A6 Rebooted

[Spitfire]

Yossel, there were two relatively early official reviews made of the case - by D.C.S. Nimmo (commissioned by Labour's Home Secretary Roy Jenkins in 1967) and by the liberal lawyer Lewis Hawser Q.C. (set up by Jenkins in 1974). I'd recommend acquainting yourself with their findings before conjecturing about conspiracies and cover-ups.

Was Nimmo's report ever published? And if so where can it be seen?

This is what the son of a coal miner thought about the Nimmo report as expressed in a written reply of 1 November 1967 to a question raised by Joan Lestor MP.

I have considered with great care the representations made to me about this case.

Mr. Peter Louis Alphon has withdrawn his earlier confession that he committed the murder of which Hanratty was convicted. His involvement in the case was an issue at Hanratty's trial, and neither his confession nor other allegations about his part in the case are supported by new material of substance.

Material has been submitted about Hanratty's claim that he was in Rhyl on 22nd and 23rd August, 1961, the date on which the murder took place. At my request Detective Chief Superintendent J. D. Nimmo of the Manchester City Police, who had not previously had any connection with the case, has made detailed and exhaustive investigations covering all possible lines of enquiry into the alibi.

This alibi was also an issue at the trial. It turned largely on identification (as did the case against Hanratty at the trial), and retrospective statements about identification cannot easily be given greater weight than those made with fresh recollection at the time of the trial, over five years ago. These difficulties could be set aside only if Mr. Nimmo's investigations had turned up some new evidence of substance which raised material doubts about the original statements.

Mr. Nimmo's thorough investigations have not had that result. He has found nothing to strengthen the evidence called at the trial on Hanratty's behalf and no further evidence which, if put before the jury, might have influenced the verdict. The only witness from Rhyl who now appears to give direct confirmation of the alibi is a lady who claims that she saw Hanratty in Rhyl for a few minutes on the evening of 22nd August, 1961. But the defence, after interviewing her during the trial, decided not to call her as a witness; after the trial she was shown photographs of Hanratty by the defence and made a statement in which she declined to give a definite identification. When she was seen by Mr. Nimmo, she at first maintained that she had given a definite identification to the defence in 1962. Mr. Nimmo's conclusion (with which I agree) is that her firm identification of Hanratty is of recent origin and is in all the circumstances unreliable. None of the other Rhyl witnesses claims a positive identification relating to a particular date.

I have accordingly decided that there are no grounds for taking any further action in this case.

[Sherlock Houses]

ps - there's no need to shout, I'm not deaf.

Oops, I must have thought I was your mate Spitfire for a moment.

[Sherlock Houses]

Methinks Derek Nimmo would have done a much more thorough and honest [without using any intimidatory tactics on witnesses] investigation than Dougie.
Even Jenkins had to send Dougie back to Rhyl for a further investigation which speaks volumes.

[Yossel]

Yossel, there were two relatively early official reviews made of the case - by D.C.S. Nimmo (commissioned by Labour's Home Secretary Roy Jenkins in 1967) and by the liberal lawyer Lewis Hawser Q.C. (set up by Jenkins in 1974). I'd recommend acquainting yourself with their findings before conjecturing about conspiracies and cover-ups.

Alfie, if I am wrong in this matter I would like to be corrected but my understanding is that neither report was made public and the witnesses who gave evidence did not sign off to confirm that the reports reflected accurately their testimonies. If that is correct, the reports are worthless and the public is entitled to infer, as I have done, that they were cover-ups.

[Yossel]

Hi Spitfire

Yes, I'm familiar with the written reply of Roy Jenkins from which you quote. I assume you are more satisfied with it than I am.

By the way, what is the relevance of him being 'a miner's son' in this context?

Cheers

Yossel

[Spitfire]

By the way, what is the relevance of him being 'a miner's son' in this context?

Because

The A6 case is as much about social class as justice.

[Yossel]

Because

Yes, but I was referring principally to the early coverage of the case, particularly in the dead-tree press. I wasn't thinking at all about Jenkins at a much later stage.

I'm not sure that his father's occupation has any relevance here. If I had to characterise his decision, I would say that it looked like a case of practical politics outweighing considerations of justice for the family, or the public at large, but at this remove it's just conjecture.

[Alfie]

Alfie, if I am wrong in this matter I would like to be corrected but my understanding is that neither report was made public and the witnesses who gave evidence did not sign off to confirm that the reports reflected accurately their testimonies. If that is correct, the reports are worthless and the public is entitled to infer, as I have done, that they were cover-ups.

