Guildford 4, Birmingham 6 and the Maguire Family
01 January 1991
Guildford 4, Birmingham 6 and the Maguire Family
artdoc August=1991
Seventeen people, most of them originating from Northern
Ireland, were sent to prison for IRA offences in Britain in 1975
and 1976. In the past twenty months ten - the Guildford Four and
the Birmingham Six who were all sentenced to life imprisonment -
have had their convictions quashed after
belated evidence of malpractice by the police and the
prosecuting authorities. The Maguire Seven also expect to be
vindicated in their protestations of innocence when the Court of
Appeal deliver their judgement.
These miscarriages of justice have had a profound and
damaging effect on the criminal justice system. With the
release of the Birmingham Six, the government has set up a Royal
Commission. The reputation of the police has sunk to an all-time
low. The forensic science service has been found wanting and less
than impartial. Former high-ranking law
officers have been implicated in suppressing evidence. Senior
judges have been shown to be reluctant to confront and deal with
miscarriages of justice. And the law itself, particularly the
Prevention of Terrorism Act, has been shown to facilitate false
confessions rather than identify legitimate suspects.
It began with the Provisional IRA's armed campaign on the
mainland in 1974, with active service units operating in
London, Southampton, Birmingham and Manchester. At the
time the IRA was a legal organisation.
The first serious incident happened on October 5 in
Guildford when timebombs exploded in two public houses,
killing five people. In a series of further attacks a bomb was
thrown into a pub in Woolwich on November 6, killing two
customers. These were the opening shots of the unit later to
become known as the Balcombe Street gang, after the London street
where four of them gave themselves up to the police after a seige
in December 1975.
The Guildford explosions were investigated by Surrey police.
For reasons which have never been adequately explained they
arrested a young Belfast man, Paul Hill, many of whose friends
had joined the IRA. Under pressure and some violence Hill began
naming names. The arrests escalated as others followed suit.
Gerry Conlon, Hill's friend, was picked up in Belfast. Paddy
Armstrong, another Belfast friend, and his girlfriend, Carole
Richardson, were detained, in Kilburn, along with a number of
their squatter friends. Both Hill and Conlon, under the duress
of interrogation, named Conlon's aunt, Anne
Maguire, of Kilburn, as a bombmaker. The Maguire family,
Anne, her husband, their two sons, Anne's brother, a family
friend, and Conlon's father who had come over from Belfast to
help his son were arrested at the Maguire home and charged with
possession of explosives. Murder charges against a
number of those arrested, including Anne Maguire, were
eventually dropped.
Surrey police were satisfied they had broken up an active
service unit, even though the London campaign continued
unabated. It is now known that statements were fabricated and
that alibi evidence for Conlon was withheld.
Meanwhile, in Birmingham, the IRA blew up two crowded
public houses on Thursday, 21 November 1974. Twenty-one
people died and 162 were injured. Within a week Parliament rushed
through the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which
allowed for suspects to be held for seven days and outlawed the
Provisional IRA and several other paramilitary
organisations.
Within hours of the bombings five Irishmen were detained for
questioning at Heysham in Lancashire. Residents of
Birmingham for many years, they were travelling to Belfast for
the funeral of an old friend from the Ardoyne, James McDade, who
had blown himself up planting a bomb outside Coventry telephone
exchange. Tested for explosives by a Home Office scientist, Dr
Frank Skuse, two were found to be positive. They were
interrogated by members of the West Midlands serious crime squad
and No.4 Re