During the 1950s and 60s the furniture industry at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire was a magnet for West Indian and Asian immigrants looking for work. There was subsequent racial friction between these two new communities and when it exploded in a mass brawl on Saturday, April 22nd, 1989, Lloyd Waite, a 30-year-old black man, was stabbed and beaten to death by an Asian gang outside the International Caf? in Desborough Road.
One of the many Asian suspects, an 18-year-old, was brought to trial for the murder but the prosecution quickly withdrew its case after accepting that he took no part in the attack on Waite. He was found not guilty and left the court a free man.