Hawser's report was published. I obtained a copy from Bedford Public Library. It quotes extensively from Nimmo's report. Nimmo btw made two trips to Rhyl, the second time to re-interview witnesses with their legal representatives present. His conclusion that there was no good reason to suppose Hanratty had been in Rhyl on the relevant dates didn't change.

Margaret Walker, the woman referred to in Spitfire's post above quoting Roy Jenkins, said, inter alia, to Rhyl police on Feb 8, 1962: "I would not like to say that I could positively identify him ..."

[Yossel]

Hawser's report was published. I obtained a copy from Bedford Public Library. It quotes extensively from Nimmo's report. Nimmo btw made two trips to Rhyl, the second time to re-interview witnesses with their legal representatives present. His conclusion that there was no good reason to suppose Hanratty had been in Rhyl on the relevant dates didn't change.

Margaret Walker, the woman referred to in Spitfire's post above quoting Roy Jenkins, said, inter alia, to Rhyl police on Feb 8, 1962: "I would not like to say that I could positively identify him ..."

Thank you, Alfie. So the Hawser report was published but Nimmo was not. Do you know when it was published?

When I was a Civil Servant engaged in much less serious work than Hawser and Nimmo, it was customary practice to send copies of notes of interview to interviewees and invite them to comment and correct any errors or omissions. The merit of such a practice is obvious. Did your reading of the Hawser Report indicate that the practice had been followed in his work, or Nimmo's?

Regards

Yossel

[Alfie]

Yossel, Hawser's report was published in April 1975. I'm not aware he interviewed anyone in connection with the case, which was over 13 years old at that time. But as Jenkins told the House, his report "examined all the important issues raised in the case, including the identification evidence and the alibis."

Hawser reports on the procedure Nimmo followed with interviewees on his second visit to Rhyl, in this instance with Grace Jones but the same held for other interviewees: "On 18th July 1967 Mrs Jones was again interviewed by Mr Nimmo in the presence of Mr John George JP: Mr Hugh C Jones - her solicitor - and Mr B Berkson, a solicitor. Her statement of 10th February 1967 was read to her and she agreed it was accurate."

The headings in Hawser's report were as follows:

Lewis Hawser: The Case of James Hanratty: Report of Mr. C. Lewis Hawser QC of His Assessment of the Representations Put Forward in the Case of James Hanratty and of Other Relevant Material: Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1975)

I Introduction

II. Outline of the Case

III. Summary of the Prosecution and Defence Cases

IV. Summary of Other Relevant Material and Contentions

V. The Identifications

Miss Storie's 'first statement'

VI. The Other Prosecution Evidence

Roy William Langdale

'Kip'

The Telegram

The Murderer's Past

Roadworks

Voice and Pronunciation

The Hepworth Suit Jacket

The Cartridge cases

VII. The Alibi

A. Mr Hanratty's Account

B. Liverpool

The Sweet Shop Incident

Identification

The Date

The Left Luggage Office

C. Rhyl

The Trial

Evidence as to the 'Rhyl Alibi' not called before the jury

Assessment of the 'Rhyl Alibi'

VIII. Additional Defence Arguments

A. Mr Hanratty's Driving

B. Mr Hanratty's Character and Personality

IX. Peter Louis Alphon

The Trial

Subsequent Events

X. Assessment and Conclusions

The Prosecution Case

The Alibi

His conclusion was "that at the end of the day the case against Mr Hanratty remains overwhelming and that the additional material set into the framework of the case as a whole does not cast any real doubt upon the jury's verdict."

[Yossel]

Thanks Alfie

According to Foot, Hawser did interview witnesses '...behind closed doors.'

I should have remembered that Hawser was published in 1975 because Foot's book quotes from it and comments at some length on factual errors and non sequiturs. My apologies.

It sounds like Nimmo's procedure with Mrs Jones was better second time around. Perhaps if he had followed it first time and with all witnesses the report would have carried greater authority. Then again it wouldn't really matter if the witnesses had had The Archbishop of Canterbury in there with them if they were not going to see the finished version of the report or have an opportunity to comment on it and the way their testimony had been used. Nimmo could write and conclude what he liked, without the risk of contradiction; likewise the Home Secretary.

If the object of these Reports was to satisfy sceptics that the conviction of Hanratty was sound, the procedural shortcomings and secrecy were not helpful.

