What an outstanding book. A first offering from a severely dyslexic man who had never written professionally before.
It’s a searing indictment of the inequality of the legal system towards those who are not properly equipped to deal with the rigours of the bureaucratic neurotypical world. What is not mentioned is that our protagonist is #ActuallyAutistic (although I believe undiagnosed at the time) and throughout the book I was touched by the gentle simplicity and perhaps naively trusting nature of the adult who cannot countenance that anybody might have motives less pure than his own. He has a stark and logical way of seeing and pointing out that something is not right, in the way that we autistic people do, which is so deeply threatening to others, and his inability to understand why these wrong things are allowed to endure made me want to jump into the book and add my voice to his in protest.
I never imagined that I could I enjoy reading about a motor race but the racing scenes are brilliantly written and I felt like I was there in the car on the edge of my seat.
It is a terrifying book when you consider that these events actually happened to someone because he was doing his best to provide for himself and his family and one small event caused a catastrophic derailment of his life.
So to say that the book is enjoyable is not the right word; our hero’s pain is very real and as an autistic person I empathised wholeheartedly with his profound lostness at the injustices perpetrated by those in authority. I highly recommend reading it.
My name is John Bartlett. I was born in Sussex in 1955 and I’m probably best known as a former racing driver and team owner from the 1980s.
I have a diagnosed condition of Autism Spectrum Disorder. I also have a number of other clinically diagnosed learning disabilities, including profound dyslexia and ADHD, which means I’m constantly bombarded with thoughts and ideas.
Autism is a life long development disorder, typically diagnosed in early childhood, but in my case, my condition (High Functioning Autism – HFA) was not clinically diagnosed until July 2017, at the age of 62. In 2010 my first novel, Chequered Justice, was…
So, twenty four years ago to the day, at around 5.30am on 8th February 1993, under cover of darkness with blue lights flashing wildly, a squad of Metropolitan Police officers forced their way into my home near Arundel in West Sussex, in an operation considered significant enough to warrant its own code name: Operation Spider!
Why? Was I some known villain, perhaps a violent criminal with a long record? Absolutely not… I was simply a family guy, happily married with two young sons and, if you excluded the odd speeding offence, had never been in trouble with the police. I did have a fairly unusual occupation at the time though. I was a professional racing driver (that’s me on the video compilation below), but unless you were into the sport, you’d probably have never heard of me and anyway, I was out of work at the time. In that respect, I’d been having a spot of trouble with a certain PPI insurance company. It had all begun following a horse riding accident in Malaysia and my subsequent unemployment. Whilst at the time you may not have heard of me, you also possibly wouldn’t have heard of PPI Insurance. However, that was about to change and now just about everybody has heard of both PPI and what it stands for. But just in case you haven’t, they’re the companies that are now, twenty years on, in the dock themselves for some extremely unethical practices!
Well, it turned out that my insurance claims had caused the police raid. But how could legitimate claims for redundancy and injury trigger such an out of context response? One can only speculate, but perhaps the following had something to do with it…
I detested being given the run around by an insurance company who, I believed, were trying to avoid paying my legitimate claims, so I’d written to the BBC TV’s Watchdog programme. Watchdog then ran a massive exposé and by the second programme hundreds and hundreds of viewers had phoned in, reporting they’d suffered similar problems with the same insurer. As I’d copied my BBC letter to my PPI insurers, they knew precisely who was behind it. As it was, my case didn’t even feature on the programme because my letter had already done the trick quite nicely and they’d responded by paying my claim! Years later, Watchdog presenter Nick Ross, voiced the “Watchdog” section in the Chequered Justice Audio Book for free.
However, clearly unhappy, they also responded by putting me under months of ongoing surveillance by no less than six different firms of unlicensed private detectives. One by one they all reported back that my claim appeared legitimate, but finally, another suggested that I couldn’t have been injured at all as they’d watched me, out each day riding horses and mucking out stables. Unfortunately this private detective had somehow watched the wrong person, managing to confuse me with a completely different man of a similar age… the husband of a lady who’d been using our stables.
The Watch Dog programme had clearly ruffled some feathers, and doubtless cost the Company a lot of money – I was later told the combined effect of lost business, ‘damage to reputation’ and settling claims previously avoided, was likely to have run into many millions of pounds. So, you may think a few rather powerful people in very high places had a bit of a grudge, and perhaps wanted a spot of revenge… I’m not allowed to comment.
In any event, the inaccurate report, produced by that incompetent private detective, was forwarded to a high level “contact” in the Metropolitan Police by my insurers and triggered what I felt was a totally out of context and brutal raid. Of course, at my trial, the jury were never allowed to know any of this. Why? Very simple… following the raid, officialdom very quickly discovered that the private detectives report was incorrect, so it couldn’t be used in the subsequent trial. Therefore we weren’t allowed to refer to it in evidence, although the private detective was invited to attend the trial by the CPS and brief the Crown witnesses in the waiting room prior to their giving evidence!
