I must have come across your site because I did read about a protest in which police made arrests. I tried two e mail addresses for a Dr Darke a PhD who opposed Leonard Cheshire Foundation segregationist philosophy but have had no reply. The matter in the European Court of Human Rights is with a Section 4 of ECHR. At some stage the matter will go to an admissibility hearing at which I am not required. (Which is handy because the cortisone steroid damage to my body makes it difficlult for me to attend meetings where I will get adrenaline surging .. as this throws my bladder area into spasm if I can be frank. If the matter gets through admissibility (which I have my doubts about) then it may be that the UK will be compelled to give me legal aid so a solicitor can tidy up the case file. So the wheels grind slowly. It could be years before they get around to an admissibility screning even. "I was a rural beat Police constable when I met leonard Cheshire in 1971 when attending the Sue Ryder HQ Care Home at Cavendish to accompany a sergeant who was carrying out aliens registration inquiries. This was about registering Polish careworkers into the UK. The Polish careworkers were not there but the report submitted was worded so as to suggest they had been seen and left instructions about registration. I found Cheshire to be an evasive character who changed the subject very quickly to the exorbitant cost of wheelchairs and the shining role of himself in championing the cause of the disabled. It did not surprise me years later to hear on the news that he sent the Moscow Cheshire Home an opening gift ... which was a signed portrait of himself. A lesson in self denying charitable Christianity if ever I saw one. Mountbatten said to Ghandi "It costs a fortune to keep you poor". And I feel the same way about the amount of propaganda to persuade us of Cheshire's humility. As far as I recall of that meeting in 1971 he asked me if something was wrong ... as my eyes scanned the shelves of box files in the Sue RYDER Secretariat. And as far as I recall I replied "Yes ... too many files". I could also smell photographic developing process and was later told that there was a Cheshire Homes film unit who worked out of there. So it is true that, from first acquaintance, I felt that Police would do Cheshire favours (misleading aliens registration reports) and I felt that the amount of admin, apparent from the shelves of box files, might indicate that the Sue Ryder and Leonard Cheshire Homes had some separate agenda. I was not impressed by Cheshire. When years later I read that Bomber Harris allegedly issued a memo on 5.1.44 which established that Cheshire betrayed every bomber stream he flew with ... I was not surprised. I trust that one day there will be a review of the IFF radar betrayals and that it might lead to a posthumous review of whether he meritted his VC and, indeed, whether the betrayal was "Idiocy" (as Bomber Harris worded it) or intended. Such an enquiry would have to examine, I think, the effects of two young men who were part educated in 1930s Nazi Germany. That is Leonard Cheshire (who stayed as guest of an admiral) and Airey Neave (who was a founding trustee of Sue Ryder Homes). It has been alleged that Guy Gibson VC was opposed to the notion of awarding Cheshire a VC in 1944. Sadly Gibson died in a crashed Mosquito target marking plane in September 1944 ... the month Cheshire's VC was awarded. The suspicions that Gibson was murdered (the Mosquito allegedly having been ground sabotaged) have been aired from time to time. On the next opportunity I had to meet Leonard Cheshire I feel sure he was at his Cavendish home but that he hid from me. This was 22nd January 1972 when I was despatched to the Sue Ryder HQ as Pc HM Coroners Officer to investigate the reported sudden death of Volunteer Matron Mary McGILL. Mary had been reported as discovered drowned in a shed adjoining the lake in the grounds. Staff tried to prevent me from interviewing Sue Ryder (Leonard Cheshire's wife). When I did confront her she feigned flu to avoid making any statement for Coroners purposes. I feel confident that Cheshire (a qualified lawyer) hid from me in order to make his statement with other police with knowledge of all the other inquest testimony first gathered. In other words so that his Inquest testimony would fit with all the other stories. The village funeral director was not answering his phone that afternoon. I learnt later that he had allegedly refused any further business from the Sue Ryder HQ Care Home (which was also the family home of the Cheshires) from that week. But he was not answering his phone at all. Which suggests to me that he knew who would be calling and did not want to get (further?) involved. I noticed that the