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Since reading certain recent somewhat naff offhand Lobster comments (1) in connection with the reissue of Gordon Carr’s Angry Brigade by Christie Books, I’ve looked at the book and a few other bits’n’pieces. So, it all led nowhere, and rightly so? Lobster isn’t the first and won’t be the last to mythologise. Even certain AB defence counsel, who I personally know, and are even more in-the-know than I am, have done the same.

My bits’n’pieces included publicity for a day long post-AB trial ‘Free The Five’ (Creek, Barker, Prescott, Mendelson and Greenfield) ‘Teach-in’ at North London Poly (17 Feb. 1973). This event was very well attended. The day’s agenda targeted the Criminal Injustice System – crupt’n’bendy cops’n’courts, Ex-Lax lawyers ‘n’shite prisons. I especially remember, and with very good reason, the arrival of Up Against the Law (UPAL) a 40 page no messin’ Defendants’ Rights magazine, hot off the presses that very day. Bent on the demolition of the Old Bailey and capturing control of the Scales of Injustice. it declared it’s ‘complete solidarity’ with the AB prisoners.

UPAL wasn’t solely an ultra popular mag. It was, in fact, the tool of a pool of previously networking pro-MacKenzie-Adviser activists, who reformed as a political collective of the same name. They came out of the very heart of the Stoke Newington 8 (SN8) defence campaign, and UPAL mag over the next few years ran to some 9 editions (see note 9), the last of which carried the most detailed and thorough account of the George Davis frame-up that ever saw the light of day.

In fact on the day of UPAL 9’s publication (28 August 1975) it helped the Davis Campaign to capture the tabloid front page lead (2)despite such august opposition as the previous evening’s bombing of the Caterham Arms pub by the IRA. The assertion of Lobster and others that the IRA’s ‘big bombs’ inevitably and rightly pushed everything else into an abyss doesn’t always configure.

It occurs to me that had the IRA and not the Davis Campaign (with UPAL still waiting to bat) sabotaged the 1975 Headingly Test Cricket wicket (19 August 1975) it would have still won loads of publicity kudos, saved a few lives and upset a few poor souls in white flannels. I hope that it is becoming clear that despite the AB courtroom convictions the political convictions of certain activist elements stayed extremely firm, and the battle went on. A grouse of my own about the Carr volume and its additional material is that it fails to bring any of this to light. Barker actually suggests that it is time for refocusing in this way, but nobody so far has rolled up their sleeves and properly got on with it.

In the late 1960’s and especially on into the mid to late 1970’s, the battle against the Criminal Injustice System was enjoined by a number of radical newly formed groups – ie. not ones like Justice, NCCL, NACRO, The Howard League for Prison Reform Trust – useful or otherwise though at times these last may well have been.

It is crucial to appreciate which new groups emerged, when, how and in certain cases who was involved and, the extent to which (ie. on which matters they separately as well as jointly were able to contribute effectively. Importantly, the very existence of these radical groups helped to create a receptive ambience which inspired confidence and hope, especially for those who might otherwise have felt they had to put up and shut up. UPAL inspired bundles of folk including those campaigning for George Ince. (3) This is Peter Chappell writing to UPAL activists from Armley Prison in early September 1975, awaiting trial for the Headingly sabotage:

‘When this campaign started 18 months ago I was completely on my own and, if the truth were known, I was probably being labelled as a well meaning nut case, even in EAST LONDON with no friends at all that I could seriously talk to about Davis’s case…….. I value UPAL’s help a great deal…..I thought that I must find other people and that if I make sacrifices then sooner or later others would join the fight…… George Davis is not on his own anymore thanks to people like you. There are more things twixt life and death than a pound note.’

Oceans of things cannot be entered into here. Suffice it to say, the most significant radical groups (in my own experience (4)) were UPAL itself, Radical Alternatives to Prison (RAP), Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners (PROP), Justice Against the Identification Laws (JAIL), the Committee for a Socialist Programme (CSP) and crucially, at particular times, Release. (5) One leading UPAL MacKenzie-Advisor ex-SN8 and ex-Oz Trial activist (6)had very firm Release connections, UPAL obtained independent office space at Release (7)and when I joined Release (September 1977) I had a UPAL, JAIL, RAP and PROP activist background and footnoted references for this piece make it clear that Release’s (then) own quarterly journal News Release provided numerous opportunities for that background to be put to good use. Indeed, by coincidence, on the 7th anniversary of the AB trial convictions (in early December 1979) Release won the Cobden Trust Annual Award for the best civil liberties publication of the year (for Trouble with the Law – a ‘bust book’ for those who were ‘up against the law’), and the contribution to it that I was able to make must have greatly helped to swing the award in Release’s favour. News Release in the later 1970s carried many radical UPAL type items, including detailed pieces about the Guildford Four case (8) by an ex-founder member of UPAL who’d kept up a direct involvement with that case since the earlier 1970s. Indeed, there are substantial features in News Release’s pages which have topical resonance even to the present time.

Of course it wasn’t all plain sailing. Before the end of the AB trials controversy loomed: for instance, were all prisoners to be supported or mainly political prisoners? London PROP’s July 1973 publication Political Prisoners or Prisoners’ Unions?: Conflict or Co-operation? addressed that very issue, as well as other crucially important matters targeted at the February 1973 teach-in and in significant earlier SN8 publications.

The early 1970s police establishment view of police corruption and malpractice was infamously that it was just ‘one bad apple’ in the barrel. UPAL mag’s pioneering countrywide densely tabulated pages of one bad apple listings soon holed that garbage well below the water line. (9)

The complementary radical activist campaigns mounted by UPAL, JAIL and PROP in relation to policing, prison and legal system abuses were an integral part of the more general pressures that were brought to bear to bring about change and improvement.

