Deaths put spotlight on city's underground liquor trade

Police in a small English city are battling to stamp out an underground alcohol industry that is turning deadly.

An explosion yesterday killed five people and left another near death with extensive burns at an illegal factory that was manufacturing alcohol.

Police in Boston, Lincolnshire, urged anyone who knew the men, believed to be Eastern European, to come forward as officers waited to question the survivor.

The still was behind a stud wall at an industrial unit which was being rented from a local landlord by a Lithuanian who is no longer in Britain.

The blast came three months after police, trading-standards and customs officers raided eight premises in the market town, confiscating 88 litres of potentially lethal vodka.

The shops are having their licences revoked, although no arrests were made during the raids.

Yesterday local people said the sale of illicit liquor, packaged in bottles bearing counterfeit labels of well-known brands and costing as little as £2 ($3.80) a bottle, was an open secret among the large community of migrant workers and the network of continental stores that has grown to serve them.

Trading-standards officers said the confiscated drinks contained large quantities of methanol, which could cause blindness or death.

Police and local MP Mark Simmonds said that until the blast yesterday there was no indication that illegal liquor was being brewed in Boston, and there was no evidence to link the confiscated alcohol with that being made at the industrial unit.

"We must get information into the public domain to make people realise how dangerous it is not just to make it, but to consume illicit alcohol," Simmonds said.

Superintendent Keith Owen said searches of the industrial unit at Broadfield Lane appeared to substantiate rumours that had been circulating since the devastating explosion, which was heard up to 8km away.

Photographs showed dozens of bottles being kept at the unit.

"What I can confirm is that we have found chemicals on the premises which tend to indicate either the manufacture or production of alcohol," Owen said.

Firefighters said the fire spread rapidly through the premises. The intense heat buckled steel shutters in unit No 8, where the men died.

Officers described it as the largest loss of life in a single fire that the force had dealt with in 30 years.

The survivor, who had burns to 75 per cent of his body, was doused by people who rushed to the scene.

He was taken to a specialist unit in Birmingham for treatment.

Those working nearby said men would come and go from the unit at unusual times, and the premises had no signs indicating what went on there.

Police said relatives and friends had yet to alert them of any missing people, but several Portuguese and Latvian people had visited the scene.

Tough streets of Boston

Rolling up his trouser legs to show off the bruises, Jimmy described how he had been stopped by four men and beaten with an iron bar last week.

It was the second time that he had been attacked in a month, having fallen foul of a group of recently arrived fellow Lithuanians.

He believes he's a target because he has integrated with the local English-speaking community.

Some estimates suggest that there are up to 15,000 foreign nationals working in Boston (population 60,000). Most live separate lives from the indigenous population, keeping within their own national groups. The Brazilians, Portuguese, Poles, Lithuanian, Russians and Latvians came for the agricultural work, picking and packaging vegetables from surrounding farms. Not all can find a job, and locals have complained that groups of men and women have been sleeping rough and drinking in public.

There is little in the way of a safety net. The discovery of the body of 54-year-old Skaidrite Timosina last week is said to be the fourth such death in two years.

Yet relations between the communities are still good, admits English Democrat councillor Elliott Fountain, who hopes to run as the town's mayor.

"People aren't angry at the east Europeans. But even the foreigners don't want more foreigners here," he said.

- INDEPENDENT