, was no passing interest from the Home Secretary, as the third document will show. I have here a letter dated 25 January 1973 about the Shrewsbury case from the then Attorney General Peter Rawlinson to the then Home Secretary Robert Carr. Its contents are extraordinary. It begins: “The building workers’ strike last summer produced instances of intimidation of varying degrees of seriousness … A number of instances consisted of threatening words and in which there was no evidence against any particular person of violence or damage to property. In these circumstances Treasury Counsel, took the view that the prospects (of a conviction) were very uncertain, and in the result I agreed with him and the Director that proceedings should not be instituted.”
‘That letter is talking about proceedings against the Shrewsbury pickets. It goes on to warn of the risks of jury trial, saying that “juries tend to treat mere words more leniently than actual violence”. There it is, an admission that they were talking about “mere words”. Two conclusions can be drawn. First, the Home Secretary of the day was advised by the Attorney General and the DPP that no proceedings should be brought against the Shrewsbury pickets. Secondly, it is made clear and explicit that there was no evidence of violence or damage to property. “Mere words” were the only things that were thrown.
‘We do not have documents revealing the subsequent decision-making process within government, but we do have the first page of a confidential memo sent by the Home Secretary to the Prime Minister the week after the letter was sent. It reads: “Thank you for your minute of 29 January about picketing. I have taken a close personal interest in this problem since I came to the Home Office and I have myself discussed it with the chief officers of those police forces which have had to deal with the most serious picketing. I believe that chief constables are now fully aware of the importance we attach to the matter.”
‘From that there is no doubt at all that the Home Secretary was heavily interfering in operational police matters, and just over a week after his memo was sent to the Prime Minister the Shrewsbury pickets were picked up by police and charged, a full five months after the strike had ended. That series of documents puts beyond any reasonable doubt the fact that the Shrewsbury trial was politically driven by the Home Secretary of the day …
‘The next document that I have shows that due process was not followed in the aftermath of the political pressure. On 17 September 1973, a conference between police investigating the case and the chief Crown prosecutor, Mr Drake, was held at Mr Drake’s home.
”I have here a note of that conference. Let me quote the key passage in paragraph 16, which records an explanation from police officers about the gathering of statements: “So that Counsel would be aware it was mentioned that not all original hand-written statements were still in existence, some having been destroyed after a fresh statement had been obtained. In most cases the first statement was taken before photographs were available for witnesses and before the Officers taking the statements knew what we were trying to prove.”
‘I put it to the House that that document, which has not been made public before, is the smoking gun in the Shrewsbury case. It is clear that the police felt it incumbent on them to investigate propelled by a prosecutorial narrative, rather than by an even-handed investigation of events. I was led to believe that the Conservative Party believed in the Peelian principles of policing, but they were not followed in this case.
‘Transcripts of the trial reveal that the court and the jury were never informed of the destruction of those original witness statements. That fact alone raises major questions about the conduct of the trial and the safety of the convictions.
‘I turn to the trial itself and the Government attempts to influence it. “Red Under the Bed” was a television programme made by Woodrow Wyatt for Anglia Television. Its aim was to reveal communist infiltration of the trade unions and the Labour Party, but it was also clearly intended to influence the trial.
‘Wyatt’s controversial commentary was interspersed with footage of John Carpenter and Des Warren and pictures of Shrewsbury Crown Court. The programme was first broadcast across ITV regions on 13 November 1973, the day the prosecution closed its case.
‘We know that the judge watched a video of the programme in his room just after it was broadcast. It is inconceivable that the programme did not influence the trial, and unthinkable in this day and age that a television programme prejudicial to a major trial could have been aired during that trial. But it was.
‘I will now reveal the full back story about how the programme was made. I have here a memo, headed “SECRET”, to a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office official from the head of the Information Research Department, a covert propaganda unit operating within the FCO.
‘It says: “Mr. Woodrow Wyatt’s television programme, ‘Red under the Bed’, was shown nationally on commercial television on Tuesday, 13 November, at 10.30pm … We had a discreet but considerable hand in this programme … In February Mr. Wyatt approached us direct for help. We consulted the Department of Employment and the Security Service through Mr. Conrad Heron’s group…With their agreement, Mr. Wyatt was given a large dossier of our own background material. It is clear from internal evidence in the programme that he drew extensively on this”.
‘What an extraordinary thing for a Government official to be writing in a memo to a senior civil servant! It gets worse. In the next paragraph, the head of the unit says this: “In our estimation this was a hard-hitting, interesting and effective exposure of Communist and Trotskyist techniques of industrial subversion. But Mr. Wyatt’s concluding message, that the CPBG’s”— the Communist Party of Great Britain’s – “main aim is to take over the Labour Party by fair means or foul – an opinion which is almost incontrovertible – offended the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s standards of objectivity, as they interpret the Statute … This difference of opinion held up the showing of the film”.
‘This is senior civil servants talking about the infiltration of the Labour Party – a spurious claim that they were trying to make through a television programme that they were directly involved in making. It is astonishing that it came to that.
‘Knowledge of what was going on went right to the very top. The Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary put in a handwritten note to Mr Heath. It says: “Prime Minister … You may like to glance through this transcript of Woodrow Wyatt’s ‘Red Under The Bed’ TV programme.” The reply came back from the Prime Minister: “We want as much as possible of this.”
‘On the back of that, the PPS wrote a further confidential memo to Sir John Hunt, the Cabinet Secretary. It says: “The Prime Minister has seen the transcript of Woodrow Wyatt’s television programme … He has commented that we want as much as possible of this sort of thing. He hopes that the new Unit is now in being and actively producing.”…
‘In a reply headed “Secret” and copied to the Prime Minister, Mr Hunt writes: “I confirm that the new Unit is in being and is actively producing material. Use of the service”– the Security Service – “is being kept under continual review between the Lord Privy Seal and Mr Heron.”
‘So there we have it: the security services were helping to make not only a television programme that was nakedly political in its aim of damaging the Labour Party but, in the case of the Shrewsbury 24, a programme that was prejudicial to their trial and that went out in the middle of their trial. The Government were complicit in making that happen.
‘The documents that I have revealed today lead us to only one conclusion: the Shrewsbury 24 were the convenient scapegoats of a Government campaign to undermine the trade unions. They were the victims of a politically orchestrated show trial. These revelations cast serious doubt on the safety of their convictions. Let us remember: this was a domestic industrial dispute led by one of the less powerful trade unions of the day, involving industrial action in and around a number of small market towns in England and, on the day in question, no arrests were made.
‘How on earth, 43 years on, can material relating to it be withheld under national security provisions? I put it to the Minister that the continuing failure to disclose will lead people to conclude that the issue has less to do with national security and more to do with the potential for political embarrassment if what was going on at the time were widely known.’
http://wrp.org.uk/news/11657
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