Change and improvement there was, although for sure, not enough. In London the relatively recent establishment of the Metropolitan Police Authority as part of the Greater London Authority at times still fails miserably. However the actual establishment of the MPA in part owes something historically to 1970s activism, as of course had the development in the early 1980s by numerous London Borough Councils of staffed units that took on board the political need to democratically challenge, highlight and improve policing standards and practices. These post 1970s developments did not spring out of thin air. Although the influences that came to bear were very many and varied, UPAL, JAIL and PROP in those now seemingly distant 1970s days got stuck in there. In fact, where JAIL is concerned, both of its first two coordinators went on to take up 1980’s posts in London Local Authority units established along the lines described above.

As for police needle with the George Davis campaign, Lobster readers need do no more than check out the absolutely foul-mouthed expletive-ridden police volume published by and energetically promoted by The Police Review Publishing Co., Yankee One and George Davis is Innocent by Dave Brady (1984).

Almost exactly six years to the day after the Old Bailey Angry Brigade trials ended, an event was held at the North London Poly where in February 1973 the Free The Five Teach-in had also taken place. This event, Whose Law & Order? – a Conference on Class Law, was well attended. Papers prepared for it were collated in a folder overprinted with images of the Hull Prison Roof Rioters, Jake Prescott and conniving lawyers artwork from the pages of UPAL. There was even a campaign leaflet calling for Freedom for Astrid Proll. Nothing more clearly indicates that the battle enjoined at the very same venue in February 1973 was still alive and really kicking than the nature of the papers that were presented and those who presented them. (10) This conference was organised by JAIL’s co-ordinator, Martin J Walker, a founder member of that group and an ex-Davis campaigner.

Carr’s book provided an opportunity for Special Branch to feed peanuts to us about the AB. Special Branch remains the least accountable part of the Police Service. My gut feeling is that there exists almost a taboo against pressing home the need for continued Special Branch scrutiny or accountability. BOSS and our own spook services dropped a real clanger that truly rebounded at least on the Criminal Injustice System when Peter Hain was fingered for a bank snatch at his local Barclays. And Davis was suddenly let out by exercise of the Royal Prerogative, despite having less than 6 months earlier lost his Appeal; and no full explanation has ever been given. It is hard not to suspect that at the very highest levels wheels were quietly turning while midnight oils were burning.

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From David Guyatt

Thanks for the latest Lobster and for including my remarks about Seagrave’s book. Please allow me to make a small number of observations on your review commentary.

The monetary values of the black gold mentioned in Gold Warriors are stupendous. Seagrave would never openly write of the sums involved because he realised that most people wouldn’t believe him but would, in fact, find it easier to scoff at him. Let them scoff, I say, life’s too short to worry about such things. You mention ‘tens of billions’ of dollars, and yet if you were to correct this to ‘hundreds of billions’, you would still be shy of the mark.

In his 67-page affidavit (included as one of the many supporting documentary exhibits in my freely downloadable e-book The Project Hammer File), General Erle Cocke, spoke of Project Hammer, which began in 1988/9, as reaching a value of a trillion dollars (and more). I don’t have the exact figures to hand, but I believe the current derivatives overhang is somewhere around $60 trillion, which will keep you in fags for simply ages and ages. Anyway, Cocke came from an old banking family and was (apart from his distinguished military career and his less distinguished role in the CIA’s Nugan Hand Bank caper) himself a banker. This included a four-year stint as the US representative at the World Bank, for example.

The simple fact is that the volume of gold mined over the ages is very much greater than the quantities allowed by any and all official statistics – including, oddly enough, NATO. It is not as if the authorities are not cognisant of their rather remarkable understatements, but they have economic reasons why they wish to have this information suppressed. But it is not just governments who have a large grimy finger thrust into this very large non-existent pie. There are a number of additional interested parties, too. And agendas.

Notes

1 Lobster 46 pp. 43/44.

2 Check out the Daily Mirror. For an insider retrospective on the Davis Campaign and the low-down on the Mirror and the Campaign and the Mirror and UPAL issue no. 9 see News Release, Sept./Nov. 1978.

3 ‘I Shall Be Released’. Anyone remember that one? Even Tom Robinson caught the bug.

4 There were other activist groups. I am writing only of those that I directly came to know most about.

5 RAP was founded in 1970. PROP was founded in 1972 by ex prisoners with two Press Conferences – one in London the other in Hull. JAIL was founded in 1975 because the many ID case campaigns needed oversight and co-ordination. JAIL’s original core activists were very closely involved with PROP. I became JAIL Secretary after leaving UPAL and when I joined Release Martin J Walker continued as JAIL co-ordinator.

6 Indeed, he had also been an advisor in the Oz trial (to Richard Neville) in addition to the Mangrove 9, The Miss World and Powis Square trials.

7 Guardian report 23 March 1973. p 10.

8 News Release Jan / Mar. 1978.

9 UPAL Issue no. 6 (November 1974) never saw the light of day. Although printed up as usual by S W Litho, the Socialist Workers Party printers, they got cold feet and promptly pulped all 10,000 copies. Ex AB counsel tried in vain to respectfully save the day; Paul Foot sided with the printers.

10 Gareth Peirce – ‘Cooper, Macmahon and the appeal’;
Francis Keenan – ‘The Diplock Courts’;
Geoff Coggan (PROP) – Prisons and Prisoners Without Law’;
Jackie Kaye (Prisoners Aid Committee) – ‘Irish Political Trials in England’ and ‘The Treatment of Irish Political Prisoners in England’;
John Plummer (Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants) – ‘Detention in Prisons Under the Immigration Act 1971’;
Duncan Campbell – ‘Grasses and Verbals’; Anon – ‘The Case of Persons Unknown’ and ‘The Fine Art of Verballing’