The Heirs of Owain Glyndwr (40 page)

91

‘Officer,' Gareth began, ‘in
your affidavit, you say that Caradog and Dai Bach approached you to become involved in an act of violence against the Investiture. Is that right?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘So none of it was your idea?'

‘No, sir.'

‘You never suggested a target, or a plan of action? After all, your legend was as the owner of a rather radical book shop with nationalist connections. Are you sure you didn't get a bit carried away, get a bit too enthusiastic?'

‘I never suggested any plan of action to them, sir, no. The only plans or actions I discussed with them were those they had come up with and asked for my assistance with.'

‘Did you not encourage them in their plans at all?'

‘Only as far as was necessary to protect my legend, sir. I did not encourage them to do anything they were not planning to do already.'

‘But you made the arrangements to rent the garage didn't you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Why did you do that, if it was not an act of encouragement?'

‘Dai Bach needed a secure place to assemble the parts and construct the device. I had to have control over that place. I had to make sure that I could get into it, or allow other officers to do so, at any time.'

‘You wanted control? Why should you have control, if it was not your plan?'

‘There were going to be dangerous materials there, sir. If Dai Bach had been totally incompetent, or if I had any worries about safety, and it became necessary to pull the plug, I needed to be able to get in there without delay.'

‘Who arranged the trip to Belfast in April of last year? Didn't you have something to do with that?'

Finch smiled. ‘Let's just say that I had some input. Dai Bach thought he needed some help in constructing the timing device. He said the written instructions he found in the basement at the
Tywysog
were not clear enough. Caradog said he had met a couple of men who had connections with the IRA when they came to Caernarfon to sound out some of the local nationalists a year or so before. That was true. MI5 had documented that visit, and they had briefed me on it. The initial approach was made by Caradog. I agreed to go along with them.

‘But I did ask my superiors to have colleagues in MI5 check all the arrangements, and make sure the trip was as safe as it could be. They were watching us as far as they could. But that wasn't to aid the conspiracy. It was to keep us as safe as we could be in the circumstances. I'm not sure Caradog or Dai Bach ever realised how dangerous it was. My MI5 colleagues tell me that West Belfast is not a place to visit as an outsider these days unless you have a very good reason.'

‘Was the trip really necessary?'

‘To be honest, sir, I think that Dai Bach would have worked it out on his own, left to his own devices. He is an intelligent man. But there were safety considerations. If he did make an error, it might have been very serious, and I couldn't lend assistance myself. So, dangerous as it was, it was decided to let him go to Belfast to learn from those more experienced in the art of bomb-making.'

‘Which also meant,' Gareth said with a smile, ‘that your colleagues in MI5 stood to gain some knowledge of IRA bomb-making techniques which they might not otherwise have had?'

Finch returned the smile.

‘And Baader-Meinhof methods also, in this case, sir. I think that was an unexpected bonus.'

‘I'm sure it was,' Gareth said. ‘Are you sure that wasn't the main purpose of the visit?'

‘I assure you, sir,' Finch replied, ‘that I would not have taken civilians into West Belfast just to gain information about terrorist methods for MI5. That's their job.'

Gareth paused.

‘Officer, you were undercover in Caernarfon for the best part of eight years, were you not?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘During which time, you ran an important community bookstore?'

‘Yes.'

‘You married a local girl, became part of her family, had a child, and made friends?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘You undertook political activities with them on behalf of Plaid Cymru, and attended demonstrations and the like – all perfectly legal, let me make that clear – but you did those things, didn't you?'

‘Yes sir.'

‘You understood the particular distress caused to your wife and to Caradog by the flooding of the Tryweryn Valley, where their family's home had once been?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you are of Welsh parentage yourself?'

‘Yes.'

‘This is a distasteful phrase in some ways, Officer. I don't mean it to be, but it is the most graphic way of putting this to you. Did you perhaps go native?'

Finch hesitated.

‘If you mean…'

‘I am asking whether you perhaps gained some sympathy for the views of Caradog Prys-Jones and Dafydd Prosser during the almost eight years you spent undercover with them. I am asking whether you acquired something of a new legend, whether you were tempted to change sides?'

‘I did sympathise with some of the things they were aggrieved about,' Finch replied, after some thought. ‘The flooding of the Tryweryn valley appalled many people in Wales, people who would not advocate violence. It appalled many people in England. But if you are suggesting that I became a terrorist, or had sympathy with terrorism, the answer is no. Not at any time.'

‘You weren't tempted, even slightly, to become the person you pretended to be for those almost eight years?'

‘No, sir. I remained a police officer, and I did my job.'

