Bid to clear Alice fails ...but her family say she is vindicated
REVIEW COMMITTEE CONCLUDES THERE IS A ’REAL POSSIBILITY’ CONVICTION WOULD HAVE BEEN OVERTURNED IF IT HAD REACHED APPEAL COURT
BID to have the case of Derby woman Alice Wheeldon referred to the Court of Appeal in the hope of clearing her name after she was found guilty of conspiring to poison Prime Minister David Lloyd George has failed.
Alice’s great granddaughter, Chloe Mason, submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in 2019, after more than a decade of research and campaigning.
But Ms Mason, who lives in Australia, says that although the CCRC has ultimately decided not to refer the case to the Court of Appeal – largely because of the 105 years since the notorious case – they also stated that “the submissions identified in the application may raise a real possibility that these convictions would be overturned”.
She added: “This is essentially a good result, I believe, especially considering that public appreciation of the injustice suffered by Alice and her family has been growing steadily over the many years of the campaign to clear their names.”
The CCRC decided not to refer the 105-year-old case to the Court of Appeal on the following grounds:
■ Alice Wheeldon, Winnie Mason and Alfred Mason are all deceased;
■ Their convictions are extremely old;
■ A referral would result in a considerable financial cost to the state;
■ An appeal would also take up valuable court time. This is inappropriate given the continued pressures on the Criminal Justice System in dealing with current ‘live’ trials and appeals;
■ Any lessons from this case, such as use of undercover officers, the possibility of the state acting as an ‘agent provocateur,’ jury irregularities and bad character, have been remedied in recent years and would have no practical relevance today.
The arrest and subsequent Old Bailey trial of Alice and her daughters, charged with conspiring to poison the Prime Minister, aroused interest across Britain. But the fallout from the case has haunted her for decades and has led to a high profile campaign to have the conviction quashed after evidence emerged to suggest that the plot was part of an MI5 conspiracy.
The idea to apply to the CCRC was conceived in 2012, long after Chloe, and her late sister Deidrie, were told about Alice by their father Peter, who was the son of Winnie and Alfred Mason. Legal advice was provided pro bono by Ben Williams, David Crigman QC and Andrew Smith QC of St Philips Chambers, Birmingham.
The main premise of the application was that the case was an abuse of process driven through by unfair means, and that the defendants’ right to a fair trial was sacrificed in the name of political interests.
Three grounds for appeal were submitted, supported by extensive
documentation including newly discovered archival records that had been suppressed for a very long time. The grounds were:
1. The role of the key undercover agent known to the defendants as Alex Gordon, specifically the failure to call him as a witness and the failure to disclose his background.
The agent was deliberately kept out of the trial. He did not appear as a witness and the defence were not told of his true identity. Research has
shown that ‘Gordon’ was William Rickard, a mentally unstable convicted criminal.
2. The discharge of Jury one and empanelling of Jury two.
The first trial was aborted after the close of the prosecution case due to the illness of a juror. The trial was restarted with the original 11 jurors plus one new juror and all the evidence that had been heard to that point was heard again.
3. Admission of and judicial referA
ence to evidence of the defendants’ ‘bad character.’
Inadmissible bad character evidence was cited against Alice. This was evidence, disputed at trial, of her involvement in the ‘suffragette outrages,’ including the Breadsall Church arson, sending a skull to the Home Secretary McKenna, and the failed ‘poisoned nail in the boot’ plot against Lloyd George.
In reaching its conclusion not to pass the case to the Court of Appeal, the CCRC also said that “if the defendants were alive today and the convictions were more recent, and the allegations being made by the applicant could be substantiated to the satisfaction of the Court of Appeal, then there is prima facie a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would consider these convictions to be unsafe”.
Regarding the three grounds of appeal, the CCRC commented:
1: “It is accepted that Gordon was deliberately kept out of the trial and should have been called as a witness, where his evidence could have been properly tested.”
2: “The CCRC accepts that the replacement of the juror was wrong, and the trial should have continued with the 11 jurors.”
3: “The CCRC would agree that the admission of the ‘bad character’ evidence should have been considered separately and submissions to challenge this should have been allowed by the defence.”
Ms Mason said: “I acknowledge the severe austerity currently imposed on the criminal justice system in the UK, and it is appropriate in this context that priority be given to people who are alive – some of them actually serving prison sentences.
“I am very glad and grateful for the commission’s positive view: that there could have been a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would hold the convictions unsafe.
“For me, this vindicates the denials by the defendants, of what was, in Alice’s words, ‘this preposterous conspiracy for murder.’ It also vindicates the efforts by many people, since the trial, to discover evidence and raise their voices about this apparent miscarriage of justice.”
She also acknowledged the extensive support she has received in compiling the application, including from the Derby Telegraph.
Ms Mason said: “Essential references and copies of documents were generously supplied by historians, particularly Dr Nick Hiley and Sheila Rowbotham. Friends and new-found relatives helped by tracking down records held in libraries and archives across England and ploughing through the British Newspaper Archive. Support also came from the Derby People’s History Group.
“This material is now much more accessible and is already being taken advantage of by historians, academics, social justice activists and artists in the UK and beyond, as well as in the local Derby community.
“Alice Wheeldon’s is the history of a woman, of a family, of a neighbourhood, and of a wider network of people who sought to make the world a better place through women’s rights, pacifism and then opposition to conscription.
“All these strands intersect in the events that led to her conviction and imprisonment in 1917, and in the consequences of the trial, which scattered the Wheeldon family across the globe.”