Winston Trew, now 76, will return to Lambeth Town Hall on 10 September – where the 1974 “Cause For Concern” rally was held “to show solidarity with the victims of police muggers” – to launch a campaign for “Trew’s Law”, new legislation that would trigger automatic reviews of cases involving police officers later found to have engaged in serious misconduct. He missed the original rally because he was locked inside Wormwood Scrubs prison, the innocent victim of one of Britain’s worst miscarriages of justice.
Mr Trew, one of the four men known as the Oval Four, was fitted up by British Transport Police Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell. In 1972, aged 22, he was arrested at Oval Tube station with Sterling Christie, George Griffiths and Constantine “Omar” Boucher, all accused of stealing handbags. The men were beaten in custody and, after a five-week trial, were convicted of assaulting police and attempted theft. Each was sentenced to two years in jail, reduced to eight months on appeal. Mr Trew’s conviction was finally quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2019.
A 50-year quest for justice
Mr Trew spent more than 40 years trying to overturn his conviction and said it had blighted his life. “I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through,” he said. “It put me on a path I never thought I’d be travelling. Even if you’re innocent, you have to prove you’re innocent.”
At the time of his arrest he was a member of the Black Power organisation the Fasimbas. While he was in prison, the group organised the 1974 rally with the Black Panther Movement and other organisations. “It’s aim was to spread news around Brixton and London and expose Ridgewell for the rotten fella he was,” Mr Trew said. “I obviously couldn’t attend, but now I can stand in the same place and try to end miscarriages of justice caused by police corruption. It feels like I’m fulfilling history.”
“They used violence against us, we did not commit those crimes,” he added. “But that horrible past has turned into a bright future. I want that to be my legacy. I want people to know that although this young man was wrongfully convicted, he used the rest of his life fighting against wrongful convictions, not just for himself, but for others too.”
Ridgewell: Britain’s most bent copper
Det Sgt Ridgewell, who died in prison aged 37, is responsible for the false convictions behind the Oval Four and the Stockwell Six. He earned the moniker “Britain’s most bent copper” after his reign of dishonesty was exposed, and is known to have framed more than a dozen men, with the true extent of his criminality only emerging after his death. He made millions with gangs while framing mostly Black victims in London.
Glasgow-born Ridgewell joined British Transport Police in Paddington in 1964 in his teens. A year later he joined the Rhodesian Police but quit within weeks; on returning home he gave interviews to TV and newspapers condemning the treatment of black citizens there. After joining the BTP, he began framing dozens of young, mostly black men for “mugging” on the Underground and beat them up if they resisted. In February 1972, he arrested four men at Waterloo station, but that case was thrown out because his evidence could not be believed. He was not punished and was moved to a department investigating mailbag theft, where he teamed up with criminals to split the profits of stolen post.
Ridgewell also helped villains steal lorry loads of goods from the Bricklayers Arms Goods Depot in Bermondsey. He and his cronies would fill a vehicle with stolen property overnight for crooks to drive away the next day. His proceeds are believed to be around £4 million in today’s money, hidden in five bank accounts including one in Zurich in a safety deposit box. Despite earning a detective sergeant’s wage, he owned property and businesses.
After being caught alongside other corrupt officers, Ridgewell hired Bernie Perkoff, a top lawyer used by many gangland figures, but was convicted of conspiracy to rob in 1980 and jailed for seven years. He died of a heart attack in his cell in 1982, aged just 37.
Families still waiting for justice
Also speaking at the 10 September event will be Jeffrey Campbell, the son of Errol Campbell, who died in 2004 having appealed unsuccessfully against his 1978 conviction for theft and conspiracy to steal from the Bricklayers Arms. Ridgewell led the case against Mr Campbell and several others, but later pleaded guilty with colleagues Det Con Douglas Ellis and Det Con Alan Keeling to stealing from the same goods depot.
Mr Campbell’s co-defendants Basil Peterkin and Saliah Mehmet were also sent to prison in 1977 for robbing the British Rail depot of an estimated £30,000. They protested their innocence for their entire lives – Peterkin died aged 51 in August 1991 and Mehmet died aged 75 in August 2021. Their convictions were posthumously overturned after the Court of Appeal was told they were convicted on the evidence of the “dishonest, corrupt and racist” officer, whose behaviour undermined the safety of the convictions.
Calls for Trew’s Law
Matt Foot, solicitor and co-director of APPEAL, said: “We look forward to launching the campaign for Trew’s Law. Many families have gone through decades of hell because there was no automatic review of Ridgewell’s cases. It’s high time we changed the law to stop this happening to anyone else.”
Last year, British Transport Police bowed to pressure after a Mirror probe revealed that a “flawed” investigation into Ridgewell stretched to just nine pages. The force announced it was “reviewing records” into Ridgewell’s “corrupt practices” and looking for “officers who were associated with Ridgewell or may have assisted him in his criminal activity”, saying “additional resources” had been ploughed into the investigation. Police had claimed all his victims had been found, but since then at least four more innocent men have had their cases referred to the Court of Appeal.
