Exposed: Britain's secret role in the Martin Luther King cover-up

The two figures instrumental in aborting the trial would have been the Lord Chancellor (a Cabinet Minister overseeing the judicial system) and the Director of Public Prosecutions (a high-ranking civil servant, rather than an elected politician).

Both positions work closely with the Home Secretary, who also has ministerial oversight of Britain's policing and prisons. In 1968, the Home Secretary was James Callaghan MP, serving under Prime Minster Harold Wilson (pictured above)

There was more. During his brief spell in the UK James Earl Ray was believed to have committed an armed robbery at a London bank. In fact, he was the sole suspect -- but no charges were ever brought against Ray for the crime. Years later, a British Government official would admit that there had never been any intention to prosecute Ray for this offence. "Turning a blind eye" to the bank robbery was nothing more than a "quick fix" solution, designed to deliver Ray swiftly back to the States and straight into the clutches of the expectant FBI. The relieved British officials could never have imagined that their decision not to prosecute Ray for the bank robbery would one day return to haunt them.

After his discharge by the Bow Street court, Ray was immediately driven from Wandsworth Prison in South-West London (where he had remained throughout), across the city, and northward to the county of Suffolk. His destination was RAF Lakenheath, a base that the Royal Air Force had shared with the US Air Force since 1959. There, Ray was handed over to US authorities, strapped into restraints, and swiftly removed from the UK under cover of darkness - aboard a USAF plane that departed at 38 minutes after midnight on July 19th.

But why had the British Government been willing to let Ray escape justice in the UK by handing him over to US justice so quickly?

The Deep Politics of the Vietnam War

THE ENTIRE saga of Ray's capture was played out against a backdrop of racial strife and general discontent in both the US and UK. The April 1968 killing of Dr King sparked a two-month wave of riots across the USA. New York, Detroit, and Chicago were among the cities engulfed in chaos, with state police forces, the National Guard, and even the US Army engaged on US streets. More than 20,000 people were injured, and 39 killed, with nationwide damage estimated at over $65m (1968 value).

However. there was another reason that the UK Government would have been willing to do US bidding when it came to the capture of James Earl Ray: in a word, “Vietnam” - the unwanted war that was destroying the credibility of US President Lyndon Johnson (pictured right). And while racial strife might be an internal matter for the US to deal with, the UK suddenly found that Ray's connection to the death of a black civil rights leader could be a useful bargaining chip.

In practice, this meant refusing to commit British troops to the Vietnam War itself, while quietly providing a degree of background support (such as training US soldiers in jungle warfare using British techniques learned in Malaysia during the 1950s). The Prime Minister's refusal to join the Vietnam War cast a shadow over Wilson's entire time in office during the 1960s. This was especially awkward because the UK's economy was so unstable that American cash injections were never far from Wilson's thoughts.

As a Wilson cabinet minister, James Callaghan made a visit to Washington DC in June 1965, to secure US financial aid for the British economy. Callaghan's biographer Kenneth Morgan later wrote:

Much controversy centred after Callaghan's visit on whether US aid to Britain had been linked with British support for American policies in Vietnam. Callaghan himself always strongly denied that any linkage had ever been brought up in discussions in which he was involved. 

Morgan comments on Callaghan's denial: “Literally, this is quite correct,” before admitting that “it was obvious that Vietnam lay in the background” to the meeting. That is an unnecessarily polite of putting it.

In his autobiography, Callaghan himself says that during the hour he spent with Johnson in the Oval Office, he barely got a word in, while Johnson lectured him “with passion and determination” about Vietnam.

Callaghan enjoyed – if that is the right word – a considerably better relationship with Johnson than Harold Wilson ever did while Prime Minister. Callaghan believed Johnson to be “despite his faults, a very warm-hearted and human man”, whereas Johnson distrusted Wilson and thought him slippery and unreliable.

It is not difficult, therefore, to detect Callaghan's politically and personally sympathetic influence at work in the legal machinations that developed from the arrest of James Earl Ray in 1968. But – much later – the workings of time and chance meant that Callaghan was confronted with the evidence of his own deviousness. And this time, he was in the perfect position to cover it up for good.

All Rights Reserved by the Author, June 6, 2018
Part 2 of this story was published June 8th, and can be read here.