Cavendish PC (Michael Marshall) who had come on duty was very agitated as was Ryder. Neither was keen that I should call a different funeral director. Eventually they agreed to the Clare village funeral director being called. This delay was actually allowing a significant feature to develop. That the body was without rigor mortis. I left the police vehicle with Pc Marshall and went with the funeral director and the body to Bury St Edmunds hospital mortuary. BUT I did not go directly there. First we went to the funeral director premises and delayed. By the time we arrived at the mortuary further time had elapsed and there was still no sign of rigor mortis. The story of a drowning during the previous night (the night of 21.1.72) was looking increasingly fragile. At the mortuary we discovered that the hospital porters were on strike and so I drew a key. This also gave us more time than might otherwise have been the case and so I decided to strip the body and check for myself the declaration of Pc Marshall at the scene (no marks and bruises) There was bruising. This was to each forward pelvic corner and to one shin. There was also a transverse mark between shoulder blades which may have been a bruise undeveloped because death intervened. One explanation for this "restraint mark" might be that she was given inappropriate but well intentioned first aid for Choking ... when the symptoms were actually of secondary drowning. IE That she died of the delayed surfactant reaction, from an incident of immersion, which someone mistook for choking. If there had been an incident of immersion overnight and if this was followed by delay .. after which secondary drowning occurred because expert medical help had not been called ... we have our explanation for the absence of rigor mortis. Death having occurred some hours after the incident of immersion in the lake which the home was suggesting had led to drowning by primary immersion discovered at 2 PM. The story of the inquest witnesses was that Mary was last seen at teatime on 21st and discovered drowned at 2 PM on 22nd. In a closed residential community the volunteer residential matron is not seen by anyone for 18 hours ?? Believe it if you like ... There was also winging of the costal margin on the body ... sometimes called Pes Recurvatus ... which the funeral director opined was congenital but there may be doubt. So using the mortuary phone I made a call to the Duty Detective Inspector SCOTT of Bury St Edmunds. SCOTT had already been making inquiries about what police activity was going on at the Cavendish Sue Ryder HQ that afternoon. So someone had contacted the Duty DI before me. SCOTT tried to order me to destroy the pyjamas and slipper worn by Mary .. to prevent forensic testing (I should add that my account has been deposed by affidavit and never challenged). Well as you can read above I knew that Cheshire benefitted from police favours .. as far as a bit of a misleading aliens registration admin report went ... but on 22.1.72 I was seeing something one hell of a lot more unlawful and sinister. Police were prepared to conspire against HM Coroner (in his duty to establish true circumstances of death) on behalf of Sue Ryder and Leonard Cheshire. I stood my ground and asked for a police photographer to visit the mortuary. SCOTT agreed. I later learnt that no photographer was sent (or at least no photos were presented) SCOTT had said that if I left the body on a white sheet in the Chapel of Rest the photos would be taken there. I did this and booked the keys back in with the hospital. On Monday 24th Jan 1972 I was up early to attend the post mortem. But Sergeant Macnair was at Clare Police Station with Pc Marshall of Cavendish. Macnair told me that I was off the case. I now know this was unlawful inasmuch as Suffolk Police would deceive HM Coroner at Inquest to conceal the proper appointment of myself as HM Coroners Officer and to conceal that I had dissented in the inquiry. I was posted to Newmarket within a few weeks. I had my troubles there with the Police surgeon GP increasing a medicine called PREDNISONE and I resigned the Police in April 1972. In July 1972 a man shew me a copy of the East Anglian Daily Times in which it was reported that Barbara Castle, Shadow DHSS minister, had raised the Mary McGILL case in the Commons .. and that Sir Keith Joseph the Minister had ordered a Care Inquiry against the Cavendish Sue Ryder Home. An inquest had sat within the Sue Ryder Home on 25th Jan 1972 (the day after the autopsy) and returned a suicide verdict. Barbara Castle was more concerned to raise Matron McGILL's critcisms of care standards. I thought I better send Sir Keith Joseph a report by recorded delivery. I phoned the Clare village funeral director to ask his permission