Ricky Tomlinson joins calls for Labour to act on Shrewsbury Picket scandal

The grieving family of the jailed Shrewsbury Picket Arthur Murray as well as Ricky Tomlinson have made an emotional plea for Keir Starmer to release all the official government papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets.

Remembering Shrewsbury Picket Arthur Murray

The funeral service for Arthur Murray was held at Flint Crematorium only five miles from Mold Crown Court, where over 50 years earlier one of the most notorious working class miscarriages of justice in British legal history took place.

The case of the Shrewsbury Pickets saw construction workers from North Wales jailed for taking part in peaceful picketing during the 1972 national building workers strike. Arthur Murray was one of the jailed pickets, alongside Dessie Warren, Ricky Tomlinson (who later became an actor and national treasure), and others.

After decades of campaigning, the convictions of the Shrewsbury 24 were finally quashed in the Court of Appeal in March 2021. Arthur Murray was the first person to submit an appeal to the Criminal Cases Review Commission that eventually led to the historic legal victory, which saw the pickets leave the Royal Courts of Justice as innocent men – which they always were.

Jillian Murray-Keddie and Cheryl Clark, the daughters of Arthur Murray, described how the families of the jailed pickets had suffered but were supported by the solidarity of other workers, but how when their father was first released from prison:

he was blacklisted and found it almost impossible to get work. But he never backed down because he knew he had done nothing wrong.

Ricky Tomlinson: ‘fitted up by the state’

Ricky Tomlinson, who served two years imprisonment for his role in Shrewsbury and who last met Arthur just a few weeks ago, spoke at the funeral, telling mourners:

Arthur fought like hell to clear his name, and all the other pickets who were fitted up by the state by a conspiracy between the Heath government and the construction employers when they wanted to wipe out trade union organisation after winning a £6 a week settlement of the strike.

This was a vicious, spiteful and malicious conspiracy against ordinary workers who dared to challenge the construction industry bosses. The quashing of our convictions is not the same as justice. The real conspiracy was between the building employers, the police, MI5 and the government. When will they be held to account?

One of the outstanding issues for the Shrewsbury Pickets, their families and supporters is that even after fifty years, the official government papers on the dispute and the trial have still not been released.

The vast majority of government papers are released under the 30 year rule (and now the 20 year rule); but successive home secretaries (both Conservative and Labour) have refused to allow the papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets to be placed into the national archive.

Demanding justice now

At the wake, when members of Arthur’s family and trade unionists who had traveled from around the UK shared their memories of Arthur, a unanimous vote was taken calling on the new Labour government to immediately release all the official government papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets. Ricky Tomlinson also added his name.

A hastily written note of the vote reads:

This gathering of friends and comrades call upon Sir Keir Starmer to release all the Shrewsbury secret files.

Phil Simpson, a long standing Shrewsbury campaigner and close friend of Arthur, commented:

We are calling on the Prime Minister to draw a line under this outrageous episode in industrial relations, where consecutive governments have used the same lame excuse that publishing the records would be a ‘threat to national security’. I just don’t buy it.

When we see the world around us heading to monumental disasters, it’s more to do with consecutive governments covering one another’s backs regardless of the political party.

The PM told us he was going to change society for the better: so let’s start here.

Featured image and additional images supplied