Lundy: The Destruction of Scotland Yard’s Finest Detective
Martin Short
Grafton, London, 1991
Scotland Yard’s Cocaine Connection
Andrew Jennings, Paul Lashmar and Vyv Simson
Arrow, London, 1991
The sixties media guru Marshall McLuhan is nowadays generally derided as a fraud.I suspect that most people would found it difficult to accept his statement that television is not a visual medium. However, the more one thinks about that bizarre idea the more its truth is revealed. Watch any documentary or news item on television and you will be hard pressed to find a visual image that is not signposted by dialogue. Television refuses to allow its audience to simply watch the image: it must always be interpreted by a commentator. So what does that have to do with the books in question? The same process is at work when it comes to photographs.
Consider three relatively famous photographs.
- In 1964 the Daily Mirror published a photograph of the Tory peer Lord Boothby sitting near the gangster Ronnie Kray. The German magazine Stern used the photograph with a caption that noted that both men were homosexuals. Boothby later won an astonishing £40,000 in a libel case. Boothby claimed that the photograph was totally innocent and that there was no homosexual relationship.
- Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker is photographed at a party with Manchester businessman John Taylor. This is later used as part of the basis of an investigation into Stalker because it was alleged by the police that Taylor was a member of the “Quality Street Gang’, an alleged criminal fraternity in Manchester. Both Stalker and Taylor claimed that the relationship was innocent. They did meet at parties and occasionally went out to dinner together, but that was all.
- The Scotland Yard Detective Tony Lundy is photographed at a party. Also in the photograph is Roy Garner, later convicted in a massive cocaine bust, and two other criminals. The authors of the Cocaine Conspiracy caption the photograph “Just good friends’. Although they do not add a question mark at the end, it is clear from the tone of the book which way we are supposed to read that phrase.
It would appear to be rather simple. Tony Lundy, assumed by many to be the Yard’s most successful thief-taker, was in fact corrupt. After five years of intense investigation, three of the top investigative journalists on World in Action (WIA) nail their man in a television programme and book which details Lundy’s connections to Garner. When Lundy retires on health grounds and then refuses to issue libel proceedings the case seems proved. Is it that simple?
With no specialised knowledge of this area all I can do is confine myself to the two books: the WIA updated and revised paperback, 260 pages long with no notes and no index; and the Short book, 350 pages with some notes and an index. On the basis of this evidence there really is little competition. Short effectively demolishes the WIA book, pulling it apart piece by piece, exposing the wild assumptions which permeate the text. He then disposes of the assumptions of guilt by association which at first glance looked so damaging. Short makes us aware of something we are all guilty of — making charges based on too little information. It may be that Lundy is corrupt but not on the evidence of these two books. It would really be interesting to see WIA reply.
I sometimes had niggling doubts about Lundy’s defence that it was part of his job to mingle with the criminal fraternity in order to gain intelligence and develop his strategy of using informers. These are relatively minor doubts, though, since his record on convictions does look highly impressive. More suspect is his apparent naivety. In ways that parallel the intelligence world’s use of defectors, Lundy used informers. But this is a notoriously difficult game. Defectors can be false; sometimes, drained of useful information, they peddle disinformation for profit. In this hothouse atmosphere paranoia develops and conspiracies are everywhere, often inspired by supposed colleagues. Just as James Angleton was accused of being a KGB agent because of his overly close relationship to Golitsyn, so Lundy was smeared because of his working relationship with Garner.
It is not a game for innocents and in many ways Lundy was just that, an honest copper who thought they should play by the rules and that the corrupt should be sought out. Lundy’s fall was inevitable. Too many toes were stepped on, there were too many bruised egos and too many raised jealousies to allow Lundy to continue. I do not buy Lundy’s theory that it was the Freemasonry ring inside the force that brought him down — there is not enough evidence — but Short’s book does convince me that Lundy was hung out to dry once the media scented corruption.
Attempting to answer all the World in Action allegations, Short’s account is occasionally hard going. However, it is a fine example of investigative journalism by our best writer on the police and corruption. It is thus rather disturbing to discover that this is only the third review the book has attracted.
SD
The Irish Information Partnership, the database on events in Northern Ireland, is being wound up. As a result there are copies of the Partnership’s Irish Information Agenda available at greatly reduced prices. 360 A4 pages, bound volumes, the Agenda is the best hard copy, one volume source on events in Northern Ireland. (The contents of the 6th Edition are shown here.) Originally costing £60 each, the 4th and 6th editions are on offer at £50 the pair, postage included. Send cheques (payable to the Irish Information Partnership) to Lobster. I will forward them.
RR