Anyway, what happened during that raid was very relevant. The object of a dawn raid is, I’m reliably informed, to cause shock and alarm… and in this respect the shock tactics worked very well, although not quite as planned, because I was five hundred miles away in Scotland at the time with my wife and two sons. However, my 79 year old mother was home… As cars screeched to a halt and the officers forced their way passed her in her nightdress, she collapsed and was later diagnosed as having suffered a stroke! Suddenly, there was a very serious risk of the Metropolitan Police being accused of causing the death of an 79 year old woman, after acting on the advice an unlicensed private detective. Nowadays the Metropolitan Police seem to get away with killing a few people without too much flack. Recently for example, there was the Ian Tomlinson case, the newspaper seller who was killed during G20 protests. But back in the 90s it was a bit different, and this was an 79 year old woman!
I returned home two days later and was incensed by the injustice of what had happened in my absence, not to mention that I considered they’d almost killed my mother. I immediately threatened to sue everyone – the police, my insurers, the private detective and even the bank that had sold me the policy in the first place! How did the police respond? I was arrested…
Although still planning to sue everybody in sight, I thought it best to calm down just a little and co-operate with the police, explaining anything they didn’t understand.
But, before I go on, perhaps I should explain a few things to you, the reader of my blog. At that time I was a very driven person; I simply lived to race and was determined to follow my dream. In that respect maybe my ambitions exceeded my abilities… sadly, I will never know the answer to that one. Perhaps that didn’t make me the best husband or father in the world, I know that now, but I really loved my family as well as my job. However, it had been my dream since childhood to make it as a professional driver and just prior to the general meltdown in the economy, I was really beginning to get there, securing lap records and wins. Then the recession resulted in the collapse of my team! Despite the deepening slump however, I’d just helped pull off a major coup, prior to the police raid, using a new and rather novel “prize Indemnity” scheme, establishing a new team and sponsors for whom I’d drive in the forthcoming season. That’s what I explained to the police, albeit over several hours of taped interviews.
And their response? Well, not a lot… that is, if you exclude scratching their heads over prize indemnity and then simply informing everyone involved with the new setup, and just about everybody that knew me, that I had a long criminal record, and was a nasty piece of work that belongs behind bars! But as I said before, I had no criminal record! And one other significant detail: the officer leading the operation, then proceeded to write all the witness statements himself, rather than troubling the witnesses to do it (click on the documents to the left for enlargement). Some may consider that a little biased… I couldn’t possibly comment.
It was shortly after this that something else happened, something completely unconnected. The bank that had sold me one of my policies, bounced a series of cheques by mistake. They said it was a computer error but I was already fuming over the PPI policies they’d sold me and the recent raid. This time I didn’t hesitate, I issued proceedings against them in the High Court. The cheques had amounted to just over £16 but the bank ultimately settled for £4,000 and the next day it was all in The Sun newspaper! “Bank pays Client £4000 for Cash Slur.” Well, I wasn’t exactly making friends… and what’s more I’d used my legal costs policy, provided by the bank I was suing, to sue them! Some people may think I was in fact making enemies… but I didn’t need to. Thanks to the helpful police officers, I appeared to have inherited an entire army of witnesses, all with neatly prepared statements (the ones written by the police themselves), witnesses prepared to swear that I was the biggest villain since All Capone.
So, why had I kicked up such a stink? Well, I’ve always hated being bullied or pushed around by anyone… big organisations or big anything. It didn’t matter how big they were, I think I must be genetically programmed to oppose it – I’d always fight back. It was a bit of an exposed nerve, something that went way back to my boarding school days where I was always being picked on and beaten black and blue by teachers and bigger kids. Anyway, I was livid at what was happening and what the police and insurance companies had already done to my reputation.
So, perhaps at this point it would be good to just recap on 5 key points from this and my previous postings…
The country was in deep recession with over 3 million people unemployed. I was just one of those 3 million and was claiming monthly, on my PPI Redundancy and Accident policies following the Malaysian riding accident and my subsequent redundancy.
After a disagreement with my insurers, who I believed were trying to avoid payment, I’d written to the BBC Watchdog programme and shortly afterwards, a big exposé had occurred, putting PPI under the national spotlight for the very first time.
I was put under ongoing surveillance by my insurers and then, following a case of mistaken identity, a report was sent to the Metropolitan Police resulting in my home being raided. My mother suffered a stroke and immediately after the raid, the police discovered the mistake made by the private detective. Perhaps that was a little unnerving for them?
