Chapter 8. Where there's brass there's muck
KIRKBY is a New Town on the edge of Liverpool, built mainly in the 1960s and early 1970s to re-house people from the city's slums. But the move brought only a brief respite. Within ten years hundreds of the jerry-built houses and flats were themselves slums and many stood empty, ready for demolition. Unemployment in Kirkby is massive and permanent. Thousands of youngsters there have never worked - and are never likely to work. About one-third of all families live on the dole. It is little wonder that a lot of them supplement their incomes in the only way possible - by crime. Kirkby police station provided the setting for the famous television series, Z-Cars.
In the healthiest part of Kirkby is a cluster of better, privately owned houses. Among the more splendid of these was the home of the town's boss, Dave Tempest, OBE, JP. Tempest was the veteran Labour leader and a friend of the local MP, Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Apart from one year of Liberal rule, Tempest had dominated the town since its birth. In the absence of any serious opposition, he did what he liked. And he shrugged off the town's problems by accusing the Press and television of "giving Kirkby a bad name".
Anyone passing Tempest's house shortly after dawn one summer morning in 1977 would have been struck by an ironic sight. A scene unlike any shown in Z-Cars. For detectives were arresting the great socialist for his part in a conspiracy which had systematically cheated the people of the town. The bad name of Kirkby had gone back where it belonged. It might never had happened but for the Free Press - and one disastrous blunder. In the 1974 re-organisation of local government, Kirkby was due to merge into a larger unit called Knowsley. Any of Kirkby council's money left unspent at the time of the merger would automatically go to Knowsley. Tempest did not want this to happen and decided to have a final fling. But the money had to be spent quickly; there was no time for a bricks-and-mortar building project. Then someone had the idea of a ski slope. It would be both quick and simple. All it needed was a gigantic heap of earth, topped off with a special surface for skiing. The ski slope first attracted the attention of the Free Press when a contributor from Kirkby told us that the council, in their haste to finish it,
had used volunteer children to lay the ski surface during school hours.
When they could not get enough volunteers, they paid children 25p an hour to work at the weekend. Then a journalist on the Kirkby reporter told us that the slope had been built without planning permission, on land which Kirkby council did not own (they later had to buy it from Liverpool). Worse still, the slope was built on top of the pipe carrying the town's water supply and it faced on to a main road, which could cause a hazard to any skiers who failed to stop at the bottom (though that was perhaps an academic point as the slope could not be opened because the council's insurance company refused to let anyone ski on it).
Responsibility for the project - and the mistakes - lay with the council architect's department, headed by Eric Spencer Stevenson. The decision to build it was taken by council leader Dave Tempest, using his delegated powers and was never approved by the full council. And the main contract for the work was awarded to local builder George Leatherbarrow without inviting formal, competitive tenders.
Shortly after our first story on the ski slope was published, we were joined by Steve Scott, a reporter who had just left a job at the Cambridge Evening News. Steve had been a student at the Centre for Journalism Studies in Cardiff, where he had read the Free Press and become interested in it. Before going to Cambridge, he worked on Merseyside for the Bootle Times and had written several stories for the Free Press. Derek, meanwhile, had gone off travelling round Europe, so there were still only three of us doing most of the work. We divided Merseyside into three geographical areas, with the idea that each of us would specialise in stories from one area. Steve grumbled at being given Kirkby because it was further away than the others. But he quickly became enthusiastic when he saw a letter which arrived in response to the ski slope story.
The letter, which was unsigned, purported to come from someone working in the architect's department. It alleged that Leatherbarrow, while charging the council for the earth used to build the ski slope, had not paid for it himself. He had advertised the site in the Liverpool Echo as a "free tip" for builders. But more significantly, the letter gave us the first inkling of the relationship between Leatherbarrow and Stevenson and Tempest. It said they were on very friendly terms and named a pub where they often had lunch together.
Steve began his inquiries by approaching councillors. He talked to several opposition Liberal councillors and one or two on the Labour side who had the reputation of being honest. But they knew nothing and suspected nothing. He spent the next two weeks in Kirkby library, going through old council minutes. From his notes, we compiled a list of contractors who had worked for Kirkby council and we ran company checks. Two things in particular stood out. One was that most of the building contracts - about £10 million-worth - had gone to George Leatherbarrow, while the big national firms which usually won contracts from neighbouring councils, scarcely got a look in. The other was that whenever anything odd happened, the council's architect, Eric Spencer Stevenson was in the thick of it.
