Dear Editor, Ronnie Biggs should be let free, given a bus pass and then asked if a Mr Big character was behind the GTR – and if so, who was he?

It seems to me that the real reason why Jack Straw came to the decision he did was to keep the media away from a man who probably knows more about who organised the GTR than anybody else.

I read that there was a Mr Big character and he was an establishment figure – whether that is true is a debate for another day, but if Biggs does know where the skeletons lie, then it is only natural that the present establishment will do all it can to keep those skeletons buried.

I used to live near the scene of the GTR during the 1990s on the Beds/Bucks border and would pass the old police station on the way into Leighton Buzzard, the town affected by the robbery.

I also went to a talk on the robbery in Beds with my wife in Leighton Buzzard during the 1990s, given by the a retired police constable who was the first person on the scene at the farmhouse the robbers had frequented just after the event.

Even in that talk there were hints made to a Mr Big character and it has fascinated me ever since.

We may never know the full and true facts but one thing is definite, what potential or otherwise threat does Ronnie Biggs offer to society now?

Criminals are a changed animal in 2009, they know nothing about the term honour amongst thieves, it is as much a free-for-all attitude of greed and gain in the criminal world now as in society generally.

I fear and feel it is today’s criminals that pose the greatest threat to our society and the full weight of resources, money and the law should be focused on them.

For that reason alone Ronnie Biggs, a veteran criminal of another age, must be set free to live his last days a free man. After all, one of the Kray Twins were allowed to do this, why shouldn’t Ronnie.

The question in Biggs case is where does justice end and revenge or retribution by our law makers begin? Is Biggs being treated as a political prisoner rather than just one of many doing a long stretch before being rehabilitated?

The debate continues.

Ian Payne,
Thornbury Rd,
Walsall.