Mr Elvis Costello

This week’s post, indeed the 200th of this blog, comes mainly from Mr Elvis Costello and a song from his album Spike in 1989. The song, which will be revealed in a second, seeks to address a wrong, an injustice. The song, angry, contemptuous, and damning of those who created the injustice encapsulates what this blog has been about; the power of music, of songwriting, to paint a picture of humanity far from its finest hour; to look behind those moments of history when the tree of life loses a branch and to see those who suffer, those who cause the suffering and those, who in the midst of tears, wailing, and anger, seek to right the wrongs and to point the finger at the wrongdoers.

This week our song in Murder Ballad Monday is “Let Him Dangle.” This first post seeks to introduce the story and to set the scene of how an injustice was created. In part two, we will hear from Elvis Costello himself and what motivated him to write the song. We will also discover the conclusion of a decades long fight for justice.

The song tells the story of how on a dark, cold November night in 1952 in Croydon, London, England, two teenagers thought they had struck it lucky when they managed to get into the yard of a wholesalers warehouse after an evening of failed attempts to gain entry to other premises. Christopher Craig was 16 years old. Derek Bentley was 19 years old. The events of this evening would see one of them hang for murder and create a controversy that would last for decades.

Capital punishment in the United Kingdom is no longer legal. Indeed, the last person to be executed in the UK was Peter Anthony Allen in August 1964. The execution method used in the United Kingdom was hanging. In 1952, murder was a capital offence, although those under 18 could not be tried for murder. This rule will have a profound effect on our story.

The post war years in the United Kingdom were drab, dour, and difficult. In 1952, rationing was still enforced within the UK, meaning there were legal limits on how much meat, sugar, and sweet items each household could purchase from shops. Ration books were still needed to be able to buy many items. The black market–the illegal, hidden, “off the books” trade in stolen goods–was massive. Indeed, the trade in illegal petrol was so strong that the government was forced to end rationing. It would be not until 1954 that rationing was finally removed. The end of World War II left a long shadow over the UK, despite being on the winning side. The UK was exhausted and broke.

As well as the ‘black market’ being huge, illegal firearms was also of considerable fear for the government. A conservative estimate done in 1948 by the UK government said there could be 500,000 firearms in circulation. The true figure was probably nearer three times as much. The amount of illegal firearms was another legacy from the end of the war, with soldiers returning from combat and finding a land with very little for anyone.

The 1945 Labour government, winning a huge mandate after promising change, was trying hard to deliver that huge change. They brought in the National Health Service, and massive reform to how the UK state looked after its citizens. One area that proved difficult and complex was the government’s commitment to end capital punishment. Senior members of the British establishment were becoming seriously worried by these changes and by the ‘spirit of lawlessness’ that they believed was sweeping across the country. Too many changes were happening, particularly within the justice system of England and Wales for the senior law lords and the highest ranks of the Police.

Indeed, a particular focus for both legal and police upper circles was the amount of attacks against police men. There was a belief that ‘something needed to be done’ to send a signal that these attacks would not be tolerated. This desire to prove a point was to have a profoundly negative and tragic impact on the central characters of our story.

Christopher Craig

Christopher Craig, the youngest of nine, came from a middle class family. Craig’s father had fought in World War I and had a respectable job in a bank. Craig’s oldest brother, Niven Craig had experienced the darker side of life and by 1952 was serving a sentence for armed robbery. The shadow of Niven Craig would hang long over his younger sibling. Around the time that his oldest brother had been found guilty and sentenced for his part in an armed robbery, young Christopher had also committed his first armed robbery. It was two weeks before him and Derek Bentley ended up on that warehouse rooftop.

Derek Bentley

Derek Bentley was born in June 1933. His family lived in a slum within Blackfriars in London. At the time of his birth he contracted bronchial pneumonia and was seriously ill. Somehow he overcame this and started to improve. At the age of three as he was playing in the street with friends, he climbed up a lorry only to fall over fifteen feet on to the street below. He landed on his head and suffered a huge epileptic fit caused by the damage done to his head. Bentley continued to suffer from epileptic fits throughout his childhood. During the war, the area he lived in London experienced many waves of aerial bombing by the Luftwaffe. In 1940 Bentley’s sister Joan was killed in a bombing raid. The family moved to Edgware to try and escape the bombings. However, in 1944, during a bombing raid, Bentley himself was buried under rubble and had to be rescued.

Bentley’s frequent epileptic fits were having a huge and negative effect on his schooling. When he was eleven his parents were told by the Headmaster of his school that Bentley was totally illiterate. The family’s doctor put Bentley’s “educational backwardness” to the wartime conditions he had experienced. Bentley’s family tried to get the best education they could for him although it was not a time of enlightenment for anyone with a learning difficulty. Bentley was repeatedly called ‘stupid’ by his classmates and would frequently arrive home in tears. Bentley, understandably, hated his school and would try and stay away. He was regarded as ‘educationally subnormal.’ He scored 66 on an IQ test which put him between being regarded as an ‘imbecile’ and ‘feeble-minded.’ Bentley had a reading age of four and a mental age of about seven.

It was at one of his many schools that Bentley would meet the younger Christopher Craig. Craig was clearly the ‘brains’ and was regarded warmly by his teachers. Incredibly, these same teachers regarded Bentley as a ‘waste of space.’

On that fateful night in November 1952, the luck that Craig and Bentley thought they had found when they broke into the warehouse was quickly disappearing almost as soon as they entered the building. They were both completely unaware of being spotted by a young girl who quickly told her father. Within minutes, they were being surrounded by the police. Craig, 16 years old and having seen his older brother sentenced for armed robbery only weeks before decided he would shoot his way out of the warehouse. As he became aware that the police were starting to surround them, Bentley surrendered.

From this point on, the facts of what happened became strangers to the those who should have known better. Derek Bentley was already in police custody when Police Constable Sidney Miles was shot through the head. And yet, in order to send a signal to society at large, Bentley was put on trial and charged with murder.

In part two we discover the outcome and find out more about the deceit and compliance of some of the most senior figures within the British establishment. We will also discover the brave investigation conducted by the journalist Derek Yallop, and the songwriting skills of Elvis Costello and Ralph McTell.