The council minutes also gave the names of people who might be willing to talk: The Personnel Committee minutes included names of officials who had left the council. Steve tried to track them down and eventually found one who was co-operative, but warned that he would never get another job in local government if it became known that he had talked. Steve went to see him. Actually he knew very little about Leatherbarrow, but suggested several other lines of inquiry. But more important, he confirmed our suspicions that something was wrong in Kirkby: After that we had no doubt there was a story, if only we could get it. One piece of information the ex-official gave us was about the first private office block to be built in Kirkby. He remembered that the developer was Philip Moore-Clague, who had been middle-man in the slag heaps affair. (The slag heaps affair had been a national scandal some months earlier, and involved Tony Field, the brother of Marcia Williams, Harold Wilson's secretary.) Moore-Clague's arrival in Kirkby was all the more interesting because Kirkby was Wilson's constituency. We got what extra information we could and splashed the story in our next issue. But it was a tantalising story, and we never really got to the bottom of it. Several questions could not be answered; in particular, how MooreClague, who lived in the Isle of Man, heard about the building land in Kirkby. We had expected the national Press to take it up, but they did not, and after this diversion we turned out attention back to Leatherbarrow and friends.
There were rumours that Leatherbarrow had done building work for several prominent people connected with Kirkby council. Through a tenants' organisation we found someone who had been a shop steward at Leatherbarrow's. He gave us the names of other workers, and they told us there had been something called the Star Gang - a group of privileged workers who went round doing "special" jobs. We got their names and Steve and Chris went to see them. By that time Leatherbarrow knew we were asking questions and the Star Gang were reluctant to talk. Steve recalls the visits to one of them: "We must have been there five times. We just kept turning up on his doorstep and each time he kept adding a bit more. He was the driver who had delivered some of the materials and he kept denying it."
Eventually the Star Gang revealed that Leatherbarrow had built a kitchen extension for Stevenson and a much larger extension to Tempest's house. Materials for both these jobs had been taken from the site in Kirkby where Leatherbarrow was building council houses.
Meanwhile, Chris had traced a former manager of Kirkby Stadium, the council-run sports centre. The manager had lost his job when he was jailed for obtaining £2,000 by deception. In court he had explained that high living while he worked for Kirkby council had,led him to crime. He had told the court of lavish entertainment and trips to Europe paid for by contractors. He gave us details of these trips and mentioned one to London paid for by George Leatherbarrow. Among the party had been Tempest and Stevenson. Then he dropped a bombshell: He said Stevenson had a car that was known as "Leatherbarrow's car".
More details of the car came from another source. George Leatherbarrow had been divorced and re-married. His first wife told us the car was a maroon Alfa Romeo, and gave the rough date when Leatherbarrow bought it. And she put the friendship between Leatherbarrow and Stevenson in a new light. She said the best man at Leatherbarrow's second wedding had been Stevenson.
At this exciting news, Chris and Steve rushed to Birkenhead Register Office and bought a copy of Leatherbarrow's marriage certificate. And there, on the certificate, were the signatures of the two witnesses - Eric Spencer Stevenson and Elizabeth M Stevenson.
By that stage we had the basic outline of the Leatherbarrow story. The rest was a matter of getting the proof and tying up loose ends. There were several weak points. One was the trip to London - how to prove that Leatherbarrow paid for it. First we tried the hotel where they were supposed to have stayed, without any luck. Then we got the name of the travel agent where Leatherbarrow had booked the train tickets. Chris decided to try subterfuge. He phoned the travel agent, posing as Leatherbarrow's accountant. He said he needed to know the cost of the tickets and would hang on while they checked. Certainly, they said. They would have a look. There was a long, tense pause. Then the answer came. £114.90 - and the bill had been sent to Mr Leatherbarrow, marked "Personal". Fortunately, the party had travelled in style, by Pullman. And Pullman tickets carry the names of passengers. Among the seven names were Leatherbarrow, Tempest and Stevenson.
Another problem was the building work done for Stevenson and Tempest. Was this legitimate work which had been paid for, or not? The work at Stevenson's was especially suspect because he lived in Heswall, some 20 miles from Kirkby. If he had been paying it would have made sense to call in a local firm. While Tempest's extension was being built he had shown no concern about the cost. He had made several changes of plan after work had been done - which would have made the job very expensive. In any case, Leatherbarrow was no jobbing builder; he specialised in big contracts.