92

‘I have some questions
on behalf of the Crown,' Evan Roberts said. But before he could begin, Andrew Pilkington stood up almost directly behind him.

‘No, my Lords,' Andrew said. ‘The Crown has no questions.'

‘We certainly do,' Evan insisted.

‘No,' Andrew replied, ‘we do not.'

The three judges exchanged looks of astonishment. Ben glanced to his right and saw Gareth burst out laughing. He could not help joining in.

‘Well, make up your minds,' Lord Parker said. ‘Who speaks for the prosecution?'

‘I do.' Andrew Pilkington and Evan Roberts spoke at almost exactly the same time.

‘This is extraordinary,' Lord Parker said, his voice betraying some irritation. ‘In all my years of experience on the Bench and at the Bar, I have never known a case in which two members of the Bar argued about who was in charge. Never.'

He looked at the two other judges in turn. They both shook their heads.

‘My Lords,' Andrew said, ‘I would be grateful for a short adjournment so that my learned friend and I can discuss the matter. I am speaking now as Treasury Counsel who received authority to conduct this appeal earlier this morning from the Director of Public Prosecutions personally.'

Lord Parker considered for several seconds.

‘Very well,' he replied, with some show of reluctance. ‘We will adjourn for twenty minutes, at the end of which we shall expect this unseemly squabble to have been resolved.'

He turned to DC Finch. ‘You can step down for the moment, Officer, but don't talk to anyone about your evidence during the adjournment.'

As Lord Parker was about to lead the other judges out of court, Lord Justice Carver touched his arm and whispered into his ear. Mr Justice Melrose stood and moved behind the Lord Chief Justice's chair, so that he too could hear. There was a whispered conversation between all three judges for some time. Ben looked questioningly at Gareth, but Gareth could only shrug his shoulders. It was impossible to tell what they were saying. Eventually, the three judges resumed their seats.

‘Mr Schroeder,' Lord Parker said. ‘We have discussed the evidence we have heard thus far. Without in any way prejudicing our decision in Mrs Finch's case, we think it right to grant her bail pending the conclusion of the appeal. She may sit with her solicitor behind counsel without being supervised by the prison officer.'

There was a spontaneous burst of applause which lasted for some seconds, and one or two shouts from the public gallery in Welsh, which the judges ignored. Ben turned towards Arianwen and saw her raise her hands to her face. As she made her way through the court to sit beside Barratt and Eifion, he felt tears welling up in his eyes.

93

Twenty minutes later, Andrew
Pilkington rose to address the Court of Appeal. Evan Roberts remained in his seat, his hands clenched in front of him, a look of pure fury on his face.

‘My Lords,' Andrew said, ‘I am grateful for the time. As a result, I can be very brief. Having heard the evidence of DC Finch we do not propose to cross-examine him, and the prosecution no longer resists Arianwen Finch's appeal against conviction. We cannot exclude the possibility that, if the jury had heard DC Finch's evidence, they may well have reached a different conclusion, and we agree with the defence that it would not be safe to allow her conviction to stand. We therefore invite your Lordships to allow her appeal.'

Ben glanced behind him. Arianwen was holding Eifion's right hand between hers, and her eyes were filled with tears. Barratt was smiling, elated. There was further sustained applause and shouting in Welsh from the public gallery. Again, the judges said nothing and allowed them to run their course.

‘
Diolch yn fawr iawn
,' Arianwen said to Ben. ‘Thank you so much.' He turned back towards the judges, now barely able to suppress tears of his own.

‘We do wish to be heard on the appeals of Caradog Prys-Jones and Dafydd Prosser, which are resisted,' Andrew was saying. ‘And we would respectfully invite your Lordships, at the conclusion of your judgment, to make observations about the proper means of holding an inquiry into the facts surrounding DC Finch's absence from the trial, and the information given about that to the trial court and to the defence.'

‘We have already allowed Arianwen Finch's appeal against conviction and ordered her immediate release,' Lord Parker began. It was by now almost 1 o'clock, and the Court had heard from Gareth Morgan-Davies on behalf of Dai Bach and Caradog. Andrew Pilkington had replied on behalf of the prosecution. It was clear that the Court had no intention of breaking for lunch at the normal time and was determined to bring the case to an end as soon as possible without adjourning.

‘I need not repeat what was said. The Court agrees that in the absence of DC Finch, and more importantly, in the light of the inaccurate and misleading basis on which the case was put to the jury, her conviction cannot be regarded as safe. The law is clear. The prosecution is entitled to withhold the identity of an informer or undercover police officer, for the obvious purposes of ensuring his safety and not compromising his professional effectiveness. But there is one clear exception to that rule: namely, that where the identity of the informer is essential to the defence of an accused person, the prosecution must either disclose the identity or abandon the case. There was no evidence against Mrs Finch apart from the fact that she was arrested in apparent possession of the bomb. The question for the jury was whether it was possible that she was ignorant of what she had in the boot. Clearly, the jury might have taken a very different view of that question if they had known the truth about DC Finch, rather than the prosecution's version of events.

