Heathrow 'no place for honest man’

Press, 20 February 1980, Page 22

Heathrow ' no place for honest man’

NZPA London If a man was honest, he could not work as a loader with British Airways at Heathrow Airport, an Old Bailey judge has said. Stealing there had reached epidemic proportions, Judge Brian Gibbens said. “What a wonderful advertisement for the shop window of this country,” he added. The judge made his remarks before sentencing six of the airline’s loaders for their part in-thefts or handling of $1 million worth of travellers’ cheques. The men were handed sentences ranging from a 12month suspended prison term to five years in jail. The judge said he had been appalled by police descriptions of activities in the baggage and freight handling sections.- '

“I cannot pretend that I haven’t heard Heathrow described as ‘thieves row’.

“But . for the police to say that no honest man can really hold down a job without being corrupted while working there is such a disgrace to this country, as well as yourselves, that I am brought up sharp by it.”

The court heard one of the defendants’ counsel say that he was an honest man when he went to Heathrow Airport and became corrupt because, in his Own words, “everybody was at it.”

The counsel said “There was so much dishonesty

going on it was impossible to keep out; of it without being ostracised.” The Loaders’- Union leader, commenting on the judge’s comments later, said there there was a degree of harassment by the police at Heathrow. Loaders had been searched in public and people’s lockers opened in their absence. He said that while he could not defend those involved in theft and would not seek to, the generalisation by a judge that a whole group of people , was dishonest was deplorable. It would not' help to solve the problem.-