to name him to Sir Keith. This was because he had countersigned my police notebook (now said to be missing from Suffolk Police archives) as an accurate report in McGILL Decd. The funeral director told me that he was being threatened by suffolk Police at that time ... to keep quiet about the removal of the body of Stefania BRONK an inmate (I am loathe to term then residents) of the Sue RYDER HQ care home at Cavendish. Stefania had been found apparently drowned facedown in her bath. Her husband had died some three weeks earlier .. with Stefania arguing that he had been killed it seems... and disputing the natural causes verdict. Stefania had been found by her daughter ... and uttered some final words quoted at Inquest which were to the effect "It was all Sue Ryder and Mrs Scanlon". Stefania had died from an overdose of medicines. She too got a suicide verdict. I did write an acknowledged report to Sir Keith Joseph in July 1972. In December 1972 I had a cardiac arrest aged 23. I now know this was caused by a prescribed overdose of an asthma drug called SILBEPHYLLINE. The doctor who gave me those pills refused to identify them to Ipswich ICU later. If I had gone home that evening after attending surgery then I would have died. I went to my parents home ... which was Stowmarket Ambulance Station where my father was the ambulance driver in residence. I was dead for thirty minutes on the kitchen floor being given cardiac massage etc. Two Stowmarket GPs attended and the kit from the amulance was being used indoors. I was transferred to Ipswich ICU where I was semi conscious and blind for three days. I emerged from hospital like victim of Belsen. (8 stones) On attending outpatients for check up in Feb 1973 I was told that the ICU inpatient records had already gone missing. I will gloss over the intervening years until 1989. That year I was working as a contract electrician at Plessey sonar and torpedo factory in Newport Gwent. I condemned the factory electrics ... for some serious reasons to do with corrupting test and calibration. This report was agreed as correct by MOD Procurement Executive experts sent to site. In discussing this matter I met Mike ROOTES, employed in Plessey security. Mike had in 1972 been a Regional Crime Squad Detective constable from Gwent Police. WE in 1989 were discussing groups like GLADIO (which you may never have heard of) ... a paramilitary group originally suggested by an MI6 officer in 1944 called Henry Nathan SPORBORG ... who happens to be Airey NEAVE's fellow trustee of Sue RYDER Homes. Mike laughed and said that I would never guess the most sinister inquiry he had been on in police. And expecting me to be surprised he said "Cheshire Homes". What then happened was that in a population of 56 millions against all the odds two surviving ex coppers had met and two halves of a story came together. In 1972 Mike with a Detective sergeant had gone to Lannhennock Cheshire Home to carry out routine aliens registrations delegated from Special Branch. The sergeant's suspicions were first that the Matron may have gained employ by deception ... as she appeared to be using the CV details of another nurse. I am not privy to the process by which the sgt ended up suspecting that linked to aliens registration malpractice was GP death registration malpractice. It seems that the RCS sgt decided to trawl anecdotal information over a region so as to get a better overview of activity within the Sue Ryder and leonard Cheshire homes network. It seems that Special Branch warned the RCS sgt to drop the inquiry but that he obeyed his Crown Oath of the Constable and defied them. He like all police is sworn to act under Judixcial primacy to pursue justice with all skill and without favour or affection malice or ill will. He seems to have discovered that Cheshire and Ryder Homes were a de facto unlawful police no go area .. being on the secret reporting lists issued to Special Branch liaison officers by the Home Office (MI5). In other words if a Pc visited one of the Homes .. then it was secretly reported back by Special Branch. The sgt appears to have gone North West to liaise with a Coroners Officer who responded to the call for anecdotal concerns about GP registered deaths. And he appears to have met his death there and to have gained yet another suicide verdict. So what I had from his surviving colleague in 1989 was a rational explanation for who had contacted DI SCOTT on 22.1.72 and who had the influence to initiate with him a conspiracy against the HM Coroner. SPECIAL BRANCH ... Initially the Monmouth MP Sir John Stradling Thomas took up cudgels with letters to the Attorney General and the Police Minister. Sir John died and there was a by election won by Labour's Huw EDWARDS who refused to take on the McGILL