Member Review
Review by
Heather R, Reviewer
My thanks to the publishers, Oldcastle, for an advanced review copy of this book, which contributes an important record of one of the most shameful miscarriages of justice ever perpetrated in Britain. It tells in depth and with empathy the stories of the people whose lives were upended by the murder of Lynette White, a sex worker in Butetown, Cardiff. And it tries to lay out the sequence of events which led to the the subsequent arrests of 5 black men by a corrupt police force and the convictions of 3 of them by an all white jury in Swansea, despite clear evidence that the crime had been committed by none of them.
The author, who comes from and has now returned to live in the area, conveys the history and geography of Butetown well and allows the reader to enjoy something of the vitality and hospitality of its people, which I can well remember, having come from Birmingham to support a demonstration by a most remarkable anti racist campaign to free the wrongfully convicted men.
To my mind the book spends a bit too much time on the ‘dirty linen’ of complex relationships between people living in Butetown and not enough on how the brothers of two of the convicted men, Malik Abdullahi and Lloyd Paris, mobilised such a forceful and successful campaign from scratch. It involved them travelling all over the country to tell people about what had happened and garner support and they were not people in the habit of doing that. Their visit to Birmingham, along with their friend Julian, the bus driver, is one of my lasting memories. I can see Lloyd now, clicking his fingers and telling us about Butetown, the melting pot.
There were a number of other anti racist campaigns at this time against deportations of black and Asian people and to defend people charged by the police when they had been defending themselves. The Cardiff Three campaign connected with all of them. They managed to get the convictions overturned on appeal through that pressure in a matter of 4 years. It had taken 16 years for a campaign to overturn the convictions of the Birmingham Six and 14 years to free the Guildford Four.
This is an important book and people should know from it that you can win if you stand up and fight injustice, no matter who you are, no matter what the cost and no matter how unlikely a victory looks at the time.
The reader should also note the aftermath of this shocking case. Vulnerable people on the margins who had been bullied by a corrupt police force into making false statements were tried for perjury and sentenced to 18 months despite the judge recognising the duress under which they acted. The case against the police, on the other hand, whose conviction should have followed, collapsed on the advice of the DPP when some irrelevant documents requested by their defence could not be found. The DPP was one Keir Starmer.
The author, who comes from and has now returned to live in the area, conveys the history and geography of Butetown well and allows the reader to enjoy something of the vitality and hospitality of its people, which I can well remember, having come from Birmingham to support a demonstration by a most remarkable anti racist campaign to free the wrongfully convicted men.
To my mind the book spends a bit too much time on the ‘dirty linen’ of complex relationships between people living in Butetown and not enough on how the brothers of two of the convicted men, Malik Abdullahi and Lloyd Paris, mobilised such a forceful and successful campaign from scratch. It involved them travelling all over the country to tell people about what had happened and garner support and they were not people in the habit of doing that. Their visit to Birmingham, along with their friend Julian, the bus driver, is one of my lasting memories. I can see Lloyd now, clicking his fingers and telling us about Butetown, the melting pot.
There were a number of other anti racist campaigns at this time against deportations of black and Asian people and to defend people charged by the police when they had been defending themselves. The Cardiff Three campaign connected with all of them. They managed to get the convictions overturned on appeal through that pressure in a matter of 4 years. It had taken 16 years for a campaign to overturn the convictions of the Birmingham Six and 14 years to free the Guildford Four.
This is an important book and people should know from it that you can win if you stand up and fight injustice, no matter who you are, no matter what the cost and no matter how unlikely a victory looks at the time.
The reader should also note the aftermath of this shocking case. Vulnerable people on the margins who had been bullied by a corrupt police force into making false statements were tried for perjury and sentenced to 18 months despite the judge recognising the duress under which they acted. The case against the police, on the other hand, whose conviction should have followed, collapsed on the advice of the DPP when some irrelevant documents requested by their defence could not be found. The DPP was one Keir Starmer.
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