For me history is a nice and safe hobby. Sitting in warm archives wading through
documents is a good way a, mostly, unemployed person can keep out of the
way. It helps that my areas of interest
are niche and largely unimportant to most people. But, history has a habit of invading the
present and, moreover, what is history to some people is unfinished business to
others. To understand the past one
sometimes has to step into the present day.
I have written several times about the case of Derek
RIDGEWELL. He was, as most people now
know, a corrupt British Transport Police officer who died in prison in 1982. He was imprisoned for theft and associated
offences from the Bricklayers Arms goods depot in south London. He was associated with organised crime and,
throughout the 1970s, regularly targeted innocent men and ‘fitted them up’ for
offences of which they were entirely innocent.
RIDGEWELL was a racist, a thug and a perjurer. Not all of his victims were black but he was quick
to exploit the overt racism which was a hallmark of society in the period.
This week some of his victims (or rather their children as
they have since died) saw the Court of Appeal overturn convictions based on his
fabricated evidence at Bricklayers Arms.
This may be the last case in his long chronology of corruption as it
arose in the final phase of his career.
RIDGEWELL’s crimes all took place a long time ago. “ The
police service is different now”. “Things
have moved on”. These are phrases I have
heard many times in discussions with serving and retired police officers. I always urge them to the testimony of his
victims and, even more so, to their families, about the long term consequences
of the convictions that still cast a shadow today.
I am also often reminded that most police officers in the
1970s were honest and hardworking. This
is true. In BTP officers were facing a dramatic
rise in violent crime with few resources.
They were poorly paid and not at all appreciated by the government, the
courts or even the general public. To
question the way corruption was handled at the time should not tarnish those who
were a force for good. Many serious
criminals were convicted at great personal risk and in most cases justice was
done, often against the odds.
Unfortunately the legacy of these officers, and indeed of
the organisation, is potentially harmed both by the crimes of officers such as
Ridgewell but also by the failure of the organisation to deal with them. This failure started in the early 1970s when one
of his cases was thrown out of court (he had arrested two Jesuit students as
they travelled on the tube) followed by a BBC Nationwide programme which highlighted
the corruption that led to the acquittal.
In fact RIDGEWELL was never charged with any offence relating to his regular
perversions of justice. Nor was
anyone else, and herein lies a problem. Decades have past but a review of RIDGEWELL’s
cases did not take place until well into this century. However some individuals who had given
evidence at the original trials were still alive even then. I have no inside
knowledge of the investigations that have taken place within the BTP but I do
know that investigators would have been hampered by BTP’s poor record
keeping. Files and correspondence were
not kept. Virtually no files survive
from the period. This was not a
conspiracy. There is no advantage to the
modern incarnation of BTP to indulge in a continuing cover up. But I
am left with some questions about the police review of the convictions that
were/are potentially unsafe:
1.
How did the review miss the Bricklayers Arms
case that has just been quashed by the Court of Appeal? It is the work of minutes to find this case
in the British Transport Police Journal – a fully digitised publication copies
of which are held by BTP.
2.
What attempts were made to interview RIDGEWELL’s
associates and colleagues? At the time
of the first successful appeal (2018) there were plenty of potential
witnesses.
3.
Did the force employ the services of a forensic
or academic historian? Using archives
and historical sources are not skills taught to detectives. Experience from investigations of the ‘troubles’
in Northern Ireland and other events on the mainland have shown the advantages
that come from using experts who understand the context of policing in the
1970s. It is worth remembering that it
was the volunteers of the British Transport Police History group (BTPHG) that
found paperwork relating to one of the original trials and located HR
information about RIDGEWELL’s career.
The Group also searched through the BTP Journal at the request of the
Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Historians, even amateur ones, are comfortable with documentation from
the past.
4.
When did BTP access RIDGEWELL’s Will – a public
document? The Will makes reference to
the “contents and all correspondence personal and otherwise, of my safety
deposit box”. Were BTP able to track
down this correspondence?
5.
Did the force make use of contemporary
newspapers to find other cases that featured RIDGEWELL? An easy task using modern databases.
6.
Will BTP and other police forces learn from the
process of reviewing old cases of police corruption?
