I wanted to remind people about Spencer Beynon’s life and death; and then reflect on Llanelli, Wales, and Britain. It’s the anniversary of Ryan Frances’s death today (died in action, 07.07.2007); and Spence died a bit over six years ago (14.06.2016).
But don’t think that this is like a chain letter. You know I’ve had troubles recently. I’m not going the same way as them! It’s not like, one man dies; another mourns him then dies; then another man mourns the second man, and he also dies, and so on. No, I’m as cold in my heart as they come; I don’t melt and feel grief so much as Spencer felt it.
I don't claim to have known Ryan Francis at all well, but I did know Spence. There is a story; there are many factual things I don’t know; and there are moral judgments which I might be wrong about. You can say what you like about what I’ve got to say. I’m writing about Spence, and where I’m wrong, then that’s unintentional.
The Inquest held in Llanelli about why Spencer died was brought to a halt last October; the jury could not come to one of the conclusions that they were ordered to chose between: they were ordered to decide, that his death was a suicide, or that it was an accident and a case of death by misadventure. The jury at the 2021 inquest were discharged because they either thought that it was neither suicide nor accident; or, they just couldn’t reach unanimity on one of these two permitted verdicts.
There may not be another inquest now, and officially, the matter of how and why he died may be left undecided by the court.
Spencer’s father, with whom I have spoken a few times by phone, and letter, and once in person at his son’s funeral, believes that Dyfed Powys Police killed him. Spence’s dad thinks that they harassed him and provoked his isolation and mental illness; and then, when he was in need of help, they refused to detain him; before, at the last moment of his life, killing him with a 50,000 volts. He has been trying to get this judgment for years now, and won't give up.
My opinion used to be, that the Police can’t really do any wrong; and I looked at Spence’s dad as one who, moved by deep grief, absolves his son of guilt, but blames the state. Of course, I kept this opinion to myself.
Today, I’ve started to change my mind. I think the Police, an agency of our government, or more properly and actually of our local towns and our nation as a whole, did kill Spencer. I could blame the man who aimed the weapon at him and pulled the trigger. But we’re all guilty of that kind of thing sometimes. Why I think that the State killed him, or even that our Country killed him, needs some explanation. I think, that the remedy of this situation, and probably what would have ensured that Spence were still alive, would be something like ‘Spence’s Law’, something which needs to be brought about in an Act of Parliament.
I want to be brief, so that you will be able to follow my argument.
In some sense, maybe I have heard a call for justice for my old friend. He died: a big hearted, natural man, a real soldier and good man; but I am here still alive, with the brains and the coldness to have survived in this land – and I owe it to him to set things straight.
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When he died, he was 43 years old. I suppose he was born in 1973, so he was two years older than me. I knew him in Tidworth and Iraq, where he was the oldest in our platoon. I said about him in my book written about my time in Iraq with 2 Royal Welsh, that he was like a Plains Indian warrior: tattoed, strong, adept at fighting, manly and loud mouthed. Geraint Jones has said of him in his account of Afghanistan, that Spence was like one of the sergeants from a Patrick Cornwell book about the soldiers of the Peninsula War, an old sergeant of a line regiment with Sharpe’s Green Jackets.
Spence was like the oil in the engine of the platoon, I suppose. The platoon wouldn’t have worked without someone like him. For the first few weeks in Tidworth with A Company, I was very shy and extremely on my guard. I didn’t fit in at all, as people will testify. Spence arrived after a month or two, and joined in the training; he had just rejoined the Army. He was my friend from first to last, always loyal.
He treated me with kindness. Mr Adams, Jason O’Callaghan, maybe Richard Pask and the others – they were professional, and courteous as a rule; but they were not friends. Spencer for no particular reason, was a friend. Over in Iraq, he was the only one who reassured me after Gardiner-Ponting was shot, something which I naturally felt responsible for, that I would survive and should not take the blame. He came to see me, read my feelings, and told me it was not my fault.
He was not a gentle or polite person by any means. He was bothering me about God all the time, and provoking me with infantile jokes and abuse; but so that he could get me to feel at ease and let my guard come down. He knew how to make people be at ease and make them welcome.
When lads were afraid, he gave them the balls and the attitude of callous indifference to your own life which a soldier must have. Spence laughed at people for being weak when they needed to be strong. He brought out in them the virtues they needed to have.
The platoon commander put him in charge of the first set of foot patrols on our operations. Once or twice, he came across explosives; it was fate that he found these things. Fate that he had to walk or run straight past them, a dance with death.
He was liked by women, too. There was a lovely looking female corporal from the medical side of things who was obviously single, and wanted company; I knew her. Spence knew her in the other way by the time we got to Iraq; he used to go off and give her company a couple of nights a week. He used to tell me that he had five or six like this at most times of his life.
He had rejoined the army, he told me, because he had done bad things; and he wanted to get in God’s good books again. It is important to me, that it is understood, that Spencer joined his army because he had that traditional view, that he was going to do work for his good name with people and his salvation with God.
People can say these things about good and evil, sin and redemption, and not mean them very deeply. To the extent that a person is able to acknowledge their faults, Spencer did know he had done bad things, and he knew that he could do good, and be forgiven. I think that when he said that he had done bad things in his life, that he meant that he had been wasting his life, taking drugs, enjoying his life when he ought to have done some service. He didn't exactly have conventional skills or inclinations. He liked military order and that kind of rare, unpleasant hardship and labour.
On the subject of drugs, I know that many people, and the Police in particular, will associate Spence with drugs. He was later on associated with cannabis. He told me in confidence that in his life, he had used heavier drugs than this, outside the army. But, I do not make of them a big thing, myself. I do not believe that ‘addiction’ is a thing; I don’t believe that chemical imbalances, and brain activity, determine a person’s character. Rather, I think that the proper way of analysing a person is from their sense of good, evil, and their use of freedom. Spencer knew what is good and what is bad; he was never an ‘addict’; he was not irredeemable. He had the capacity to sacrifice himself, choose to leave drugs and evil behind him. That is what he did, joining the army ‘to serve his country’. He told me this a few times. It was only when he was unemployed, out of the forces, that he found himself in need of drink or drugs. His unemployment is what most puzzles me, and has been the main reason why I have tended to think of him as a lost cause; I’ve changed my mind now, as follows.
There we were: him serving his country, risking his life a few times, for his country’s reputation and to get the work done. And me, as well, in my way.
On the 7th July, 2007, we did that strike arrest operation at night time. That’s the one where I went into the wrong house. I’ve just read a post from Spence from 2014, in which he calls me names, and says he almost double-tapped me because I came into his target’s house. That’s all rubbish. I was in that house because of Clarke, the other TA in the platoon; I was late getting to the house because I was helping Pask.. anyway, it’s not important.
It was the same night that Spencer, as he told me later, removed Ryan Francis’s body from the Warrior. He told me about it a bit later. Men are afraid to speak about war for two reasons: first, because it makes them emotional, and they don’t want to cry in front of you; or, second, because they are ashamed, and feel guilty about what they saw or did. Spence didn’t feel ashamed, and back then, he told me about Ryan Francis’s body after the explosion because it was horrible, but it did not make him emotionally vulnerable.
I don’t think today, that PTSD is a thing, either. I think, that PTSD comes to people, when they come home and they are treated as if they are a foreigner, a foreign body in the body politic; like a disease. I think, that Spencer, after doing those awful things, came home to Britain, and found out that he was not a warrior, respected and loved by a grateful people; he came home (and I don’t know why he left the army exactly) and was told to either fit in to the way things are, or else go away.
I think, that this ultimatum to natural soldiers, this is where PTSD starts to set in. It’s not a mental illness; it’s the result of a society which is set up in the wrong way. And I also today tend to blame it on this ultimatum that men like Spence end up unemployed and isolated, so they resort to their awful memories and the drink.
Spence didn’t have a driver’s licence, because he had been caught doing 120mph along a motorway. So he had been disqualified. Therefore, he used to get a lift back and to, between Tidworth and Llanelli, with his mate, the 23 year old Ryan Francis. Franky was driving a Warrior on that night I just mentioned; he was a Lance Corporal, and the only man of that rank I ever saw driving on operations. Apparently, he had volunteered. Spencer found Franky, this friend from back home, after a roadside bomb explosion which stopped our operation while we sorted out the Warrior, his body burned and broken.
