Love and the betrayal of a heroine

In the early hours of Saturday morning Rose Davis finally stopped fighting. The gap-toothed, elfin-faced Cockney whose gritty campaign against injustice propelled her from the back streets of Bow to a brief world fame, slipped into a coma and died, an almost-forgotten figure.

The graffiti is still there, if you can find it: "George Davis Is Innocent OK." Who remembers that now? In the mid-1970s it was a catchphrase, a battle cry worked into pop songs, a slogan worn on T-shirts by superstars, scrawled on walls and bridges all over London.

George was Rose's husband, a petty crook who had been convicted of a crime he did not commit. She and her friends, almost all East-Enders, campaigned to get him out of jail. They drove a car into the gates at Buckingham Palace; they stopped a Test match by digging up the pitch. They fought with the ingenuity and resilience for which their part of London is justly famed.

And they won. Against all the odds, Davis was released from jail. There was an ecstatic reunion with his adoring and feisty wife and the story should have ended there. But it didn't. An apparently indomitable love was destroyed by betrayal and the wife nothing could break suffered a broken heart.

Now she is gone, aged 67 but Rose left something behind. When she knew the cancer she had fought for several years would kill her - and soon - she decided to tell the real story of her battles. For the first time, she told what happened in those tumultous years: the joy and, ultimately, the pain. This untold narrative is in her autobiography, The Wars of Rosie. She read the final proofs just before she died.

Paul Woods, the editor who helped her write it all down, was one of the closest to her at the end and he gave the Evening Standard his own take on this exceptional woman. He talks of a love story, one of those human episodes that is only comprehensible in the context of a great emotion. There is, too, a powerful thread of social history, a recording of events that although mostly forgotten now are very much part of the London we know today. Above all, you have to ask: how could George do that to her?

Rosie Dean was a skinny, pretty kid who grew up among the bombsites and poverty in the post-war East End. At the age of 17 she married a local boy, George Davis, who was also 17. Their first child, Deana, was on the way.

George was a tall, good-looking lad who was holding down a job on the river, working on the lighters in the Port of London. It was tough work, poorly paid and he took to driving, first lorries and then minicabs. They were a happy young couple, although they suffered a tragedy when their second child, Mark, died months after he was born. They had another son, Rick, now 43, a black cab driver who lives with his family in Essex.

In the 1960s and early 1970s the Davis family was typical of many among London's working class. Friendships were strong, neighbours were part of the inner circle and there was an unspoken code of mutual support and respect.

There was also crime. The Kray twins ruled most of the territory east of Aldgate. For the police and rival gangs, the Krays were a scourge. For people like George Davis they were demigods. To this day, people in the East End talk of the time of the Krays, when old ladies could walk the streets without fear and doors could be left unlocked because whatever the Kray gang was doing elsewhere, it did not prey on its own. Indeed, they say, the Krays and their toughs kept peace on the streets, something that was lost when they were finally banged up.

Not all of that is myth and, like many young men from his background, George Davis saw nothing wrong in taking from those who could afford it. His great pal was Mickey Ishmael, a desperado who was to feature prominently in Davis's final treachery.

In 1972, Davis was convicted of receiving stolen goods. He was given a suspended sentence, much to the chagrin of the police who had him pegged as an up-and-coming local villain. Then he was arrested for conspiring to steal from a railway yard but the evidence didn't stick and he was acquitted. By now, the police were determined to nail the young crook.

They got their chance, it seemed, in April 1974. At that time, bank jobs, wages delivery hold-ups and security van hijacks were almost daily events. The armed robbers who carried out these crimes were called over-the-pavement artists, because of the technique of ambushing from getaway cars parked at the kerb. On 4 April 1974, George Davis went over the pavement - or so the police seemed to believe. A London Electricity Board office in Ilford was hit by an armed gang chasing a payroll delivery. They had planned everything meticulously but there was one thing they did not know - the police had been tipped off and were lying in wait.

During a fierce battle in the street, in which one police officer was shot in the leg and another badly injured, the robbers managed to get away. But the police had taken photographs of faces and one, they said, was George Davis. It certainly looked like him.

