A remembrance ceremony was held yesterday at Slapton Sands for 749

A remembrance ceremony was held yesterday at Slapton Sands for 749 American soldiers and sailors killed in 1944 during rehearsals for D-Day – deaths which the authorities covered up for years.
Survivors and residents of the south Devon village laid wreaths beside a Sherman tank recovered from the sea and preserved as a memorial to the largest loss of American lives in a training exercise during the Second World War.Early on 28 April, a flotilla of eight landing ships, part of Operation Tiger, were to land troops and armour on a stretch of the beach which most resembled their target area in Normandy.A pack of nine German E-boats – fast motor torpedo boats – surprised the Americans, appearing out of the darkness to launch their torpedoes, sinking three of the landing ships. He suffered from these symptoms for the rest of his life.Earlier this year, Tomlinson published an autobiography in which he called for a campaign to reopen the case of the “Shrewsbury pickets”. With the election of the Labour in 1974, there were calls from the trade union movement for their release. But the home secretary, Roy Jenkins, refused.Warren and Tomlinson wore only blankets for long periods of their imprisonment because they refused to wear prison uniform, as part of their campaign to prove their innocence.Warren spent most of his three years in solitary confinement and developed symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease.

He said last night that a London firm of lawyers was looking at the prosecution of the pickets and the 1973 trial.. He claimed his illness had been caused by the “liquid cosh”, a prison description for tranquillising drugs administered to difficult inmates. They were arrested at Shrewsbury, at the height of the strike, and accused of organising violent picketing.There were demonstrations outside the court in Mold, north Wales. Inside, Warren and Tomlinson denied the charges and argued that it was a “show trial” resulting from connections between the Tory government and the big construction firms.An appeal heard at the High Court in London was rejected There were major demonstrations in London and Manchester.

Des Warren, whose jailing along with Ricky Tomlinson after the 1972 national building workers’ strike became the focus of mass protests by trade unionists, died at the weekend.
Tomlinson, now a successful actor, was imprisoned for two years and Warren for three, after being found guilty of conspiracy charges. The three people released are all from the Greater Manchester area.”All 10 arrested last Monday were described by police as North African and Iraqi Kurdish in origin.They were held on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.The operation involved more than 400 officers and was co-ordinated by Greater Manchester Police and also involved the security services and the Metropolitan Police’s Anti-Terrorist Branch.. Two men and a woman arrested in anti-terror raids across the UK last week were released today without charge, police said. Irvine thus had no chance to carry out his threat of making his feelings plain during a Lords debate and his silence makes it impossible to know whether he bears a grudge against his former ministerial colleagues. His reluctance to speak about any of this in public only adds to speculation that Irvine is a ticking time-bomb at the heart of Labour who could go off at any moment.Like Sir Thomas More – another lord chancellor who adopted a policy of silence when asked to chose between his leader and his principles – Lord Irvine may have to say a little more to prove his loyalty.. Although he still comes to Westminster to sit through many of the debates, no-one can actually remember his ever making any significant contribution.