Now, to the aftermath. What I did know in the years which followed was, that I had been expecting Spence to call me one day, and tell me to come down to Swansea or one of those southern towns, and have a reorg, a get together. The call never came; I knew nothing more about him and did not hear from him. I assumed that he would be in the Army until retirement. I retained my happy memories of him.
It was a complete surprise when I heard on the Radio 4 that he was dead; I went a week later to his funeral. I met a few of the old platoon at the service and wake. I heard by way of the eulogies, and read in papers, what had happened. At the time, Spencer’s father had said, that exactly what had happened was still under investigation, and that we should not believe everything we read or heard. I followed these instructions, and did not dig deeply.
His dad had explained at the funeral that Spence had spent too long at the side of Franky’s grave over the years, drinking and trying to communicate with his friend. He seems to have led an unemployed life; underemployed, probably on welfare, looking around for something to do with his life. He did not find anything, and became more and more introverted, using cannabis, eventually developing severe PTSD, and being sectioned at some point.
From the local papers, I notice that he had got involved in a policing scheme of his own making, to keep the streets safe for children. This is important to my theme. Note also that Spence was subjected to arrests and raids by armed police on his house; they are known to have damaged doors and windows of his house, breaking in and generally harassing him frequently. He had been self-medicating with cannabis; and growing plants. That’s what I understood.
And, the following is what I know today. That on the day of his death in 2016, he had gone to see his dad. He had told him, “I will make you proud, dad”. He had told his girlfriend that he wanted to marry her on the beach and make her happy. But, he practically fell apart that morning, before their eyes. In the weeks preceding his death, he had started to tell people that he saw demons and devils. His father has said, at the inquest, that Spencer had started praying, and had turned to a form of Buddhism. His father said that the meditation and prayer had allowed him to grow calm more often than not, in those final days.
But on that morning, there was a moment after he had told his girlfriend that he loved her, she said, that his eyes had gone dark, and he had complained about seeing evil things in the world, devils. He had prayed in front of his dad that morning, for blessing from God, and his dad was worried about him.
His dad, afraid that he was acting erratically, called Dyfed Powys Police, telling them he was worried that Spence was not in his right mind. By account of the police records, the call had been dismissed. The father had mentioned that his son had been smoking cannabis, and told them that he smoked it non-stop, trying to urge them to help him with these impassioned claims. But the call was dismissed as a low-level drugs incident.
That morning, Spence walked from the house, angrily punching the glass of the door, apparently angry about the evil or devils of the world. He was seen walking barefoot through the street, and a call to the police was made by neighbours. He was said to be carrying a cannabis pipe. He was found by officers lying down on the road soon after, with a self-inflicted wound in his neck. He had also killed his dog.
His body was prone on the ground, and it was recorded that he had said: “I want to die”. The police officer who shot him, a male PC, West, said that he rose from the ground and went as if to run toward him. The other PC who was there, a female, PC Beynon (no relation) said that he did not rise from the ground. Apparently, other witnesses also say that he never moved before being shot. The officer who shot him said that he made a quick risk assessment in his own mind, then fired the weapon. Spencer then died. They put a sheet over his body and left it there for some time.
What happened after the event is said, by his father, to be shrouded in deceptions and some lying by the police; there is dispute about where Spencer’s body was at this or that time, and what efforts to revive him were made.
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I remember him happy, comfortable, in Iraq in 2007; they say that he left the army as a Platoon Sergeant. I know little more; I don’t know why he left the Army. He was in his element there. Maybe he was injured; or he grew bored of it; or he started drinking or something. I can’t say if he got discharged for PTSD, some other injury, or some offense. For me, that is where it goes awry for him. I think that he failed to find proper employment.
He had joined up to do good, to have his sins forgiven by God and his country; he believed he was going to be rewarded. He had done his duty, and was a classic non-commissioned officer of the British Army. Then, he had left, and declined into madness. That is how I see it.
It remains for me, in brief, to suggest the meaning of this story. Spencer died with God on his lips, praying. He had engaged in productive work as a man trying to do the old ancient office of constable, making the streets safe for normal people, especially young people, in Llanelli; he had been in the local papers doing this, I do not know how successful this effort had been.