Paul Woods said: "When Rose and his friends first visited him at Ilford police station George was in a state. He told them he was innocent and begged them to get him out. 'You've got to help me,' he said. Rose said she would get him out, but at that stage she had no idea how."

Davis was charged and sentenced to 20 years for armed robbery, despite the fact there was strong evidence he had been miles away at the time. Woods said: "When he was sent down at the Old Bailey, Rose walked up to the detective in the case and told him: 'You don't know what you've started.' "

Indeed, he didn't. Within weeks a campaign to free Davis began. His friend Peter Chappell, the Ishmael family and other friends and neighbours - including Violet Kray, mother of the Kray twins - started to organise. Soon the graffiti appeared. It was impossible to move around London without seeing it. Then Chappell launched into a series of crazy stunts, driving a lorry into buildings and ultimately ramming the gates at Buckingham Palace.

Then, in August 1975, with Davis at the start of his long sentence, Chappell and others dug up the cricket pitch at Headingley, sabotaging the Test match between England and Australia. The move was accompanied with Free George Davis material for the television cameras and, as the campaigners expected, there was uproar.

Chappell, who had been treated leniently before Headingley, was jailed for 18 months. "Fair enough," he said, as he was led away. But his stunt triggered a sense that something was indeed wrong. Newspapers began to take Rose's campaign seriously. The then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, ordered a review. It discovered vital blood sample evidence, taken at the scene of the robbery, had been suppressed. And while the police photograph of one of the robbers did look like Davis, the scale showed that he was a much smaller man.

Davis's conviction was declared "unsafe". He was released in May 1976 on the Queen's prerogative of mercy.

The East End erupted. There were scenes reminiscent of VE Day as Davis returned home to his children and his wife, London's own La Pasionara. While covering the story for the Evening Standard as a young reporter I had a conversation with a photographer colleague. Every man, he told me, should have a wife like Rose Davis.

Tragically, George Davis appeared not to agree. Paul Woods explained: "When George came out he was a celebrity. The campaign had attracted attention across the world. It was one of the greatest love stories of modern times. He found himself at the centre of attention, surrounded by groupies." One of them, a stunningly attractive young woman, became his mistress within a week of his leaving jail. There was more treachery to come.

While Rose worked as a waitress to support the family, Davis went on what Woods described as "an 18-month bender". His post-jail life became an endless spree, surrounded by adoring hangers-on and a few old friends. Prominent among the latter was Mickey Ishmael. He and his family had helped campaign for his friend's release and there was a strong bond between the two men. That, Rose came to believe, was a problem. She was proved horribly right.

While she set off for her waitress job on 23 September 1977, Davis drove Ishmael and a group of over-the-pavement men to Seven Sisters Road in Holloway. Their target was the Bank of Cyprus, where £58,000 in cash - £400,000 in today's money - was to be delivered.

The gang was armed and well-briefed, although not entirely. The Sweeney - the Flying Squad - was waiting for them. Ishmael tried to escape by taking an elderly passer-by hostage but he realised the hopelessness of it and dropped his sawn-off shotgun in the street. Davis was arrested in the getaway car. He got 15 years, later reduced to 13 and served seven. "Mum was devastated," her son Rick Davis said. "It was so awful for her after what she had done. She had shouted dad's innocence from the rooftops, only for him to prove he wasn't so innocent after all. Could anyone imagine a worse slap in the face?"

Rose couldn't. She divorced Davis, reverted to her maiden name and never remarried, living her life quietly in a Victorian house in Stepney Green, close to her old friends and old haunts.

Davis came out of jail, went straight eventually and married a police officer's daughter. He lives in Highgate and, says Rick, was on reasonably amicable terms with Rose. "They were together at my wedding," he said. "They talked, but she could never forgive him."

Paul Woods has a theory about that. He said: "Rose was one of those people who could love and fight with an intensity that's very rare. But if that love was abused, the intensity went into reverse. The acrimony was just as powerful as the love had been."

Rose has gone now and her story, although an East End legend, will doubtless fade from memory. But it was her last wish that it be written down, together with her final judgment on the long ago day George Davis walked out of jail, a free man: "Oh, they should have f****** kept him there."

* The Wars of Rosie: Hard Knocks, Endurance and the "George Davis Is Innocent" Campaign (Pennant Books)