It is nearly half a century since the 1975 Ashes Test between England and Australia at Headingley in Leeds was abandoned after the pitch was dug up overnight and splattered with oil. A hand-painted message at the ground spelled out an apology – “Sorry, it had to [be] done” – and a justification: “George Davis Is Innocent.”
The stunt was carried out by friends of the east Londoner to protest his innocence of an armed robbery in Essex for which he was serving a 20-year sentence.
The campaign, publicised by the ubiquitous graffiti, was led by his wife, Rose, and his loyal friend Peter Chappell, who both knew he was innocent. To catch the media’s attention, Chappell had already driven a lorry into the front of the Daily Mirror and three other newspapers and the gates of Buckingham Palace.
It all paid off when the then home secretary, Roy Jenkins, granted Davis a royal pardon in 1976. But within two years he was back inside, this time for a crime he actually had committed, an attempt to rob a bank in north London, and he was jailed for 11 years.
Now he is talking about both cases in a Sky History television series, The Guilty Innocent, about miscarriages of justice, narrated by Christopher Eccleston. Why did Davis agree to go public after all these years?
“It was to set the record straight,” he told the Guardian. “Even though we eventually got the original conviction overturned (in 2011, at the court of appeal, after it was referred back by the Criminal Cases Review Commission), there are still people who think that I’m guilty. And I wanted to thank all those people who had campaigned for me.”
The targeting of the Headingley Test was the most spectacular event in the campaign. Davis was in Albany prison at the time and was about to watch the cricket with a friend on a black and white TV.
“My friend said ‘have you heard the latest? They’ve dug the cricket pitch up.’ I said ‘you’re joking! It’s them Aussies, they just don’t want to get beat!’. The commentator was saying ‘it’s a sad, sad day for cricket, the perpetrators have dug up the wicket … looks like it’s supporters of the Free George Davis campaign – he said it very quick.
“There was a screw from Leeds there and we were all laughing and he said ‘I don’t think that’s funny’ … I did think it may well be a little too strong but I think it worked … Afterwards, Rose sent a letter to apologise to both captains. Tony Greig didn’t reply but Ian Chappell, the Aussie captain, sent a letter saying ‘I’m so sorry about your husband’.”
Did Davis regret getting involved in an actual robbery? “I knew what I was doing but you don’t ever think you’ll get caught – that’s why people do these things. We pleaded guilty. Someone asked me ‘well, did you think of anyone else?’ and I had to say no. I didn’t think of my family and especially Rose, the children, my mum and dad, who were still alive. It was quite selfish of me.”
Peter Chappell, who was in prison for the Headingley stunt when Davis was freed, remained a friend but for Rose the conviction was a heavy blow, as she recounted in her memoir, The Wars of Rosie, published in 2009, the year she died. They were never reconciled. “She did not speak to me, she barred me from her funeral,” Davis said.
Davis will be 83 this year. He lives in Muswell Hill in north London, is married to the daughter of a police officer and is a great-grandfather, with a granddaughter who has a master’s in criminology and a great-grandson studying to be a solicitor. There will be no memoir. “People have suggested it but it would be a case of naming names and I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that.”
He served time in Wormwood Scrubs with three of the Birmingham Six, who had to wait many more years to be freed, and is aware of others still fighting to have their names cleared.
Would a similar campaign as his work today? “I think it was of its time,” he said. It kept his spirits up while he was in jail – and for many years afterwards he he would still see a sign saying “George Davis is innocent OK” while driving through the Rotherhithe tunnel. And the same faded slogan can still occasionally be seen on bridges or underpasses in parts of east London to this day.
The Guilty Innocent starts on Sky History at 9pm on Tuesday 14 May.