A little later, my bank, the bank that sold me my PPI policies, bounced a couple of cheques by mistake and I responded by suing them, using their legal costs policy – provided and underwritten by themselves! Now in a checkmate situation, they’d settled for £4000.00, The Sun newspaper gleefully featuring the story.
There was also a completely unconnected case taking place just 5 months prior to my arrest. That case involved a British racing team run by a Vic Lee. Vic Lee had pleaded guilty to importing £6M of cocaine in his Teams racing transporter. The Vic lee case had taken place in South London, where my trial was to be scheduled.
Note the comment that: ‘Investigators will now try to find out if the motor racing connection has been used before.’ Did the Crown think, with me they’d hooked another “Mr Big”? All I know is that the circuit Judge suddenly and very specifically requested to ‘sit’ on my trial and then, at each pre-trial hearing, made very obvious references to ‘drug money and money laundering’.
Around this time my solicitor had been saying that the Crowns case was crumbling and all charges were likely to be dropped. Consequently, I started to write a book called Broken Dream, about what had happened and to prepare civil proceedings to sue everybody I could lay my hands on! The Metropolitan Police responded by kicking the original officer off the case, bringing in a superior and writing to my insurers warning them that I was about to sue. My insurers responded by suspending my legal costs policy, stating they were only required to provide cover if I had a good prospect of success and as the Crown Prosecution Service are only allowed to proceed if they have a good prospect of success, my insurers considered I clearly couldn’t have! I now had to rely on Legal Aid.
So what happened next?
Well, my insurers saw The Sun article and clearly didn’t like it. A confidential internal email was sent from their claims department (click the image to see) asking if anything could be done and a reply the same day refers to trying to “rekindle the police interest”. The Metropolitan Police kindly obliged by raiding me again for a second time and during that raid they took away all my privileged defence documentation, prepared by my solicitor for the forthcoming trial. On leaving, one of the officers whispered: You’re going down, son! Get used to it, that way it won’t be such a shock when it happens… you’ll have plenty of time to write your little book!
If the events that had overtaken our lives by this point weren’t bizarre enough, the trial that followed was mind boggling and deeply flawed on many levels, with so many strange events and rulings that the trial itself should clearly have been investigated. Instead, the Crown prosecutor was promoted and the Metropolitan Police, paid a share of my fathers Will following it’s seizure and confiscation by the Crown!
Just one mindbogglingly ruling was the judges refusal to allow the spinal surgeon time to give his full evidence JB – 26, or even present to the jury the all important x-rays of my injuries! New MRI Images, below (New MRI Report), submitted to CCRC in 2019 clearly show the accident damage the jury were prevented from seeing by my trial judge on 11th Nov 1994. The new report also confirming what the spinal surgeon had originally identified back in 1993: “Both exiting nerves are flattened, more on the right side… severe narrowing of the L5 – S1 exit foramina, more on the right side, compromising the exit nerves”:
Subsequently I was warned of severe consequences should I publish a factual account of the trial itself or the proceedings surrounding it, events that would later be dismissed officially as a string of coincidences, flukes and regrettable errors. So, despite living in a country with supposed free speech, I was never permitted to publish my original factual
book, Broken Dream, but I was allowed to write a “novel or a fiction” based on it! In 2010, Chequered Justice was finally published as a hardback. It sold out in less than 4 weeks and was subsequently republished in bulk paperback format (subsequently reprinted five times to date). In 2011 it was released inAmazon Kindle eBook format, where it became a Number 1 Bestseller for over 3 months in their Legal Thriller and Courtroom Drama categories.
So what I plan to do next, having skipped over the trial itself, is to post on this blog what happened after it and our subsequent move to the rainforests of Madagascar… currently the subject of yet another book, A Step too Far, being written by Mary, my wife.
As I approach 63, having finally told my true story, I’ve more or less accepted that the past is in the past and most likely will never be resolved… I know that I need to look to the future, not remain stuck in mire that casts its shadow over everything it touches, but it’s tough to except. I certainly don’t blame my jury for what happened in my trial; after all, they were never allowed to see any of what you’ve seen on this blog.