‘As we have been invited to do, we call on the Attorney-General to set up an inquiry to investigate, as thoroughly as possible, the circumstances under which the case was put to the jury in the way it was. We will make no other comment about that for now, except that no stone should be left unturned, and no one – and we mean no one – should be regarded as above suspicion.

‘I now turn to the other appeals. Mr Morgan-Davies, to whom we are indebted for his very able argument, not only addressed us on behalf of his own client, but also, at the behest of the Registrar of Criminal Appeals, on behalf of Caradog Prys-Jones. Mr Prys-Jones, of course, has only himself to blame for the fact that he did not have his own counsel. But we have a duty to consider his appeal just as carefully as if he were present and represented, and we are grateful to Mr Morgan-Davies for assisting the Court in that task.

‘Mr Morgan-Davies invites us to say that the false story the jury was told about DC Finch infects Mr Prys-Jones's case, and Mr Prosser's case, just as it does that of Mrs Finch. He invites us to find that all three convictions are unsafe and must be quashed. In essence, he says that Trevor Finch was an informant, and that his identity should have been disclosed to the defence because it was necessary for a fair trial, as it was in the case of Arianwen Finch. We do not agree.

‘That was the position in Mrs Finch's case, but that was because her state of mind was the key to her case, and DC Finch would have been an important source of evidence on that question. We have considered anxiously whether it is also true of the other two defendants. We do not think it was. Ironically, the prosecution's case would probably have been a good deal stronger than it was if DC Finch had been disclosed and called as a prosecution witness. But that was not done. We repeat that there is no excuse for the court being misled. But there was evidence against both Caradog Prys-Jones and Dafydd Prosser which did not depend on DC Finch at all.

‘Mr Prys-Jones, in essence, admitted the offence to the police in a statement under caution. Even if he had not, there was the clearest possible evidence that he chose the site at which the bomb was to be placed, and he arranged the perfect cover for himself by getting a job as a night watchman with access to Caernarfon Castle at all hours.

‘There was the clearest possible evidence against Dafydd Prosser to implicate him in the construction of the explosive device in the garage at Bangor, consisting of debris from the dynamite and electrical wire, the instructions for building such a device, and his fingerprints. In addition, both men went to Belfast in circumstances which make it clear that they intended to – and apparently did – receive valuable technical information from those in other organisations who were more experienced in such matters, information of which Prosser no doubt made good use when he returned to Bangor.

‘It is true that certain evidence given to the jury should not have been given to them. It is now agreed that certain passages and signatures in documents, which the prosecution said were in the handwriting of Trevor Hughes, were in fact written by someone else. That is not in dispute. The written report of the hand-writing expert, Miss Bailey, makes it clear. The evidence of these documents should never have been given to the jury. It was a serious irregularity. We must consider whether it renders these convictions unsafe. We do not think it does. There was a great deal of other evidence against both the appellants.

‘There is no evidence at all to suggest that Mr Prys-Jones and Mr Prosser were entrapped by DC Finch into committing an offence they would not otherwise have committed. We are unable to see that the identity of DC Finch was essential to the defence of Mr Prys-Jones or of Mr Prosser. Accordingly, we conclude that there is no ground on which their appeals against conviction can succeed. Those appeals are accordingly dismissed.

‘We have not been invited in any serious way to interfere with the sentences passed by the learned judge. They were severe sentences, but the judge was right to be severe. These men were convicted of a conspiracy to cause an explosion which might have caused death or serious injury to the Queen, Prince Charles, or other members of the Royal Family, or to other persons present at the Investiture. It was an offence of the utmost gravity. The sentences were fully merited, and are beyond criticism.'

He paused.

‘But we cannot exclude the possibility that, if the learned trial judge had known of the part played by Trevor Finch, he might have viewed the matter of sentence in a somewhat different light. We have no way of knowing whether that would have been the case or not. It may very well be that it would have made no difference at all. But it seems to us important to avoid any possible appearance of injustice arising from the prosecution's conduct of the case, and accordingly for this reason alone – and I stress, for this reason alone – we have decided to reduce the sentence of Caradog Prys-Jones and that of Dafydd Prosser from one of 40 years to one of 20 years.

‘We will say no more about this case, leaving to others to decide what further steps, if any, should be taken.'