John Stonehouse: my part in his downfall

If you’ve been watching the ITV drama series Stonehouse https://www.itv.com/watch/stonehouse/10a1973/10a1973a0001, you’ll know the Walsall Labour MP John Stonehouse faked his own death in November 1974, creating the impression that he’d been drowned off a beach in Miami, only to turn up later in Australia where he was arrested. Later he was gaoled in the UK on various fraud charges.

At the time, I was a reporter at ATV, then the ITV company for the English Midlands, and I covered the story extensively. Shortly after his disappearance, I remember interviewing (sadly only by telephone) an American detective who told me he thought someone might have made Stonehouse ‘an offer he couldn’t refuse’ and that the MP might currently be ‘wearing a concrete overcoat.’

The detective turned out to be wrong, but the most surprising thing about the affair for me was that I had done a discussion programme with Stonehouse shortly before the General Election of October 1974 in which he and a Conservative MP had knocked lumps off each other in the customary manner. I’ve always wondered whether Stonehouse already knew he was going to fake his death a month later.

I did a number of interviews with his election agent, Harry Richards. This is one from May 1975:

https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-06051975-john-stonehouse-affair

Further down Memory Lane

Another couple of items from my days with 'ATV Today' in the Midlands in the 1970s. First a report on the court appearance in August 1974 by 7 men charged in connection with IRA bombings. IRA bombs were nothing unusual in the West Midlands around that time. Let's hope Brexit doesn't lead to a revival

https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-05081974-birmingham-bomb-explosions-arrests

Then from July 1977, a report on villages in Leicestershire persecuted by very heavy traffic, who were very keen to see the M69 motorway (pictured) built to siphon the juggernauts away from their streets.

https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-08071977-m69-villages

The world's deadliest tower block fires

A retired judge, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, has been appointed to head the official inquiry into London’s Grenfell Tower fire in which at least 79 people died, while the police say they are investigating any criminal offences that may have been committed.

The deadliest ever fire in a tower block (or blocks) was the result of the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, which cost more than 2,300 lives, but the worst accidental fire was probably the one that raged through the 25-storey Joelma office building in Sao Paulo, Brazil on 1 February 1974. (Grenfell Tower had 24 storeys.)

The blaze happened just a few weeks after the disaster movie, The Towering Inferno, was released, and it became known as ‘the real Towering Inferno’. It was started by an electrical fault on the 11^th floor, and spread rapidly thanks to the ready availability of combustible materials such as paper, plastics and wooden walls and furniture.

When the blaze began, there were more than 750 people in the building. More than 170 fled to the roof, but the heat and smoke foiled a helicopter rescue, and about 40 were killed jumping down or trying to get to firemen’s ladders out of reach below them. Altogether up to 189 people died. 

Bloody Sunday and the Birmingham pub bombings - no more double standards

The British government has spent up to £400 million trying to find out the truth about Bloody Sunday in 1972, when 13 civilians were killed by the army, with reports that a number of soldiers may face being charged with murder.

Less than three years later, in the Birmingham pub bombings of November 1974, 21 people were killed by IRA bombers, and 200 more seriously injured, but the authorities seem to be a good deal less enthusiastic about getting to the bottom of what happened.

Inquests on those killed were closed when six men were convicted of the mass murder, but they were the wrong men, and they were released in 1991. No one has ever been found responsible, and now some of the victims’ families are trying to get the inquests reopened, but West Midlands police are apparently going to oppose them.

Last week the police interviewed a Dublin solicitor who was the IRA’s ‘director of intelligence' at the time of the bombings. He expressed his ‘shame and regret’ over them. But as you will see from my earlier blog of November 21, 2014, there are some very odd things about the police investigation. The authorities have decreed that an independent review of it should remain secret for another 54 years, and a lot of evidence, including another bomb that failed to explode, has gone missing.

My earlier blog:-

http://disasterhistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/birmingham-pub-bombings-40-who-were.html

The real 'Towering Inferno'

On this day…..42 years ago, fire broke out in the 25-storey Joelma Building in the centre of Sao Paulo in Brazil. The blaze happened just a few weeks after the disaster movie, The Towering Inferno, was released, and it became known as ‘the real Towering Inferno’.

The fire was started by an electrical fault on the 11^th floor, and spread rapidly thanks to the ready availability of combustible materials such as paper, plastics and wooden walls and furniture, and within a few minutes, flames were leaping right up to the roof.

When the blaze began, there were more than 750 people inside, but the building had no emergency exits, fire alarms or sprinkler systems. More than 170 fled to the roof, but the heat and smoke foiled a helicopter rescue, and about 40 were killed jumping down or trying to get to firemen’s ladders out of reach below them.

Others died of suffocation attempting to escape via the building’s escalators, and altogether up to 189 people were killed. After the disaster, Brazil’s fire regulations were tightened up.

