Skip to main content
The Morning Star 2026 Conference
Forget the endless Jack the Ripper programmes, whatever happened to investigative journalism?
Documentaries exposing real miscarriages of justice have virtually disappeared from our TV screens. PAUL DONOVAN asks why
Gerard Conlon, one of the Guildford Four outside the Old Bailey after his release

WHAT has happened to miscarriage of justice programmes — have they been replaced by history mystery? 

How would the Birmingham Six or Guildford Four get on these days, with the vista of miscarriages of justice having virtually disappeared from our TV screens?

Maybe they would have had to wait 100 years or so in order that their cases could be examined by “experts” of some future generation, looking back with the benefit of hindsight and new investigative techniques.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Press cuttings of the Angry Brigade, 1973
History / 18 October 2025
18 October 2025

With the recent release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie One Battle After Another, STEPHEN ARNELL gives the storied history of the British real-life left-wing urban guerillas

General view of the Cammell Laird ship yard on the River Mersey in Liverpool
Workers' Rights / 30 September 2025
30 September 2025

KIM JOHNSON MP places the campaign in the context of the history of the working-class battles of the 1980s, and explains why, just like Orgreave and the Shrewsbury Pickets before it, justice today is so important for the struggles of tomorrow

CONTROVERSY: A court artist sketch of Nicholas Johnson KC crossexamining nurse Lucy Letby at Manchester Crown Court, May 18 2023
Features / 14 September 2025
14 September 2025

Former judge ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the details and controversy of Lucy Letby’s trial and appeal in the context of famous historical wrongful convictions that prove both the justice system and legal activists make errors

Amanda Seyfried and Rivera Reese in Long Bright River (2025)
TV Network Monitor / 22 April 2025
22 April 2025

DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid