Ricky Tomlinson: 'It was a political trial - start to finish'

In the week where the Court of Appeal reconsiders the case of the Shrewsbury 24, one of the men convicted and imprisoned back in 1973 speaks to The Justice Gap Podcast. Ricky Tomlinson is probably best known as the idle, but loveable patriarch, Jim Royle, from TV’s the Royle family or as Brookside’s Bobby Grant. But you may not have known that he started his career as a construction worker and played an active role in the first and only ever national construction strikes. Ricky’s involvement in that industrial action landed him a conviction, alongside 23 others, based on ‘lies and fabrication’. In 2017, the miscarriage of justice watchdog, the CCRC refused to refer an application from the Shrewsbury 24 back to the Court of Appeal. A judicial review successfully followed and they finally referred the case in what the chairman of the CCRC, Helen pitcher, described as 'not our finest hour’. Ricky and Calum McCrae discuss the state of the construction industry back in the 70's, the strike itself and the 'political' charges and trials that followed.  Visit: www.thejusticegap.com for more