For the bulk of my marriage, Mary, has been my constant supporter, always by my side. Sometimes it takes fate to test those bonds of love and friendship and only then do we discover their strength. So, we’ll be celebrating, not the memory, but the passing of this twenty four year milestone and then I’ll try to move on, damaged yes, but stronger, much stronger than before…
So, to continue my story, by 1979 I’d naively stumbled my way into the world of motor racing… and it was everything I had imagined as a child. But was the world I’d entered, intrinsically corrupt? Was that why the police raided me with such force? Certainly I wasn’t aware of anything at the time, but then I wasn’t looking for it. All I wanted to do was to become a racer, a name and ideally a big name. So why in 1993 did the police think I was some sort of criminal mastermind, a potential threat that needed force to overpower me… or my 79 year old mum? Was there anything criminal in my or my family’s background? Absolutely not…
I was born in Hove in East Sussex, the third child of William and Betty. My parents ran a seaside hotel in Brighton called the Claremont. Following a meeting with Graham Hill, who’s father was a guest at the hotel, I became fuelled by a determination to join that world and become a racing driver. At the age of seven, I was sent off to Shoreham Grammar, a boarding school where, being dyslexic, I was beaten black and blue most days by my teachers, who were of the opinion that corporal punishment, was the best method of eradicating my affliction. Needless to say, I hated school and quickly learnt a distrust of authority, and having auburn hair didn’t help, making me an instant target for bullies. I was considered a dreamer by my teachers, who throughout my school years commonly cursed me with the phrases like: “You’ll never amount to anything…” the curse, mixed with frequent bullying and pain inflicted by my teachers has held me in good stead throughout my life… It instilled a strong strength of mind, a drive to prove myself and an instinctive mistrust of authority… I’ll never accept bullying from anyone, especially those in power… I will always fight back!
So, looking back at motorsports recent history, did the police have any reason to be a bit suspicious of anyone involved in the sport? Possibly… just one or two cases in point…
In the US, back in the early 1980s, the IMSA Sports Car Championshipthat I’d competed in had been hit with a drugs scandal. A top driver, John Paul Junior, had been sent to prison for several years as a result of an investigation and his father sentenced to 25 years after pleading guilty to importing marijuana and tax evasion. But that was in the US. Did the British police consider the UK racing scene to be funded by drugs or some sort of illegal activity? Was that why I’d been raided with such force?
One prominent court case involving a UK racing team was a little matter concerning Lotus founder Colin Chapman, American John Delorean, a gentleman by the name of Fred Bushell and the British government. Basically, De Lorean agreed to pay Lotus US$15m to develop a car. You may know the one, the DeLorean DMC-12, which later featured in the 1985 film Back to the Future. Well, somewhere along the line, a large amount of government cash disappeared. Delorean fled, Chapman died and Bushell was arrested and found guilty of receiving a big pile of the missing money. The judge commented that if Chapman and De Lorean had been present they would have each received 10 year sentence for fraud.
Another man to be sent to prison with a link to motor racing was British businessman Ted Ball whose company, Landhurst Leasings, crashed with US$75m missing. It later evolved that Ball had been funding both the Brabham and Lotus F1 teams during the early 90s and he and his partner were accused of doctoring the books of Landhurst Leasings. He was sentenced to three years in prison after admitting to defrauding banks of millions.
From a promising racer in Formula Junior, then F1’s training ground, came Roy “The Weasel” James, who like many young and aspiring racers, was struggling to find sponsorship…. James decided to use his skills and tackle the problem head-on by taking up some part-time work… as a getaway driver for the Great Train Robbery!
Then there was Doug Wood, a former racing driver and team owner, arrested at helm of his cocaine packed yacht, Ronin. The boat had been tracked to the UK after being sailed into Trinidad and loaded with 91kg of cocaine, valued at around ten million pounds.
This type of activity and more, sensationalised by the British media, didn’t help the sports image. Articles thin on detail, designed only for impact to sell newspapers, reflected a picture of a sport mired in corruption.
By now I’d been racing for almost 13 years and had reached the World Sports Car Championship. It was now the very late 80s and the UK’s buoyant economy had turned. Thatchers Britain was in severe meltdown with another tsunami of debt heading our way courtesy of the US and a certain Jordan R. Belfort, aka The Wolf of Wall Street, the master of stock manipulation and corporate chicanery. The recession of the 90s hit with the power of an erupting volcano, its shockwaves rippling throughout the country. More than 50,000 small business a week were going bust, amongst them my race team, resulting in my redundancy. On 8th February 1993 the police raided me…
At precisely that moment yet another case was hitting the headlines, an investigation and trial involving a man by the name of Vic Lee… Had his case somehow, unwittingly influenced the police and the justice system who were at that very moment looking into my situation? In essence, had “the system” been prejudiced by the unconnected events of recent years?
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”
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!
Hello world and welcome to my nightmare blog! My name is John Bartlett and I’m the author of 2 books, Chequered Justiceand 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 Justicewas 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….
RT @SecretPrisoner: Weekends are the worst when in prison, not being able to join in with what your friends and family usually get up-to. I… 14 hours ago
From a promising racer in Formula Junior, then F1’s training ground, came Roy “The Weasel” James, who like many young and aspiring racers, was struggling to find sponsorship…. James decided to use his skills and tackle the problem head-on by taking up some part-time work… as a getaway driver for the 
John Bartlett 