The Shrewsbury pickets’ case saw old common-law crimes dredged up to convict them in what was widely regarded as a vindictive political act, after the failure of the Conservative government's 1971 Industrial Relations Act to control strikes. Six were imprisoned; sixteen received “suspended” sentences. The full story has now been told in A Very British Conspiracy.

The year 1972 saw extensive deployment of “flying pickets”: coal miners stopped the movement of coal, especially to electricity power stations, while dockers picketed container depots and cold stores, taking away their jobs. These groups’ successes emboldened building workers, whose selective stoppages from June 1972 escalated to an all-out strike over pay during August. Their problem was the large numbers, especially outside urban centers, who were ununionized.

Eileen Turnbull details the background to, and conduct of, several trials of building workers in 1973 and 1974. Her book culminates in the “Campaign for Justice,” reignited in 2006, after the early death of one of the imprisoned pickets, Des Warren, and which pursued an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. This involved raising money, especially from unions, to pay for legal advice and representation. Turnbull, the campaign treasurer, became an unpaid researcher, digging in the archives for fresh evidence. Much of what she found confirmed what activists had suspected.

Arriving in coaches, some 250 pickets (mainly from North Wales), accompanied by police, visited several building sites in Shrewsbury and nearby Telford, on 6 September 1972 to hold meetings. Despite incidents, no one was “cautioned” or arrested, even for typical picketing offences such as obstruction and “breach of the peace.” Yet before the strike had ended in mid-September, the National Federation of Building Trade Employers circulated its member-companies to prepare files on “intimidation” by flying pickets. An overall dossier, presented to the Home Secretary, received extensive press coverage.

Sustained lobbying from Shropshire building contractors, local Conservative Members of Parliament, and sensationalist reporting, culminated in a “clandestine” police enquiry into North Wales pickets (113). Despite hundreds being interviewed (including seventy-three of the police officers present on the day), the evidence was poor. Allegations in local police reports were not different from those elsewhere in the country where charges were not pursued. The decision to retrospectively investigate and then prosecute pickets from North Wales, an area of weak trade unionism, was “calculated,” even “political” (125).

Section seven of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 allowed those charged with “intimidation” to elect for trial by jury, which all but one of fifteen pickets prosecuted for offences in North Wales opted to do. They were found not guilty of intimidation as were those also charged with “affray” (a common-law offence). The main prosecutor, Maurice Drake QC (Queen's Counsel), had (unusually) taken the original cases in magistrates’ courts and then at Mold Crown Court. These trials were a “testing ground” (138). Fearful of not securing convictions for affray against the Shrewsbury pickets (seven had been among those tried at Mold), Drake added “unlawful assembly” (another common-law offence) to their charges.

There were then three jury trials at Shrewsbury Crown Court, covering the events of 6 September 1972. Twenty-four pickets were charged with affray and unlawful assembly, along with intimidation, and some lesser charges. Six “ringleaders,” mostly officers of the local strike action committee, were also charged with “conspiracy to intimidate” (another common-law offence) as the picketing had been planned in some way. Convictions for conspiracy had no maximum term; those for intimidation, only three months.

When the six were tried first, the prosecution built up a picture of rampant fear and terror on 6 September. All were found guilty of unlawful assembly. Only Warren, Ricky Tomlinson, and John McKinsie Jones were convicted of conspiracy and affray. They received immediate concurrent custodial sentences on each charge of three years, two years, and nine months, respectively. When the first two later appealed, one judge ruled: “where charges of substantive offences [such as intimidation] do not adequately represent the overall criminality it may be appropriate … to include a charge of conspiracy” (207). At the resumed appeal hearing, another stated “this was a classic example … in which the punishment inflicted must be such as will actively discourage others” (212).

Turnbull provides convincing evidence that the jury was misdirected, especially when split on the conspiracy charges. The prosecutor amended the affray charge for the other eighteen pickets to a single instance rather than one supposedly uninterrupted affray, which had included stopping for a “fish and chips” lunch. This was in order to make the charge “appeal-proof” (210). (The affray convictions for Warren, Tomlinson, and Jones were quashed on this ground when they appealed in 1974.) The eighteen pickets were also offered a deal if they pleaded guilty to unlawful assembly; seven accepted and another admitted a lesser charge. Three who were also found guilty of affray received six months’ sentences. Many were “blacklisted” from the industry for life.

Turnbull found proof that many original witness statements—taken “before” police officers “knew” what the prosecution “was trying to prove”—had been destroyed after fresh statements had been taken, an “abuse of process” (286). This was key to a judicial review overruling the Criminal Cases Review Commission's rejection. Eventually, eight pickets and the families of six deceased were represented at the Court of Appeal in early 2021. The judges ruled that the absence of original witness statements affected how the trials had been conducted.

This “was a miscarriage of justice on a seismic scale” (297), but Turnbull does not say that the pickets were not cleared. The convictions were merely “unsafe.” The court ruled “there is no sensible prospect of a retrial, nor would it be in the public interest” (R v Warren [2021] EWCA Crim 413). That point aside, Turnbull has produced an enthralling and well-referenced account, a fitting tribute to the framed pickets and their supporters.