CHRIS BISHOP reports on the dramatic end to the Norfolk farmer’s fight for freedom

October 30, 2001

It all seemed so cut and dried when they found Tony Martin guilty of murder. He’d turned a shotgun on a pair of burglars who broke into his house and killed one of them. While some kinds of force might have been considered reasonable under the circumstances, the jury thought shooting dead a 16-year-old boy wasn’t one of them.

Hours after the verdict Martin was on his way to start a life sentence and the country was in uproar. Seldom was a trial more talked about. And seldom was a debate more polarised.

To many Martin was the archetypal English eccentric, who had paid the price for defending his castle. If the opinion polls were anything to go by, a sizeable proportion thought they ought to give him a medal - not lock him up. But the police and politicians stood firm on the moral high ground.

Fred Barras - the 16-year-old killed by Tony Martin.

While Fred Barras was no angel that did not give Martin the right to be judge, jury and executioner. There were issues like rural policing and response times which needed to be looked at, the powers that be admitted. But that didn’t mean you could just go round shooting people.

In a memo to his most senior political advisers, which was leaked to the papers, Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the government was seen as being out of touch on a range of issues, spanning all points of the compass from Zimbabwe to Emneth Hungate.

“The Martin case - and the lack of any response from us that appeared to empathise with public concern and then channel it into the correct course - has only heightened this problem,” he said.

Mr Blair suggested the law on self defence should be looked at, and a tougher stance should be taken over claims jurors were intimidated. The Bleak House shootings brought a much bigger picture into sharp focus, regardless of where your sympathies lay.

The trial became a focal point for rural communities preyed upon by the modern breed of travelling criminal - the bail bandits who kept on thieving no matter how many times they ended up in front of the courts. Yet the biggest irony was that no-one got inside the man who sparked the whole debate when he pointed his gun at the torch beam and pulled the trigger. More

Vulnerable and paranoid
Refuge at Bleak House
Key Events
The Tony Martin File