Setting the Scene: February 1993

What you’ll see on these postings will generally be based on my actual case, the events of which commenced more than twenty years ago.

So, what was on the public’s mind back then?  Let me set the scene back in February 1993…

As with present times, the UK economy was sliding deeper into recession; a recession that had commenced some three years earlier during the final term of Thatcher’s ‘reign’.  To the everyday citizen, burgeoned with debt, the future was becoming ever bleaker with spiralling interest rates. February, two decades ago, economists issued a stark warning that unemployment would exceed three and a half million before the end of the year, a poll indicating that 80% of the country was dissatisfied with Thatcher’s replacement, John Major.  Whitney Houston was in the charts, belting out:  I Will Always Love You, and the news reported the horrific story of two year old James Bulger, who had been murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The UK was in shock, debt and depression.  Across the Atlantic, Americans were digesting the news of a terrorist car bomb exploding in the underground car park of the World Trade Centre.  Also in the news at this precise time, was a totally unconnected story… the case of Vic Lee, the owner of a prominent British racing team, ultimately sentenced to twelve years in prison.  Lee was convicted of importing drugs worth £6 million, hidden in his race transporters.  At that time I was barely aware of the case, or that his trial was taking place in a South London court… a significant detail I’ll return to later.

Against this backdrop of fear over unemployment and new apprehension over terrorism, there was also a developing prejudice, a prejudice I was oblivious to…. that anyone involved with motorsport was likely to be corrupt!

On this day, 8th Feb 1993, under cover of darkness, no less than 12 Metropolitan police officers raided my Sussex home, in an operation code named: “Operation Spider”

Link to Motivating Force Page

Next post: Motorsport and Corruption

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1. The day my life changed forever

The day my life changed forever

So… in just a few days time it’ll be my anniversary.  8th Feb 1993, twenty years ago, a corrupted seed, planted with impunity by the system I’d trusted, began to grow.  The events of that day, nurtured by influence, would develop into a trial; a trial that would end up defining me, changing my life and my beliefs forever.  I’d grown up believing in our justice system, trusting our police force was only a force for good.  Until that day, I had never considered how the often self-serving aspirations of the powerful could conflict with that popular belief.  As I was to discover, every now and then, objectives may be at odds with people of influence.

Over the coming months I plan to post information and documentation that our police and justice system would prefer remained hidden from public scrutiny.  Some may choose to dismiss this blog as a fiction. After all, my books, Dark Horse and Chequered Justice, on which my true story is based, were officially published as such.  But in that regard I had little control… I’d been warned:  either publish as fiction or don’t publish at all. This blog however is somewhat different; I won’t be publishing carefully phrased prose or conjecture …nothing I can’t verify 100%.  My purpose is straightforward… to demonstrate how our justice system sometimes convicts the innocent, and having done so in full knowledge a conviction may be unsafe, places its awesome resources behind concealing that fact…  Yesterday was my birthday, I’m now 58 years old and fully aware, twenty years on, that my case will now never be overturned, but awareness of what our system legitimately does, in the name of justice, could be the first stage towards creating a change for others.

Some of you may consider me biased; after all, incidents we have lived through can prejudice our perceptions, distorting them… but consider this; if what I say is true, what happened to me could, in some form or another, so easily happen to you.  The scary thing is it does happen, and far more often than you’ll ever believe.  With a prison population in the UK of well over 80,000, if our conviction rate was 99% accurate, we have at least 800 innocent people locked away for crimes they didn’t commit… and the generally accepted figure is in fact nearer to 4%.  i.e. 3,200 wrongly imprisoned!

Link to Motivating Force Page

Next post:  Setting the Scene

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Hello world and welcome to my nightmare blog! My name is John Bartlett and I’m the author of 2 books, Chequered Justice and Dark Horse.

This will be my very first posting, (if you exclude the video posting for my latest book, Dark Horse,  uploaded by the talented book cover artist Cathy Helms, who kindly set this blog up for me).

I’m about to turn 58 years of age and I’m very happily married to Mary, have two sons George and Jonathan, a brace of Border collies Mr Breeze & Mr Moo and an ex stray cat known as HeShe.  I’m also an ex (very, very ex) professional racing driver from back in the 1980’s and am profoundly dyslexic… oh, yes, I’m also a “convicted fellon”, a title bestowed upon me by the British Justice System, for crimes I will, to my dying day, always maintain were the result of a “set-up” between very powerful financial corporations and the Metropolitan Police.

It’s now 2o years on from the day in Febuary 1993 when, under the cover of darkness, around 12 police officers raided my Sussex home … A trial took place after 2 long, horrendous years of character assassination by the Metropolitan Police, and somehow, inconceivably, despite the facts, I was found guilty and sentenced to a total of 6 years in prison.  Every attempt to appeal was blocked… we even appealed against the decision to not allow an appeal!  And so, I was condemned to this agony that words can never express.

Most people, having “served their time”, attempt to hide from the stigma and somehow build a new life… For a time we did try to hide, in the rainforests of Madagascar, but if you continue to maintain that you were and are, totally innocent of any crime, there’s nothing to hide from, so we returned.  Ten years later, my book, Chequered Justice was published.

The 8th Febuary 2013 will be the twentieth anniversary of the police raid that changed my life.  Eighteen years on from being found guilty, I still wake shouting, drenched in sweat from the vivid nightmare world that still haunts me.  A place I was plunged into, by the very people I’d grown up believing were the “good guys”.  It’s a nightmare world that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but if you want to know what happened, subscribe to this blog and over time I’ll tell you the facts.  For legal reasons I will not publish real names but if anyone out there has any information or similar stories please get in touch….

Next Post: The day my life-changed forever