Thread 29 Starmer - Paint your Bandwagon

[DuncinToffee]

And do a little rain dance

previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5385382-thread-28-starmer-weodmonath?page=40&reply=146569893

I have to say MNHQ seems to be cracking down a bit more on the racist shite recently.

Good! About time.

That is a shame. I loved mine so much. I still feel a little pang about my poor lost Troll.

Yeah I’ve read a few books based on 40/60’s east end London based on gandland crime. It mentions a lot about pubs saying “no blacks, no Irish” etc.

Id have thought we’d have moved on 🙄

God - I misread that post and thought you were talking about ‘grandad crime’. I thought that was a bit niche

This is about Rillington Place . It's the casualness of the racist comments and the generalisations about black tenants and the assumptions about black men.

And the fact that thanks to the capital punishment brigade, not only was an innocent man hanged, but the real killer went on to kill again.

Well, possibly. I don't think there's certainty about the innocence of Evans. We'll never know. But certainly the whole thing was bizarre. The fact that in those days newspapers paid legal teams is one of the more bonkers aspects.

When I was looking for a new flat in London, late 80s with a professional job and well paid salary, I rang about a flat I was interested in, via the Evening Standard, which was available from 12pm - lots of students in the place. I was told very abruptly that the flat had gone.

My received English accent friend was taking no nonsense and immediately rang back from a different line to be told that the flat was indeed available for viewing. She said she would ring back. We discussed it and she did as I asked - rang back to call him out on his overt racism. And told him very politely to fuck off - think Margot in the Good Life.

I have an Irish accent.

About bloody time too. Is it safe to come back here yet?

He was exonerated. There was a campaign at the time to continue a smear of his name as given the huge publicity plus the increasingly abolitionist nature of society there was (as it turned out a real) risk that capital punishment could be abolished.

The chances of two killers living under the same roof at the same time defy even my capacity for accepting the incredible.

Of the three cases that get lumped into the story of abolition, Evans is the most convincing. He was innocent of the crime.

Bentley was a little different. Joint enterprise was a long established thing. However whether it could be applied to someone in custody was dubious, and the fact that Bentley probably should not have been tried makes it uncomfortable.

Ruth Ellis was bang to rights as far as I can see, although had there been a defence of extreme emotional distress, the outcome may have been different. For all the handwringing the police dug a bullet out of a wall showing that she was indifferent to the risk to bystanders. That was (for me) probably the concluding fact.

All of which being said, since I disagree with capital punishment, had I been on the jury with no other choice but guilty and hang or innocent, I'd vote innocent. As I suspect was happening at the time.

Evans, a person of low literacy due to a disability and consequent low attendance at school was absolutely innocent because Christie admitted to the killings.

Have you read ‘The Fortune Men’ by Nadifa Mohamed @Piggywaspushed and @SerendipityJane ? It’s about Mahmood Mattan, who was basically executed for being Somalian…that was the only evidence against him and witnesses told the police it wasn’t him. There’s a BBC podcast on Sounds about it, called Mattan: Injustice of a Hanged Man.

There was a real "but was he really ?????" sort of campaign in the more establishment media.

As I said there was already a growing unease about the death penalty, and the patronising "we never make mistakes" of the establishment were not being taken seriously. The Evans case came slap bang in the middle of that.

Remember the current mantra of the hang'em brigade is "But DNA ...."

People used to gather outside jails and (really) protest with someone slamming a car door at 09:00.

Noted with thanks 🙏

I read Pierrepoints self serving autobiography. And while he's clearly a grifter, whoever he let write it for him made some damn good points about capital punishment. Basically it was never about justice.

@SerendipityJane the death penalty became exponentially unpopular after WW2 ended.

I don't think Christie admitted to killing the little daughter. I imagine he did though.

So did Evans. Read The Peepshow. I think there's a weight of evidence that they were both involved. At the very least, Evans beat his wife. I am very anti capital punishment by the way. So many cases are so ambiguous.

I have read about Mattan and will seek out this book

He didn't. No one did. Poor mite.

Just checked on the 'gatherings', it's safe to say that the government won't fall today.

They are all egregious but Bentley to me is by far the worst

He killed the pregnant woman, and admitted it. At that time abortion was illegal and killing a woman who was pregnant came with a heavy penalty.

Christie killed his wife and many other women. Why would there be any doubt that he killed Geraldine?

I believe that it will prove the beginning of the end following the November budget.

Just my view, of course.

Possibly not.

Geraldine was found buried with Beryl.