decd case being fought by his tory predecessor. The prospective tory became Roger Evans a barrister and he from 1991 began advising on the McGILL case. And this development (the prospective tory MP continuing Sir John's work) seems to coincide with Gwent SPECIAL BRANCH allegedly carrying overt surveilance (IE intimidation) of the ex RCS man Mike ROOTES. In March 1992 ROOTES suffered a burglary in which allegedly his police service papers were rifled. In 1994 a burglar stole all Newport Gwent Births Marriages and deaths records. Roger won the Monmouth seat back at the General Election and sent a Section 13 Coroners Act appeal against the McGILL suicide verdict to the Attorney General. Secret absolute custodian of public interest who refused access to the High Court. I had traced and contacted Mary McGILL's New Zealand family in 1992 and got their account. In 1972 they had a cable from Sue Ryder telling them of the death and inviting their phone call. On the phone she deceived their representative that death was natural causes. She concealed that there had been a drowning and she concealed that there was to be an immediate inquest. By the time the truth reached them it was too late for full autopsy or legal rep at inquest .. as they had been conned by Ryder out of cremation consents and UK cremation had already occured. Mary's brother had been a wartime colleague of a man called Charles Littlejohn ... who by 1972 was Chief legal advisor to the NZ govt. The McGILL case went straight to the NZ Prime Minister. The London High Commission were instructed to ask the Home Office how to re-open the Suffolk Inquest. The Home Office had proffered instead a report to the NZ Govt which would include a statement from the Pc HM Coroners Officer. This report was sent in April 1972. It makes no mention of me and I certainly was not told about this intergovernment inquiry. In fact as you have read .. I was busy coping with increasing doses of corticosteroid drugs being given by Suffolk Police surgeons until I resigned in APRIL 1972. The favours for Cheshire and Ryder then also included a Home Office report drawn up with a Chief constable which lied to the New Zealand Government. Later in 1972 (I am not sure of his status) an investigation in Suffolk was made by a New Zealander called John BLACKIE who seems by December 1972 to have made contact with a male nurse aide who left Ryder's employ. His story being that he was with McGILL when she died and that he offered to give inquest evidence but was refused. On the day of the inquest held within the Sue Ryder Home he tried to get in to tell the Coroner but was physically prevented by Suffolk Police Officers. This story has the ring of truth. As you have read the signs were that someone tried to help Mary but mistook secondary drowning for a case of choking. The clincher is a letter of 1972 to the McGILL's solicitor from Sue RYDER's solicitor in which he states that the home was circulated for inquest witnesses on the morning of the death itself. So the inquest witness list had been drawn up before the official time of discovery of the body !!! There was a stitch up. The concocted story presented as evidence at the 1972 inquest was initiated by exploitation of ten year old mentally handicapped jeremy Cheshire who initiated the 2 PM discovery by allegedly finding the body in the boatshed whilst playing in the garden at 2 PM. and so I have little difficulty in concluding that Cheshire hid up having involved in setting up a conspiracy using his qualified lawyer expertise. That to initiate his fabricated scenario he exploited his own disabled and vulnerable son. In August 2001 I put an appeal case to the European Court of Human Rights in one last desperate bid for justice for Matron McGILL. A QUAKER NURSE WHO HAD BEEN WORKING DUTY WEEKS FREE OF 143 HOURS PER WEEK FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF THOSE SHE CAME TO DESPISE (Yes one hundred and forty three) The care inquiry of 1972 was a stitch up (one phone call to Social services calibre). But a local doctor wrote two letters for attention of the inquiry ... the doctor wrote "People are extraordinarily blinded by the smokescreen of charity" and that the homes are not so much a case of loving patients as of loving Sue Ryder loving patients. The doctor also offered an opinion on Sue Ryder's mental state .. to the effect that she was not a suitable person to have care of vulnerable persons and that she could only be rational if under the influence of persons more in touch with human reality. I have written this e mail for total inclusion on your website. Go for rights in our society. Reject the condescending and sub standard crumbs of charity from the self aggrandizing officer mess table. Best wishes Richard Card |