Justice for Christopher Alder!

ALEX HALL applauds the account of a dogged, traumatic and punishing campaign for justice that has lasted from 1998 to the present day

Film of the Week / 17 September 2026 Own Gaulle 17 September 2026 NICK WRIGHT laments the one-sided telling of French history in an otherwise entertaining spectacle

MARK TURNER relishes the warm, melancholy of jazz drummer-turned composer Sam Green

RITA DI SANTO assesses the winners of the most politically charged festival to date

KATARZYNA KOSMALA introduces a retrospective by one of the most significant figures in contemporary US photography

MAYER WAKEFIELD is entertained but let down by an audacious production that, sadly, doesn't ring true

IN 1998 Christopher Alder was in a brawl outside a nightclub in Hull. A tooth was knocked out and he bashed his head on the ground, falling unconscious momentarily. An ambulance was called and he was taken, somewhat disorientated, to hospital by paramedics, where he was examined by a doctor. PCs Neil Blakey and Nigel Dawson were sent to the hospital to interview him about the assault.

Later that night, Alder arrived at Queen’s Gardens police station, unconscious and handcuffed behind his back. He was dragged out of the van by Blakey and Dawson and dumped face down on the floor of the custody suite. By this time he had lost a second tooth, his belt, and his trousers were round his ankles. There were further injuries to his head, lip and eye. Remaining face down, and unattended by anyone in the custody suite, Alder choked on blood and vomit and died.

Blakey and Dawson have never answered questions about what happened between the hospital and the police station. There are no convictions for Alder’s death despite a coroner’s verdict of unlawful killing.

If the police thought Christopher’s sister, Janet, would be no match for the judiciary, police, media and government, they were sorely mistaken. Defiance is Janet Alder’s story of what happened to Christopher, herself and her family in her quest for justice. It has been a dogged, traumatic and punishing campaign journey since 1998, from the bottom to the top of the legal chain, and the facts stated above are far from the worst of it.  

The book reads as a thriller in every sense except the one that matters: it is not a work of fiction. I will not give away its shocks, but they are breathtaking.

But this is not just one family’s tragedy. It is a textbook case of how the Establishment closes ranks, a pattern instantly recognisable to today’s campaigners such as Craig Murray, who is presently trying to get a Scottish judicial review into the proscription of Palestine Action. It will not surprise Tony Greenstein who had to dismiss his own barrister so he could make a closing speech in his trial under the Terrorism Act.

Alder’s book clearly exposes how the British state exercises power on behalf of the powerful. When principle faces power, the courts are called in to exercise judgment and rule. However justice is very much compromised in favour of the powerful and this includes those who make up the state. The system is far from unprejudiced when its own agents are in the crosshairs.

When this happens the state has, literally, unlimited resources. Alder tells how she was unable to afford representation. While each police officer involved had a team of two top-flight, publicly funded barristers, Janet could often not get a solicitor and had to fight as a litigant in person. 

Alder’s persistence in the task was able to make some headway; throughout the book we hear that she was brought up in care of the state, and some of the horrifying experiences the Alder siblings went through. 

Grit, intelligence and hard work made some progress from unpromising circumstances.

Defiance demonstrates what a limited number of people can do. Reading it in 2026, with the number of significant legal battles presently being fought over protest, what people can say on placards or voice in public, what information people can legally receive, and how power is organised and influenced presents a broader picture of a deeply compromised legal system. 

It didn’t start with the government’s legal contortions justifying the starvation of civilians in Gaza. The rot was laid bare long before.

The legal system is not fit for justice. Janet Alder says: “It is only pressure from the people that forces institutions to move.” 

Defiance is the title of the book, but even 26 years of it was too little to actually get justice.

The institutions need to be torn down. 

Book Review / 11 September 2026 How did such a horror come to pass? 11 September 2026 ALEX HALL recommends a searing panorama of our global predicament

Book Review / 2 September 2026 Weimar: turning a blind eye to the far right 2 September 2026 MARJ MAYO recommends an engaging, if chilling, collection of diaries and letters that trace a population's capacity for accommodation with Nazism

Books / 22 May 2026 The Good Life, Cicero-style 22 May 2026 MARTIN HALL examines the way the Roman orator took on different schools of philosophy

Books / 30 April 2026 Rent - the original sin of capitalism 30 April 2026 ALEX HALL is fascinated by a lucid and historically convincing account of how rent has dominated capitalist economies from feudalism to modernity