Memory Lane

Back in the 1970s, I used to be industrial correspondent at ATV in the English Midlands, appearing mainly on ATV Today. Two of my film reports from that era have just appeared online:-

The effects of the British Leyland toolmakers' strike on supplies of the Mini in 1975 - 
http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-11031975-british-leyland-toolmakers-strike/MediaEntry/22814.html

The British hot rod team practising in 1974 - 
http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-21111974-british-hot-rod-team-practising-at-hednesford/MediaEntry/22279.html

Birmingham pub bombings + 40. Who were the killers?

Forty years ago today, I was a reporter at ATV (the forerunner of Central Television covering the English Midlands) covering the Birmingham pub bombings. Two pubs in the city centre were blown up by the IRA, killing 21 people and injuring more than 180 others in what was then the worst terrorist attack in British history.

Today we still do not know who was responsible. The ‘Birmingham Six’ were wrongly convicted of the crime, and were released in 1991. Devon and Cornwall Police later conducted an inquiry into the West Midlands Police investigation. The authorities have decreed its contents must remain secret for another 55 years.

Julie Hambleton, whose sister was killed in the bombings, has been highly critical of this decision. The current Chief Constable for the West Midlands, Chris Sims, has maintained the investigation remains open, but Ms Hambleton has accused the police of lack of commitment to investigating Britain’s ‘largest unsolved mass murder,’ saying they seemed to be waiting for evidence to ‘drop on their desks’.

Another blow to those wanting to bring the killers to justice was the revelation that 35 pieces of evidence had gone missing, including a bomb that failed to explode. Mr Sims said it seems the items had been disposed of in the 1980’s, and that this was ‘not unusual at the time.’ 

Bangladesh flood

After some of the heaviest rain Bangladesh has suffered in years, floods and landslides have killed at least 70 people, and left another 200,000 homeless.     Eighteen inches of rain are said to have fallen in the port of Chittagong in just 24 hours.

At least 15 people died there, while another 30 perished in Bandarban to the south-east.  The authorities fear more people may be trapped under mud, and rescue efforts are continuing to find and free them.

In Sylhet in the north-east of the country, house roofs are three feet beneath the water, and local people have had to scramble up onto high ground, or take refuge in boats.   Districts around the capital, Dhaka, have also been inundated.

A monsoon flood in Bangladesh is said to have killed nearly 29,000 in 1974, though some of these may have perished in the famine that followed.    It happened less than four years after the deadliest cyclone in history killed perhaps half a million of its people. 

Financial disasters 2 - stock market crashes

The worst two Stock Market crashes in the UK both happened within the last 40 years. From 1972 to 1974, the market lost 70% of its value. Investor confidence was undermined by a spate of bad news, particularly the oil embargo and four-fold price increase that followed Israel’s Yom Kippur War with Egypt.

The market did not recover the ground it had lost in real terms until May 1987. Then five months later, it crashed again. On Friday, 16 October, 1987 hardly anyone was at work in London’s City financial district because of the disruption caused by the Great Storm, the worst in Britain for more than 280 years.

While they were away, prices in New York had been falling steeply. The reasons are not altogether clear - a drop in the price of the dollar, poor trade figures, just that headless chicken panic that seems to grip markets every so often? Anyway, by the time London opened on Monday, 19 October, there was huge pent-up demand to sell. £50 billion was wiped off share prices, and the date went down in history as ‘Black Monday’.

The next day’s collapse was even more precipitous, and by November 9, the index had fallen 34%. The main blame was put on ‘programme trading’ which meant that computers automatically sold shares when they dropped to a certain level, though others thought Mrs Thatcher’s ‘Big Bang’ deregulation had also played its part.

Monsoon floods

The death toll in the Pakistan monsoon floods is now put at about 1,600. With perhaps 14 million people driven from their homes, and crops and animals being wiped out, it is rightly being seen as a major catastrophe.

However, this is not yet the deadliest monsoon flood in history. There have been at least ten over the last 40 years that have claimed more lives. The worst hit countries have been India and Bangladesh.

A monsoon flood in Bangladesh in 1974 is said to have killed nearly 29,000, though some of these may have perished in the famine that followed. It happened just two years after the country had won independence and less than four years after the deadliest cyclone in history had killed perhaps half a million of its people.

*The Croydon Guardian has written a piece on London’s Disasters. http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/8313593.Author_masters_London_s_disasters/

The Bologna station bomb

Just back from the lovely ancient Italian city of Bologna. In the Piazza Maggiore, there’s a simple but moving monument to the 85 people killed in a neo-Fascist terrorist bombing at the railway station on Saturday, August 2, 1980.

It was a hot morning, and the air-conditioned waiting room was packed when an unattended suitcase exploded at 1025. The blast destroyed most of the station’s main building and severely damaged a train at the platform by the waiting room. So many people were injured that a large number had to be taken to hospital in buses and taxis.

In 1988, four neo-fascists were gaoled for life for their part in the bombing, though two were later freed on appeal. A third person was gaoled for 30 years in 2004, but he continues to maintain his innocence.

The attack came on the same day that a Bologna court sent 8 men for trial following a neo-fascist terrorist bomb on the Rome-Brenner express in 1974 that killed 12 people.