The Boy from Tiger Bay by Ceri Jackson

The events recorded in this book shocked me to the core. The Boy from Tiger Bay is a true crime narrative that exposes one of the UK’s most infamous murder investigations and the racial injustice suffered by five men who lived in Tiger Bay arrested following the murder of Lynette White on Valentine’s Day 1988. A former BBC journalist, Jackson has championed the case of the five men wrongfully charged with the murder initially through the BBC broadcast, ‘Shreds’ and now in her first book, where she documents the murder hunt and the impact on these five men with painstaking detail, primarily through the eyes of John Actie – one of the five framed with the murder.

As she states in the preface, ‘This is not a story about a murder investigation, but about the dark side of human nature, of blind judgement and prejudice. above all it is the story of five men- snatched from their lives and families to be thrown into a nightmare from which they were never allowed to escape.’

At times I got lost in the depth of the detail across the three decades of the story. The spider’s web of corruption exposed in the book is staggering as Jackson meticulously documents the procedural errors and coerced confessions. Some of this detail slows the pace.

Despite pressure on the government for a public inquiry into the scandal of the Cardiff Five, none has taken place. I hoped that the book might end with a positive note that a public apology was made to the five innocent men, accused of murder. As a teenager who lived through the Bloody Sunday scandal in Derry/ Londonderry, Northern Ireland, I grew up listening to lies and counter lies about what happened that day on 30 Jan 1972 and it was not until several public inquiries and a public apology from the British Prime Minister David Cameron on the 50^th anniversary, that the victims found some sense of acknowledgement for their suffering. His message at the time to the victims of Bloody Sunday of ‘the double jeopardy of having your relatives suffer.. for so long…and taking so long for the truth to come out,’ could well be applied to the Cardiff Five case. Thirty years later, three of the five men framed for the murder of Lynette White in 1988 are dead and the families of all five have suffered unimaginable recriminations in the aftermath of wrongful convictions.

This book will stay with me for a long time. I hope that if it is made into a film, the sub titles at the end will emphasise that no public enquiry has ever taken place and indeed I would hope that this book will ensure that this story is never forgotten and will cause the government to and rethink their stance on a public inquiry.