The Torture Trial

By the way the judge that tried us, now Sir Fredrick Lawton and retired High Court Judge and Lord Justice of Appeal, his father was Governor of Oxford prison and Pentonville and Wandsworth. I kidnapped him and tried to hang him on Wandsworth common.

Some time later I saw his son Sir Fredrick Lawton on Victoria Station. I cornered him and told him what I thought of his father. I didn't hit him or anything, didn't swear, but forcibly and firmly what I thought of him. He couldn't go backwards or forwards but eventually he managed to run away and I chased after him.

You had guys giving evidence in the trial in 1967. One of the charges against Eddie for instance, was something that happened in about 1957, before I even knew Eddie. I was in prison then. Eddie went with a guy called Jack Duval to Austria or Switzerland and into Italy. Jack Duval's evidence was that he smuggled a watch through. Eddie said "you idiot, you could have got us all into trouble" and punched him. It sounds ridiculous over one punch and he got 10 years for that and other things. You had everyone giving evidence years ago.

They had to go, they was getting too powerful, too much money.

I brought this out at the trial. The idea being that he shouldn't be allowed to try us because of the things I said to him. He denied any knowledge of it completely. In the lunch hour when the jury retired, we went to go down to the cells and Mr Lawton called us back. He said that he had given it some thought and he said there was an incident on a London railway station in the winter of 64/65 when a drunken man was abusive to him. He can't remember his father's name mentioned and even if it was it didn't mean he couldn't try this case.....

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