A 50-year battle for truth: the Birmingham pub bombings and the price of injustice

When bombs tore through two crowded pubs in central Birmingham on the evening of November 21 1974, they claimed the lives of 21 people and injured 220 more. They also led to the wrongful conviction of six men.

The tragic events of that night and the subsequent wrongful convictions have left wounds that, even decades later, remain painfully open. The 50th anniversary of the Birmingham pub bombings serves as a stark reminder of the multiple victims created by miscarriages of justice.

The 1974 bombings occurred amid a climate of intense public fear surrounding a sustained campaign by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which had already claimed many people’s lives.

Shortly after the bombings, six men, originally from Northern Ireland – