UK - 'Don't free Great Train Robber'

[John Ashworth]

Don't free Ronnie Biggs

When the Great Train Robber comes up for parole, sentimentality must not cloud justice: he is not a hero, he is a criminal

o Geoffrey Alderman
o guardian.co.uk, Sunday 12 April 2009 17.00 BST

In just under three months' time the parole board will meet to consider whether Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs should be released from Norwich jail. His lawyers have apparently argued that he is eligible for parole because, taking into account the time he has spent in custody abroad, he has served or will have served a third of the 30-year sentence imposed on him in 1964. But being eligible for parole is not the same as deserving parole. Does it really serve the public interest to free this man?

Many of you reading this will not remember the Great Train Robbery. Those who do may be inclined to romanticise it. Well, there was nothing romantic about the robbery. Its perpetrators were not heroes and do not deserve to be remembered as such.

On 8 August 1963 a gang of thieves stole more than £2.6m from the Glasgow-to-London mail train. The Great Train Robbery – as it came to be known – was front-page news. The gang had somehow managed to stop the train in deepest Buckinghamshire. They had uncoupled the carriage containing high-value items – mainly money being sent by registered post – and had somehow used the mail train's own diesel locomotive to move the carriage to a bridge, where the sacks containing the money were transferred to a fleet of waiting vehicles. Then the gang made off. They had stolen cash valued at more than £2.6m – let's say around £40m at present-day values.

At the time the Great Train Robbery was the biggest theft – in terms of the cash value of items stolen – in British history. It soon became the stuff of folk legend (several films have been made about or based on it), and those who had perpetrated it were portrayed in some sections of the media almost as romantic heroes – arguably none more so than Ronald Arthur Biggs. Ronnie Biggs, then in his mid-30s, was quickly apprehended by the police along with 12 other members of the 15-strong gang that had carried out the robbery. In April 1964 he was given a 30-year prison term for his part in the escapade. But Biggs had other plans. On 7 July 1965 he made a daring escape from Wandsworth prison by scaling the wall using a rope ladder thrown from an accomplice on the outside. He fled Britain with some of the money he had helped steal and underwent plastic surgery in France. Eventually he ended up in Rio de Janeiro, where he fathered a child by a Brazilian night-club dancer, knowing that as the parent of a Brazilian child he could not be expelled from the country – from which, in any case, he could never have been extradited to the UK as no mutual extradition treaty then existed.

In Brazil Biggs lived the good life, cocking a very public snook at the British judicial and penal systems. He did indeed seem to be living a charmed existence. In 1981 he was smuggled to Barbados by kidnappers who hoped to claim a reward from the British authorities But Barbados, too, had no extradition treaty with the UK. Then, on 7 May 2001 he returned, voluntarily, to Britain. There has been much speculation as to why he did this. According to some, his money had run out and he could not afford Brazilian healthcare charges. According to others, he was just homesick. Whatever the reason, immediately upon his arrival back in the UK he was naturally rearrested and returned to prison. He has failed to get his original sentence quashed or reduced. Now, approaching his 80th birthday, he has applied for parole.

To force him to assist in the heist, the driver of the mail train, Jack Mills, was brutally beaten and was never able to return to work (he died from an unrelated illness in 1970). The robbers brought the train to a halt by interfering electrically with the railway signalling system – thus compromising the safety of other trains on the line.

The sentence handed down to Biggs was totally just. He is no hero. But he is now in poor health. An argument is therefore being made that he should be released on compassionate grounds.

A misplaced sentimentality has surrounded Biggs in the decades since the events of 8 August 1963. Criminals are sent to prison primarily as a punishment. Biggs may well not now pose any danger to the public. But the circumstances of his original conviction must surely be taken into account. The argument is also being made that Biggs should be paroled because he should be treated no differently from other robbers who have served a third of their sentence. But, considering Biggs's escape and life on the run, there is really no precedent in this case.

The Great Train Robbery was despicable, and involved quite gratuitous brutality. Biggs's subsequent sojourn in Brazil was no less outrageous. Having suffered a series of strokes, he is now apparently unable to speak or walk. So be it. Let justice be done and let him spend what remains of his life "banged up" in a prison infirmary.