Christopher Eccleston: 'If the judicial system comes down heavily, it's always on working class people'

Christopher Eccleston’s breakthrough role as the late Derek Bentley in the 1991 movie Let Him Have It highlighted one of the 20th century’s most infamous miscarriages of justice. So it seems only fitting that, 33 years on, the Doctor Who actor is fronting a documentary series — his first ever presenting gig — that chronicles other travesties of the British legal system.

"My career started with one of the most controversial miscarriages of justice, as Derek Bentley was hanged for a murder he didn’t commit," the actor tells Yahoo UK. "And then by doing Hillsborough and Sunday with Jimmy McGovern, which again were about miscarriages of justice, there was a sense that I had a level of engagement with those issues.

"So I suppose a number of the dramas I've done have given voice to people without a voice."

The Sky History series, The Guilty Innocent, comprises eight 45-minute episodes, with the first focusing on the story of George Davis, wrongly convicted in 1975 for his supposed part in an armed robbery at the London Electricity Board, and the second shining a spotlight on the case of James Henratty, one of the last men to be hanged in the UK.

While Eccleston wasn’t yet born when Henratty allegedly shot and killed Michael Gregsten in August 1961, he was around for the trial of George Davis, whose fitting up by the police inspired the then-ubiquitous words 'George Davis is innocent OK' to be scrawled on walls up and down the country.

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"I remember the graffiti," says Eccleston, who at the time of Davis’ conviction would have been 11 years old, "but I was too young to engage with it. I never imagined as a child, though, that I would end up meeting George and discovering the story of Rose, his wife, and Peter [Chappell, Davis’ best friend].

"They’re inspirational characters because they both had pretty rudimentary educations, and hadn’t hitherto been particularly politically engaged, but they did so and made a noise about it."

Class is a theme that runs deep in The Guilty Innocent. In most of the great miscarriages of justice in Britain, from the Guildford Four to the Birmingham Six to the Tottenham Three, those that found themselves in the dock, up against the might of the British establishment, were invariably working class — the powerless versus the powerful.

"As was Derek Bentley, as were the 97 football supporters at Hillsborough, as were the victims of the Bloody Sunday massacre," points out Eccleston. "They were disenfranchised people. It's what this country is all about: class."

"Class and race for me are the two big issues, they’re eternal. But yes, if the judicial system comes down heavily, it's always on working class people."

It’s clear that Eccleston is passionate about the cases covered in The Guilty Innocent, and he says he never wanted to be a simple talking head, reciting these stories from the confines of a TV studio.

Each episode climaxes with the actor meeting some of the key participants (in the George Davis one, he makes contact with the daughter of campaigner Peter Chappell and in the other the nephew and grand-nephew of James Henratty), a decision Eccleston reveals was key to his saying yes to the project.

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"At first, I was supposed to be topping and tailing it," he says, "but that’s never been the way I’ve worked. In researching dramatic roles, in researching Bentley or Our Friends In The North or Hillsborough, one of the great stimuluses of my work is meeting and understanding people. That's where I get the raw material for my performances.

"And as I'm speaking to George, as I'm speaking to the Hanratty family, I'm trying to understand them on the grounds that maybe one day I might play them. You've got to be a listener as an actor in front of the camera and in doing your research."

Though Henratty was hanged 62 years ago, questions endure over his guilt or innocence. In 2001, as a result of persistent questions over the handling of the case, Henratty’s body was exhumed, with his family hoping that new DNA evidence would finally exonerate the 25-year-old.

In the end, the Court of Appeal reached the opposite judgement, that it proved Henratty’s guilt "beyond doubt". Except many believe that the DNA evidence may well have, over the decades, become contaminated, leaving the question of whether James Henratty really did pull the trigger on Michael Gregsten still unanswered, something that continues to haunt his relatives, as we see at the end of episode two.

"The last thing Henratty said was that he wanted his name to be cleared," says Eccleston. "That’s an enormous burden for his family, but also for the victims' families. If it wasn't Hanratty, then the victims most of all need to know who it was, for peace. It's a very dangerous, delicate programme we're making there and I'm hoping that the viewers feel we've done it with sensitivity."

There are eight episodes in this run, but — sadly — there are many more examples of gross miscarriages of justice to keep this series running for years, and it seems as if Eccleston is hungry to expose more scandals, and to tell more stories of when the innocent found themselves, either through police corruption or incompetence, sent down.

"Oh, the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, the Stephen Lawrence case… I’d like to revisit those things to examine establishment views on race and class," he says.

"And as we did in Our Friends In The North, show how corruption takes root in a judicial system, and how it takes root within our police force. Even the Post Office scandal. That’s been dealt with dramatically, but I think it would be interesting to look at that in a more documentary type view, and have individuals affected by that interviewed on camera.

"It's great to have them dramatically represented, but I do love to hear from the horse's mouth, as we did with George and the Hanratty family. There are no plans for more, but if there is an audience appetite, I'd certainly be on board."

The Guilty Innocent with Christopher Eccleston premieres on Sky HISTORY at 9pm on 14 May.