Steve decided to confront Tempest about the extension. He phoned him and asked first about the trip to London:
Hello. Mr Tempest? My name is Stephen Scott from the Liverpool Free Press. ..
How've you got my number?
Well, I got it from somebody. I've got a couple of questions I'd like to ask you about your
work in Kirkby if I could, if you have a minute. One of them is about
a trip to London in July 1972 which was to see the White City, the sports
stadium down there. Did you authorise that trip?
Did I authorise it? Yes. What do you mean, did I authorise it?
Well, did you say it could happen?
I don't know anything about a trip to White City. Well, perhaps it
was the Crystal Palace. I, I've never been on a trip anywhere.
You've never made a trip anywhere?
On a trip, no.
Not a two-day trip to London to see. .
I've never been on a trip anywhere. Yes, well the trip was on
July 18, 1972. Was it? You see, it all depends on what you mean by a trip.
Well I mean it was a trip to London staying overnight in a hotel,
the fares being paid by George Leatherbarrow. I don't know anything about that.
You were on it.
Nobody's paid my fare or anything else other than official ... er
... meetings I've gone on by the council.
So you absolutely deny that you were on that trip?
I don't deny anything. I'm saying nobody's paid my expenses anywhere other
than when I've gone officially by the council or I've paid for myself.
So if George Leatherbarrow bought say, the tickets - first class Pullman
tickets to London for £114 - Then you would have paid him for Your ticket?
He certainly wouldn't have bought mine.
He wouldn't have bought yours?
No.
Yes but you ... you did go on that trip to London.
I don't know what you mean by a trip to London, you see. I ...
I made arrangements myself to go, to go to the White City, er Crystal
Palace rather, and I paid my own expenses. What George Leatherbarrow
did, I wouldn't know ...
OK. I'd like to ask you, on a slightly different note, about
the extension on your house. Yes. Can you tell me who built it?
Why?
Well because I'm interested.
Well, what's it got to do with you?
Er, it may or may not have anything to do with me. I mean
I'm just asking you the question
If you say...I had ... I had my extension. built ... with a, er, a further
mortgage from my building society and it's my business and it's not your business.
Did. .. ?
I pay my building society every month on my house.
Yes, er, was it George Leatherbarrow who built your extension?
Are you asking me or telling me?
Well I'm asking you. Was it George Leatherbarrow?
Well then, I'm saying whoever built my extension it's none of your business.
I don't... You see I don't see why you should be able to pry into
my private affairs like this.
Well, that depends on whose private affairs they are.
Yes, it, it depends on what you want to do really, doesn't it?
Well, well it does. I mean Eric Spencer Stevenson could say the same thing to me:
Why do I want to pry into his private affairs? Well, there's a very good reason why.
Well I don't know. But there's no reason why you should pry into my private affairs
and if you want to take any steps then it's a matter for yourself ...
Sure, OK.
But er, I don't see in these particular circumstances and that the sort
of rag you represent that I should talk to you like this.
Well, that's up to you. I'm simply asking you the questions. If you say
it's none of my business that's fair enough.
Well, it isn't any of your business.
Well, let me just say on the extension,
this might be of concern to you. Yes? The materials, or some of the materials for
that extension. If I said to you they came from the Tower Hill site where George
Leatherbarrow was working, what would your reaction be to that?
I would say that, er, that somebody's trying to put ideas into your mind
probably with a view to trying to get me into some sort of trouble.
Well if I say to you that I've checked this out and I'm convinced that some
of the materials, not all of them...
Well, I wouldn't know anything about that.
Yes.
Would it be a matter of concern to you, say, if they had come from the
Tower Hill site, because of course the council. ..
All I can say is this. That I've paid for my extension quite legitimately
and above board. Now if somebody builds an extension for me I don't
go following them round where they get their materials from.
It was in fact a very expensive job, wasn't it, because ...
No, well it doesn't matter what sort of an expensive job it was. All I'm saying
is that I've paid for my job to be done and I got a further mortgage from my
building society to do it.
Tempest was clearly lying about his trip to London and, we suspected, about the "further mortgage". (In fact later, during the police investigation he denied the mortgage story and offered a different account of how he paid for the extension.) But at that time, despite our suspicions, there was no way we could prove Leatherbarrow had done the work for nothing. So we changed tack and looked at the source of the materials. As they had come from the site of Leatherbarrow's council contract, did they actually belong to the council? At first this seemed equally difficult to prove. We thought we would need evidence that the council had paid for specific bricks, doors and so on that had gone to the Stevenson and Tempest homes. But then we had a stroke of luck. A surveyor with a firm in Liverpool told us we had all the evidence we needed. Councils advanced money to contractors to buy materials. This meant that once the materials had been checked on to the building site they belonged, at least in part, to Kirkby council. And even if Stevenson and Tempest had paid Leatherbarrow for the materials in their extensions, Leatherbarrow had no right to sell them.