Regards

Yossel

[cobalt]

Hi Yossel,

Your conclusions regarding the A6 Case are pretty much in line with my own.

The social class point you made was in my view valid, but in truth is a feature of any trial in the UK or anywhere else I imagine. The partly acknowledged wrong conviction of Timothy Evans was an example of a poorly educated labouring man- I think his I.Q. was under 70- vainly attempting to place the blame on John Christie, a man of above average intelligence who worked as a clerk and possessed some social graces. Perhaps there are echoes of this somewhere in the Hanratty/Alphon axis of guilt.

I have no idea why Lewis Hawser is described as a ‘liberal’ judge. Since being a black-hearted reactionary is pretty much a basic requirement for appointment I imagine the bar for being described as ‘liberal’ is rather low. Hawser was entitled to his opinion that there were no grounds to overturn the verdict of the jury, but for him to claim the case against Mr. Hanratty ‘remained overwhelming’ certainly showed he was very liberal in his use of language.

[cobalt]

Two further thoughts on your earlier post, Yossel.

Although Paul Foot was an irritant to The Establishment I think the support given to the A6 committee by John Lennon and Yoko Ono would have been of greater concern. Lennon was a prickly character whose sneering disdain for conventional morality was a feature of his discourse at the time. Given his high status amongst the youth of the UK and beyond this made Lennon a danger to traditional power structures, in the days before they had fully learned how to absorb the counter culture. His 1969 interview for the BBC programme ‘Man of the Decade’ (yes, there was crap TV back then as well) sees him mocking ‘Mrs. Brighton-on Toast’ whose days, as he saw it then, were numbered and good riddance. Paul Foot wanted to change the system from within. Lennon wanted to piss on it.

Why was there no similar crime to the A6 Case afterwards? The easy answer is to say that Hanratty was executed and stopped in his tracks. Yet the motivation offered at trial- that Hanratty was a petty thief who wanted to step up to armed robbery- could surely apply to many an up and coming villain. By the law of averages we would expect there to be a similar type of crime now and again. Yet although there have been cases of motorists being ordered out of cars at gunpoint or held at gunpoint to be robbed, it seems there has never been a crime quite like the A6 Case since 1961.

[Alfie]

I have no idea why Lewis Hawser is described as a 'liberal' judge.

Hawser wasn't a judge, he was a QC. And he was described as "a prominent left-wing and anti-establishment lawyer" by the Liberal Democrat politician and life peer Dick Taverne, in his memoir 'Against The Tide: Politics and Beyond' (2014).

In the mid-1960s Taverne had signed a Commons motion calling for a pardon for Hanratty. Then in 1966 "after I arrived at the Home Office, the BBC ran a programme that claimed that Hanratty's alibi had been confirmed by a number of new witnesses and that he was innocent. Roy Jenkins appointed Detective Superintendent Nimmo to investigate. I asked if I too could look at the Home Office papers because I had signed the motion and hoped that exoneration of Hanratty would strengthen the case against capital punishment, which was still a highly controversial issue. After a conviction for murder, the Home Office used to retain every relevant document, because the death penalty was only implemented in a very small number of cases in which there appeared to be no scintilla of doubt about the guilt of the accused ... Much to my dismay, after study of the documents, I concluded that the evidence that Hanratty was guilty was overwhelming. Nimmo's report in March 1967 also dismissed the claims made by the BBC."

[cobalt]

From Dick Taverne’'s perspective half of the UK was left wing since he himself left the Labour Party which had nurtured him to join an early form of the SDP. Unsurprisingly Taverne was lauded by the right wing press as a hero who had seen the light and given much airtime even after he subsequently lost his seat. In much the same way as Nigel Farage is nowadays barely off mainstream media although in his case he has yet, despite many attempts, to actually win a seat in the UK parliament. Taverne'’s complacency is clear from this quote:

‘because the death penalty was only implemented in a very small number of cases in which there appeared to be no scintilla of doubt about the guilt of the accused’

There appeared to be rather more than a scintilla of doubt at the time of Hanratty’s conviction, in fact even the jury themselves asked for direction on what 'reasonable doubt' meant.

If Lewis Hawser was anti-establishment then it would be interesting to know of any cases he successfully pled that caused embarrassment to the authorities. I cannot recall him saying anything about the Guildford Four for example, a worse miscarriage of justice than the Birmingham Six, although maybe he was busy on his report at the time.