The final convictions of members of the so-called ‘Stockwell Six’ have been overturned at the court of appeal almost half a century after they were fitted up by corrupt British Transport Police officer, Derek Ridgewell.

Ronald de Souza was convicted in 1972 as one a group of six black men falsely accused of assaulting British transport police. Errol Campbell was wrongly convicted in 1977 of theft and conspiracy to steal from a London goods depot and also had his conviction overturned today as a result of probes into further cases involving Ridgewell. Both men were fitted up by Ridgewell, a corrupt and racist officer now known to be behind a series of wrongful convictions.

The total number of cases involving Ridgewell which have since been overturned has now reached 13. Ridgewell was ultimately arrested and hailed in 1980 for stealing over £1m worth of goods, yet his testimony that had put away mostly young, black men for robbery offences of which they were innocent, continued to uphold convictions long after his conviction and even after his death in 1982.

Eroll Campbell died in October 2004, and it is only over 20 years later that the CCRC and the court of appeal have overturned his wrongful conviction. His family made the application to the CCRC on his behalf with the assistance of the charity APPEAL.  The convictions of Mr Campbell’s co-defendants, Saliah Mehmet and Basil Peterkin, were referred in August 2023 and quashed in January 2024.

Last year the British Transport Police released a report into the actions of Derek Ridgewell, which was criticised at the time for running to only nine pages and being ‘flawed’ in its inability to grapple with the impacts of records that had been lost or destroyed. Matt Foot, Director of the legal charity APPEAL, said BTP’s probe went ‘nowhere near enough’, and accused the force of not examining all the available internal records that would uncover the full extent of the scandal.