The last major problem was the Alfa Romeo car. The one Leatherbarrow had bought for Stevenson was described as maroon. At the time of our investigation, the Alfa Stevenson was driving was cream. Had it been re-sprayed? We checked with the licensing office, using the pretext that it might have been involved in an accident. But it was not the car we were looking for. Stevenson had got the cream Alfa some time after the date when he got his car from Leatherbarrow. We checked local dealers who might have records of Stevenson trading in the Leatherbarrow car, but drew a blank. By that time we were very hard up and approached the BBC's Nationwide programme, with a view to selling the story. They liked it and sent a producer, David Geen, who shared Stevenson's taste for fast cars - and knew something we had overlooked: Very few garages service Alfa cars. He checked these and found one where Stevenson's maroon Alfa had been repaired. The garage gave him the registration number. It was then a simple matter of finding the present owner and asking to look at the log book. The log book gave the name of the garage which had sold the car, ostensibly to Stevenson. But the man at the garage told a different story. He remembered that George Leatherbarrow had paid for the car, that he brought a man answering the description of Stevenson to look at it, and had given the impression he was buying it for this man.
The picture was then complete. We published the story and the BBC's film was broadcast a few days later. Tempest had lost his council seat in the elections the previous month and Stevenson was immediately suspended from work. The police began a long investigation. Tempest, Leatherbarrow and Stevenson were arrested on conspiracy charges and later jailed.
The story-behind-the-story was actually far less straightforward than it may sound. In the first place, the Leatherbarrow affair was only part - but the most effective part - of the whole investigation. A complicated business deal involving soil, and the tactics of other firms to win contracts for the sports centre put it in a broader context. Also, a lot of the inquiries proved unfruitful. Rumours were rife and anything that seemed important had to be checked. For example, Stevenson was not the only person said to have got a car from Leatherbarrow. And Tempest was rumoured to own a hotel. Checking these two rumours alone took a great deal of time of led us up blind alleys. More time was taken trying to get a picture of Stevenson at Leatherbarrow's wedding, and we even spent an afternoon at Chester races because Leatherbarrow and Stevenson were thought to be there.
Time (which also means money) is the main reason why such stories are rare in the Press. By the shoe-string standards of the Free Press it was an expensive story. We paid no-one for information, but travelling and phone calls probably left us £100 out of pocket. And the time we spent could have been used more profitably doing something else. The BBC paid £250 for the story and got a bargain. Our return on that worked out at a few pence per man-hour. The BBC were able to do the story because the ground-work had been done and they knew the story would check out. Had they employed a reporter from a cold start, it would have been a very different matter. The cost would have run into thousands - a powerful deterrent. Of course, similar stories do sometimes come to light, usually despite, rather than because of, the Press. The Poulson case in the north-east is the most famous example. The story was taken up because it was handed to the Press on a plate. Poulson went bankrupt and it was the bankruptcy court, not the Press, which began the digging. All the Press had to do was send someone to take notes. Until that happened, as far as the Press were concerned, Poulson's hench-man, T. Dan Smith, was one of the great men of local politics.
It would, however, be wrong to suggest that investigations like ours at Kirkby are beyond the pocket of the national Press. They are not. National newspapers frequently spend thousands of pounds on stories - as the Express did in finding escaped train robber Ronald Biggs. But the difference is this: While there is little value for readers in knowing the whereabouts of Ronald Biggs, there is enormous value for a newspaper in being able to tell them.
The above article is an entire chapter reproduced in full from the book, News Ltd -
why you can't read all about it. It is reproduced in its entirety and no alterations
have been made. Thanks to the author Brian Whittaker and all who worked for
the Liverpool Free Press in years past. Kirkby Times will be publishing the rest of this book here online.
The original authors copyright is to be respected - Kirkby times is only reproducing the book due to the fact its now out of print.
The book deserves to given a new lease of life on the internet. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Knowsley council held a minutes silence when the criminal Dave Tempest died.
We hope he's burning in hell. A Real Old Labour low-life - and how many more are there?
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