‘I sold my home to HS2 for scrapped line for £1.2m – only for it to be turned into a cannabis factory'
Alan Wilkinson bought the four-bedroom luxury home in the leafy hillside village of Whitmore Heath in Staffordshire with his wife, Gillian, in the late 1970s.
The couple added a swimming pool and new kitchen to the plush property – but when proposals emerged for the now-axed HS2 line beneath the hamlet, they pushed forward with plans to downsize and sell.
It triggered a battle to sell the home to HS2, a fight Gillian would not see the end of, as she died from pancreatic cancer two weeks before the scheduled move-out in 2019.
The detached property was not required to make way for the line, but the couple settled on a £1.2m deal with HS2,which purchased it under a 'special circumstances' purchase scheme.
But Mr Wilkinson was left shocked when he discovered his old home, which had subsequently been rented out, was being used to grow cannabis plants.
'My old neighbour saw two Jehovah's Witnesses walking out of my old drive and he told them 'you won't find anyone in there',' the 85-year-old said.
'They replied 'no, but there's cannabis'. Turns out there was 184 cannabis plants growing inside. They could smell it.'
Soon after, Staffordshire Police raided the house and found the drugs growing across five rooms inside. A man from Merseyside pleaded guilty to the production of a class B drug in July.
The property, which Mr Wilkinson said was re-roofed and had its swimming pool removed before being rented out, has now been left empty – one of hundreds of properties requiring security, costing HS2 £1.9m in 2023/24.
'It's terrible,' he said. 'I feel awful, truthfully, about what's happened. I lived there for 30 years; it was a great chunk of my life, a beautiful house, and now it's sitting empty, abandoned.
'I hear rumours it's going to be knocked flat and rebuilt.'
The Wilkinsons' home was one of 35 sold to HS2 under a number of selling schemes as HS2 planned twin tunnels beneath the hill-top village.
Some are now rented out, while a number sit empty, judged not to be suitable for the letting market.
The community's strain over the situation was exacerbated by the then-Tory government's decision in 2023 to scrap the section of line that would have run from Birmingham to Manchester.
Mr Wilkinson said: 'HS2 destroyed our village. It was a fine community where people who had made it and gone to live. But the plans for the line tore it apart, more than a dozen people died while waiting to sell their homes.
'I can't bear to go back, so many memories there with my wife, all gone.'
Mr Wilkinson, who also served as the chairman of Whitmore Parish Council, was central to the community's dispute with HS2 as locals sought deals to sell their homes.
With his wife's condition worsening, he travelled to London to deliver a petition for HS2 over the selling of homes at the High Speed Rail Bill Committee in 2018.
Asked on the impact of the HS2 plans on his family's health, Mr Wilkinson said: 'Yes, of course it did [have an impact]. HS2 was the worst thing that could have happened to Whitmore Heath.'
It's understood that homes purchased by HS2 in Whitmore Heath, and along the stretch of axed line to Manchester, remain under Department for Transport ownership despite the route being scrapped almost two years ago.
In total, HS2 spent £3.79bn purchasing properties for the overall line, including £633m on the now-scrapped sections of the route.
An HS2 spokesperson said the line would have run in a tunnel up to 30 metres beneath Whitmore Heath, and that no homeowner was compelled to sell their property for the railway to be built.
They continued: 'We recognised Mr Wilkinson's difficult situation and he accepted our offer in 2019 to buy his home through HS2's Special Circumstances Scheme, under which we covered moving costs, paid stamp duty and legal fees.
'We utterly condemn the illegal use of property acquired by the project being used as a cannabis farm. It was let on the open rental market, and managed by property agents, to help recoup costs to the taxpayer.
'We have been unable to relet the property since the farm was closed down by police because the costs of returning it to a lettable state are too great. The area is patrolled by our private security teams who work closely with Staffordshire Constabulary.'
On the cannabis farm discovered at Mr Wilkinson's former home, Staffordshire Police said Darren Pinnington, 32 of Gomville Road, Liverpool, was charged with being concerned in the production of a controlled drug of class B in May.
He pleaded guilty to the charge at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court in July and is awaiting sentencing.
The HS2 section still going ahead will run from London to Handacre in Staffordshire with a spur to Birmingham, but delays and spiralling costs mean no target date has yet been announced for opening.
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Is it fanciful to suggest that they were targeted because someone, somewhere, resented this pan-sectarian fraternisation? Lee doesn't think that was the motive. 'We were the No 1 band, and this gang wanted maximum publicity. If that bomb had exploded when they intended, the Miami Showband would have been accused of carrying weapons for the IRA.' (Indeed, within 12 hours, the UVF accused the band of being bomb-traffickers, describing their killing as 'justifiable homicide'.) Lee agreed to testify at the trial in Belfast on condition he was helicoptered to and from the Irish border, with 24-hour protection. His life was threatened by relatives of the accused; he has, he says, been looking over his shoulder ever since. Lance corporal Thomas Crozier and Sgt James McDowell, both of the UDR, were sentenced to life in the Maze prison, as was John Somerville, brother of the deceased Wesley and a former soldier. (They were released under the Good Friday agreement.) Everything pointed towards collusion: covert collaboration between paramilitaries and the organs of the British state. Travers, Lee and Millar relaunched the Miami Showband with new members before the year was out, to familiar scenes of hysteria – but their hearts weren't in it. Travers felt they had become a circus, and that audiences had come to stare rather than dance; he left the band the following year. For Lee, now lead singer, it could never be the same without his lost band members. 'I looked around and there was no Fran, no Brian and no Tony, and I didn't enjoy that.' In 1982, tired of feeling that he and his family were in danger, Lee started a new life in South Africa, performing as a saxophonist and band leader on the Holiday Inn circuit. He remained there for two decades, only returning after his wife, Brenda, died. Travers, meanwhile, went on a tenacious, meticulous search for the truth, engaging with numerous investigations and initiatives. A 2019 Netflix documentary, Remastered: The Miami Showband Massacre, is centred around his dogged efforts. Through the years, the finger of suspicion has repeatedly pointed at two men: Capt Robert Nairac of the Grenadier guards (later executed by Republicans), and Robin 'The Jackal' Jackson, a former soldier from County Down and a key figure in the notorious Glenanne Gang, were believed to have planned the ambush. Both were named by British intelligence whistleblowers, and Ken Livingstone named Nairac as a conspirator in his maiden speech as an MP. In December 2017, 80 documents were released including a 1987 letter from the UVF to the then-taoiseach Charles Haughey on headed notepaper, which openly admitted collusion with MI5 in the attack. The evidence was now overwhelming. The historic activities of the Glenanne Gang, including the Miami Showband Massacre, fall under the purview of Operation Denton, due to report this year. The massacre hasn't faded from Irish memory. A sculpture commemorating the dead musicians, unveiled in 2007 by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, stands on Parnell Square in Dublin. One person who apparently didn't remember, however, was Bono, who described the 2015 shootings at the Eagles of Death Metal show in Paris as 'the first direct attack on music'. He later apologised, and U2 incorporated a slide of the Miami Showband into their show. The survivors don't have the luxury of forgetting. The trauma has left an indelible mark. Travers was diagnosed, in later life, with enduring personality change. Lee has, he tells me, experienced profound survivor's guilt. In 2021, Lee was awarded £325,000 compensation, in a package he says was presented to survivors and families as a take-it-or-leave-it deal. He considers the sum to be 'peanuts, for 50 years of anger and pain'. More than financial recompense, he says what he hopes for, with up to five perpetrators still officially unaccounted for, is closure: 'Just tell the world the truth.' My Saxophone Saved My Life by Des Lee with Ken Murray is out now (Red Stripe Press)
