The Gunman 1 Won't Name!
Socialist Press1980 1980-07-16Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 1 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
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Charlie Cramp is a freelance photographer. He is a member of the Central London Freelance Branch of the National Union of Journalists. He is not a nice guy.
He is known among journalists as a man who is sent on the sort of job where the people he is to photograph might not like what he is doing. He goes, therefore, prepared for trouble.
Last Wednesday, the Daily Mail employed him to go to Oxford and take photographs of members and supporters of the Workers Socialist League.
Cramp, who is well known for his anti-communist views, parked in the Oxford street where Alan Thornett has his home.
During the morning he approached another house and asked for a woman by name, hoping to establish whether she was there.
He then waited outside, hoping to photograph her. (He had the wrong house).
But that same afternoon, he returned to the street, where he was photographed in his car by Socialist Press staff.
Photographed
When Alan Thornett, a shop steward at BL's Cowley plant returned from work he, too, was photographed by Cramp.
Thornett demanded that Cramp identify himself. Cramp refused, claiming that it was none of Thornett's business.
Thornett then grabbed Cramp's camera which lay on his lap as he sat in his car.
It was at this point that Thornett says Cramp leapt out of his car with a large revolver his hand.
Holding the gun down at his side with the chamber open, Cramp came round the car and told Thornett: "I'm not joking, give me that camera"
Another BL steward, Tony Richardson, who was with Thornett at the time suggested that Thornett return the camera as Cramp was holding a gun.
Thornett returned the camera-and Cramp jumped back into his car and sped off down the road.
The police were called and traced Cramp's car back to the Daily Mail. Before they were able to pick Cramp up, he was tipped off and surrendered himself to the police, denying the accusation and claiming that he had a tyre lever' in his hand Cont'd p.11, col. 1
Scan page 2
Workers in the motor The same union officials had