Chapter 12

The Ride of Death

t is easy to be wise after the event; all of us have been in that position. And yet this incident started off so well – a sharp-eyed police officer had spotted a parked-up Mini bearing false number plates in Drayton Road, Leytonstone during the early hours of 15 July 1965. Either ‘Juliet One-one’, the ‘J’ Division ‘Q’ Car, or the night-duty CID, or both – unmarked cars each containing three officers in plain clothes – ought to have been alerted. In consequence, an observation would have been set up – two aids to CID in a nondescript observation van close to the suspect Mini, and either the CID car or the ‘Q’ Car, or both, in the vicinity, with all of the vehicles in radio contact with each other. In this way, as soon as a suspect went to the Mini, the aids could alert the other police vehicles and jump out of the observation van in order to arrest the offender; then the ‘Q’ Car or CID car could quickly drive to the scene, if necessary, to block in the suspect vehicle. If it appeared that the suspect in the vehicle was likely to escape, the police car could ram it, or (and this scenario was far more likely) in the event of a peaceful arrest convey the prisoner to the police station. I know, because I was involved in an exactly similar situation. It is a simple strategy, and it works.

But not in this case. It was thought far better to start knocking on householders’ doors in the vicinity of the stolen car in the middle of the night; apart from seriously annoying the neighbourhood, this ran the risk of alerting the car thief to the presence of police if he lived in the vicinity – as indeed he did. As six o’clock in the morning arrived, so the night-duty handed over their outstanding matters to the early turn shift; and still the CID had not been alerted. An hour later, the crew of ‘Juliet Two’, the marked police Area Car, came on duty; this included the observer, a uniform officer wearing plain clothes. Knowing him to be a very keen officer, the duty officer drove him to Drayton Road in his private car and left him there in it, at some distance from the suspect vehicle, taking the car keys with him and walking back to Leyton police station in Francis Road. So that was the situation: a lone officer in plain clothes, with no means of pursuit and with no means of communication; personal radios would not make an appearance in the Metropolitan Police for another three years. Nobody knew if one suspect or four would approach the car. This was an ill thought-out scenario, set for disaster; and the fact that PC Barrett was not killed or crippled was due to his courage, his enormous determination and a great deal of good fortune.

The bravery of Police Constable 365 ‘J’ John Henry Barrett was never in question. His National Service had been spent with the Royal Military Police, serving mainly in Gibraltar, before he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1956. Most of his service had been spent at Leyton, and Barrett was married with two young children, a girl and a boy. His first commendation came within eighteen months of joining; whilst on holiday with his wife in Clacton, he went to the aid of a police constable who was being attacked. He was commended again in 1964 for vigilance and ability when carrying out two arrests and the following year he was commended for another arrest off-duty: a man had left a stolen car with false plates outside the house of Barrett’s mother-in-law in Clapton, to be used in a robbery the following day. Now, five weeks later, Barrett was about to become involved in another incident oddly reminiscent of the case for which he had just been commended, involving a stolen car with false number plates parked outside a house.

After an hour of waiting, Barrett saw a man – John Michael Stannard, aged twenty-three – emerge from a nearby house and make his way towards the Mini. A fitter’s mate, Stannard had a busy sideline; not only had he stolen the Mini, he had also stolen two other cars – a Humber and a Morris – as well as an outboard motor and navigational equipment valued at £900 from a yacht moored in the River Hamble, Southampton.

As Stannard inserted a key into the lock on the driver’s door, so Barrett ran over to the car; but by now, due to the distance involved, Stannard was in the driver’s seat and had started the engine. Barrett showed his warrant card and shouted that he was a police officer, but Stannard put the car in gear and drove straight at him. To avoid being run down, Barrett dived on to the bonnet of the car and hung on to the rain channels on either side of its roof. Stannard accelerated away, and for the next five minutes, at speeds of 30 mph, did his best to dislodge Barrett, who was shouting at him to stop; Stannard swerved from side to side across the road, braking sharply then accelerating fiercely, and on two occasions crashed into parked cars. He banged Barrett’s fingers through his open window to try to break his grip, shouting, “Get off or be knocked off!”

There was never any question of Barrett drawing his truncheon to smash the windscreen; with the lunatic way in which Stannard was driving, it was all he could do to retain his grip on the car. Had Stannard succeeded in breaking his hold on the car, Barrett would have slid off underneath the wheels, with undoubtedly fatal consequences.

Astonished early-morning pedestrians turned and gaped as this ride of death was enacted through the side-streets of Leytonstone, and Barrett shouted out to them to call the police; as he told me forty-five years later, “I think at least one of them must have done.”

As the car entered Queen’s Road, Stannard shouted, “Get off, or I’ll do you!” and then, with the car travelling at 30 mph, he braked suddenly and leapt from the car, which freewheeled down a slope and hit a tree. The sudden impact caused Barrett to be thrown free; he landed in the roadway on his head and shoulders. Badly dazed, he got to his feet; he had seen Stannard run off into a side road and now he followed but lost sight of him. He enlisted the aid of some newspaper delivery boys to keep watch for any movements of the suspect, and then assistance from Leyton police station started to arrive. The arrest was later carried out by Police Constable Aubrey Crabb from West Ham police station; Stannard was found cowering in a garden shed, close to the scene.

Barrett was taken to hospital, but incredibly he was not detained and was allowed to go home. Matters changed considerably that evening when he was rushed back to hospital, suffering from concussion. Altogether, he spent one month on sick leave; he later spent ten days recuperating at Hove convalescent home. However, the effects of the impact he had sustained would last for years, with headaches and mood swings.

In the meantime, Stannard had confessed his misdeeds, and during the course of their enquiries the CID arrested Lionel Borges, a twenty-five-year-old chef who had been implicated in the various thefts. The investigation was conducted by the marvellously eccentric Detective Sergeant Arthur Baigent, who, apart from his astonishing social gaffes, was best remembered for his report of a burglary where entry to the premises had been effected by cutting through a corrugated iron roof. After half a dozen unsuccessful attempts to spell ‘corrugated’ correctly, Arthur simply gave up and wrote ‘crinkly tin’.

But he had more success with Borges, who stated, “This has been worrying me for a long time. I would have got everything cleared up but I didn’t want to split on Stannard.” Stannard had been charged with the attempted murder of Barrett, but in November 1965 at the Old Bailey the jury was directed to find him not guilty of this offence by the trial judge, Mervyn Griffith-Jones. Giving evidence, Stannard had piteously told the court that he had panicked, he had never intended to do Barrett any harm, “and at no stage did I ever drive fast.” Convicted of causing Barrett bodily harm by ‘wanton and furious driving’, the judge told Stannard:

This was the most wicked conduct to a police officer doing nothing but his duty and doing it thoroughly well. That conduct could have resulted in serious injury, if not death to that police officer.

After jailing Stannard for a total of eighteen months and Borges for twelve months, the judge told Barrett, “Your conduct is worthy of the highest commendation,” as indeed it was.

He was highly commended by the commissioner in December 1965 and a month later was awarded £20 from the Bow Street Reward Fund. Four months later he was gazetted to be awarded the British Empire Medal for Gallantry, which was presented to him at County Hall by Earl Alexander of Tunis.

The British Empire Medal (BEM) had originally been instituted in 1922, both for ‘meritorious service’ and for gallantry, at which time it was known as the Empire Gallantry Medal (EGM). The EGM was superseded in 1940 by the George Cross and the George Medal, but its successor, the BEM, was still awarded for gallant acts which just failed to reach the criteria required for the George Medal. From 1940 until 1974 (when the BEM was replaced with the Queen’s Gallantry Medal) 128 awards were made to Metropolitan Police officers, including a bar to the award. The silver medal was 36mm in diameter, with an effigy of a seated Britannia on the obverse looking towards the sun to her right, encircled with the words ‘For God and the Empire’ and at the bottom the words ‘For Meritorious Service’. On the reverse, the royal cipher was surrounded by a crown, incorporating the words, ‘Instituted by King George V’. A straight clasp attached to the medal with laurel leaves secured the 32mm wide rose-pink ribbon, edged with thin pearl-grey stripes. The recipient was permitted to add BEM after his or her name, the medal could not be awarded posthumously and the fact that it was awarded for gallantry was denoted by a silver oak leaf emblem worn on the ribbon.

Prior to this incident, Barrett had applied to become a dog handler, but despite his exemplary record of off-duty arrests, he was told selection for a course could take as long as seven years. However, following the investiture Barrett was very quickly given a course and, as he wryly told me, “I could have had a dog and a horse as well.” In total, he had three dogs – Zola, Khan and Bodie – and remained on ‘J’ Division for the rest of his career, where he carried out a great deal of useful work.

In 1971 Barrett and another officer rescued an elderly woman who had attempted suicide by putting her head in a gas oven. As well as being commended by the commissioner and receiving a resuscitation certificate from the Royal Humane Society, he was feted at a reception given by the Mayor of Waltham Forest. In 1975 he was again commended by the commissioner and the judge at Snaresbrook Crown Court for his action in a case of robbery and firearms offences; and ten months later again, both by the commissioner and Snaresbrook Crown Court, for arresting five people wanted all over England for forging Post Office savings books. In 1977 he was on foot patrol with his dog one Sunday afternoon and, leaving the dog to keep watch, Barrett climbed over a gate into an enclosure which housed several garages. He discovered a number of car parts taken from Transit vans which had been stolen and broken down for spares. It led to the arrest of thirteen persons and another (and final) commendation for Barrett.

Barrett retired after twenty-five years’ service to the house in Woodford where he has lived for all of his married life. He has been married for fifty-two years and has four grandchildren, one of whom is a police constable at Limehouse police station; Barrett’s brother was also a police officer and his son is a police sergeant, also at Limehouse.

After his retirement Barrett opened an art gallery, but after thirteen years it had to close when he was afflicted with a virus which paralysed him from the waist down. Now aged seventy-four, he still drives and manages to walk, albeit for very short distances, with a stick.

Given Barrett’s amazing courage and fortitude, as someone who had survived ‘the ride of death’, it would take more than paralysis to stop him.