Guildford 4Birmingham 6Maguire Family
01 July 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 Regional crime squad. The sixth, a friend who had seen them off at New Street station in Birmingham, was arrested two days later. Four signed