I have no right to know the answers to these questions. Investigations have to be conducted in a
confidential manner, but I am curious. In due course papers will be revealed to
historians.
There is a background issue here. The police service has a culture that is
largely contemptuous of the suggestion that anything that happened more than a
decade ago can be relevant. This is one of
the reasons that the police are so bad at learning the operational lessons of
past incidents. To the modern service everything
is new. Every time it repeats the
mistakes of the past Chief Officers don sackcloth and ashes and proclaim loudly
that lessons will be learned. A telling
phrase one hears in working with police officers is ‘…that’s before my time’, it
is as if relevance can be measured only with a personal stopwatch.
There is an aspect of this that troubles me greatly. RIDGEWELL did not act alone in any of the
cases that involved fitting up innocent people.
Two other officers were convicted with him when he was eventually caught
stealing. But these were not the only
officers who supported his criminal conspiracies and who lied on oath. It is important to remember that the cases
that have been overturned in the last five years did not involve officers exaggerating
what they saw or heard. These were not
examples of ‘gilding the lily’ or of ‘noble cause corruption’. These prosecutions were a work of complete
fiction. Innocent people were seized and
imprisoned by police officers who exercised their powers for their own
purposes. In the process these men were
dehumanised by people who were supposed
to uphold the law. I don’t think I know
a police officer capable of such conduct – that they existed (and may still
exist) shakes my belief in the system that gave me employment for most of my
adult life. History teaches us that crime,
including crime committed by police officers, does not occur in a vacuum. Systems matter and so does culture.
In response to the latest case BTP issued a rather clunky
press release. It starts by repeating an
apology to the British African community for the trauma suffered because of
RIDGEWELL’s actions. While RIDGEWELL was
a racist not all of his victims were black or would identify as British
African. This was the subject of
critical comment from the families of the those convicted in the Bricklayers
Arms case. The Press Release also
mentions the funding of a bursary for a British African Youth to study
law. This did not show a great deal of
sensitivity to the ethnic background of the Bricklayers Arms victims. I have previously welcomed the prospect of
a bursary. It is a powerful symbol that
RIDGEWELL’s targeting of the black community in London has not been forgotten
but his offending did also touch other groups and this needs to be
acknowledged.
As is to be expected the press have run many articles this
week, covering the background and the human interest angles of what happened
and how it has blighted the lives of many.
Unfortunately some in the right leaning press have alighted on the creation
of the bursary and the content of the press release and have made this the main
story. Hijacking an injustice to produce
ammunition for the manufactured concept of a ‘culture war’ is pretty poor
journalism. The Spectator, The Daily
Telegraph and the Daily Mail have indulged themselves in a field day of
righteous indignation without making any suggestions about how best to confront
the wrongs of the past – or indeed the relationship between past misconduct and
that which can still be found in policing.
I made the mistake of reading the public comments on the article that
appeared in the Daily Mail on line. It
will be a while before I recover my faith in the British public.
In my study of the history of policing the railway there are
plenty of examples of misconduct. I
sometimes blog about them and I know that they are reflection of the wider
police service. But the corruption
revealed by the RIDGEWELL case is on an entirely different level to everything
else I have seen. For many years BTP
officers were so embarrassed by his crimes that they were rarely mentioned. However it is time for all of us to
acknowledge what happened. Police history
isn’t just about the bravery, dedication
and detective skills of the last 150
years. Police historians must not ignore the darker parts of what has gone
before. We, together with serving
officers, must confront the past and in doing so we contribute to justice
itself.
Phil Trendall
Jan 2024
NOTES
(i)
In other posts I often point out the skewed
development of the constitutional and legal position of BTP and its railway/dock
police ancestors. I find it ironic that
if RIDGEWELL were alive today he would not be placed on the College of Policing
Barred List, despite his crimes and his inevitable dismissal. BTP, which features heavily in the caselaw on
police misconduct (in a positive way),
is not included in the regulations designed to prevent wrongdoers being
re-employed by other police forces.
Hopefully this will change soon.
(iv)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68017926
(v)
Note at the time of writing the full text of the
Court of Appeal Judgement is not available.
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