The Crucifixion of Charlie Alliston

The news haulage industry ran a show trial to pave the way for oppressive laws on cycling and transport minister, Jesse Norman, has just made the official announcement.

Part one dealt with how the news haulage industry perverted the course of justice ahead of bicycle courier, Charlie Alliston’s unprecedented prosecution for manslaughter, and here in part two, I will look at the wider media war on cycling during the trial.

The Show Trial

The main features of a show trial are (1) a heavily publicised prosecution where (2) authorities already have decided guilt and (3) intent is influencing wider opinion rather than ensuring corrective justice.

Heavy Publicity

The life of Kim Briggs was sadly lost, February 12th 2016. She died after stepping out onto Old Street in east London, giving eighteen-year-old, Charlie Alliston, cycling by just seconds to take avoiding action. Court evidence states he reduced speed, had right of way, shouted warnings, then swerved but tragically heads collided, leaving Briggs with fatal brain trauma from which she never recovered.

Perhaps inside living memory if not beyond, this is the first case where a fixed gear bicycle was involved in the death of a pedestrian. In comparison HGVs are 5% of London traffic but cause 20% of cycling fatalities, and kill any sort of vulnerable road user weekly. Even as I’m writing, there are muted reports of two drivers, one hurling a HGV and the other a car, having collided to crash onto the pavement severing the leg off someone securing a bicycle. Yet despite this but also because of this (which will become clear later), at the Old Bailey August 14th, Alliston faced the unprecedented charge of criminal manslaughter which carries a potential for life imprisonment. He was found not guilty, but guilty for a lesser offence of “wanton and furious cycling” and now faces 18 months in prison.

Worse for Alliston and following a two week nationwide deliberately orchestrated anti-cycling perjury campaign, an even more hysterical frenzy ran during trial. Some one-hundred-and-fifty articles — many salacious and deceptive — flooded through the likes of the Dail Mail, Evening Standard, Guardian, Metro, Times and Mirror. TV coverage was daily. BBC ran scare videos with alarming soundtracks implying Alliston was street racing at the time. On BBC radio, news-actor Tony Livesey by name and lie did he by nature, exaggerated the spin:

In trying to emulate something he’s seen in [Lucas Brunnel’s courier racing] movies [Charlie Alliston has] taken his front brakes off — I’m just saying if you start to go on the wrong side of the road, go the wrong way up a one way street, and take your brakes off you run the risk of harming other people.

Alliston hadn’t taken his brakes off, was on the correct side of the road, was on a two-way street, had right of way, and certainly was not street-racing. Collision speed was estimated at 12mph. Later, the interview containing the above quote was diced into an even more provocative and misleading video, with discussion of Alliston overlayed onto footage of people cycling into people, on pavements and ignoring traffic signals.

On ITV, Richard Madeley, an ITV news-actor and long-term employee of haulier Archie Norman, even feigned aneurysm on morning television over Alliston and children being able to cycle without insurance. Quite how shifting financial liabilities outside the person increases personal responsibility, or how insurance would have saved Briggs isn’t clear. It’s as if all the apparent media concern was disingenuous and some other agenda was at play. Indeed, behind the scenes lay the Press Association directing events and generating as much negative publicity as possible.

In contrast was the prosecution of Jessica Wells. At the same courthouse as Alliston during the same week, she pleaded guilty on August 21st to death by careless driving and was given a non-custodial sentence. She killed Ian Rose speeding at 44mph, undertaking vehicles and not looking at the road ahead. Using Google news search, Wells has received precisely two articles. A similar search for Alliston returns over thirteen-thousand. Exactly how many people now have minds imprinted with the case of Kim Briggs compared to Ian Rose is unknowable, but one can easily suspect that 13000-to-2 is a gross underestimate and the true figure is in the millions.