He was killed by the modern police, with their cars, their body armour and cameras, their semi-lethal weapons, their paperwork, and their legal hesitations and risk assessments. Their war on drugs, and their attitude of disinterest in crime, their obsession with domestic incidents, gender, race, and people’s attitudes and thoughts.
The police, in my view of it, treat the good, the bad and the ugly, the same; they show no discretion. They arrive after the event, with horns and strobe lights polluting the town as if they intend to strike fear, as if they intend to be alien. That is how they are trained; it is no reflection on the youths who are employed in that job. It is their occupational role to do this.
Sat at desks doing paperwork, they solve fewer then 10% of crimes. Spence had noticed this very well; he had set up at some point, his own form of ancient constabulary. You can see him doing patrols after hours, in the local papers. His explicit intention, in an employment which he himself had initiated, as a bulwark against evil and underemployment, was to make the streets safe for children and the normal people.
What does a man like him deserve, or expect, when he comes home from foreign wars? Back in the early 1800s, the British Parliament spent nearly 40 years debating how to permit the British people to police its own streets. The understanding back then was, that any man can carry arms, and carry out arrests; any man may and must arrest and escort wrong-doers to a justice, and get a hearing in court. That is the ancient model in England. Prime minster Robert Peel set up the first London police force with this little amendment to the ancient right of English men: that there would be people employed full time to do this work. The police would be the same as us, with the same rights as the next man, the average Englishman; but the Police would be employed for it, and paid for doing it.
But the modern British police, since perhaps the 1960s, have strayed far from this model. They are today almost an alien race, and just as useless. Let us not go too much into this. Just notice, that the jury at Spencer’s inquest, seem to have believed what the coroner forbade them to say: that the police killed him.
Not only the police on that day, but for months and years with their harassment. Did they hate him because he was in his heart, and in some of his actions, and unlike them, a real Constable? And did his own country kill him by denying him any productive outlet or employment?
When, in the continuance of the ancient role of the constable in England, Peel set out the ideal kind of man who would be the police officer in England and Wales, what type of man did he envisage? I will tell you: Peel advised that the ideal Police officer would be a former sergeant of the infantry. That is the idea of the policeman. You can look it up, what type of man was originally and for a long time intended as the ideal policeman: it is a former sergeant of the infantry.
The policeman would have a beat; he would walk it for eight hours per day; he would know everyone on his beat, and deter wrong-doing there. He would be strong, and know how to deal with bad people. He would have seen the world, and have great common sense. He would know right and wrong, and he probably had some history of seeing both sides. Isn’t this what Spence might have done?
I’ve asked myself, how could anyone have helped him? Wasn’t he completely out of place in Britain? And, then, I told myself, he did the only decent thing: he killed himself. But today, I blame society, and I especially blame the police, and those politicians who have made the police the ineffective agents they are, those precise agents who made a good man into a criminal and an outcast; reserving a place for him in isolated madness. They have made criminals out of those precise men who wanted to do good and to serve their country.
The modern police force needs to be replaced, piece by piece, by a new force. Doing so would be part of ‘Spence’s Law’. It would actively seek out veterans of the rank of sergeant and above, and demand that they effectively do nothing but patrol their beat, entirely free from any political instruction.
You would ask me: Are you serious in thinking, that men like Spencer Beynon should be given a baton, and a uniform; and allowed to wander the streets by day and night, looking out for wrong-doers? Would you allow them to discipline your son? or defend your daughter? or keep an eye out for the safety of your van on the carpark? Would you allow a man like him to be the basis of Law in England? I would splutter something like: “How can you ask me that? Haven’t I just described somebody who I trusted my life to, and in the right circumstances, had a heart of pure gold, the undiminished metal the country is built on?”
You would ask me: Wouldn’t you prefer to have the college educated, legally minded youths with their spray gas, their handcuffs, and stab vests, and hi-viz jackets, and their flashing lights and high speed chases? Aren’t these the people we really need?
It’s true, we can’t turn the clock back; we can’t bring Spence back from the dead; and we can’t bring the old Police back from the dead, either. But there are things we can do in future, good rather than bad things. And, like Spencer’s dad, I’m not accepting that ‘he just killed himself’, or ‘it was an accident’. Somebody or something went wrong, and it wasn’t altogether or even mostly Spence’s fault.
Jason Powell
Chester, 07.07.2022
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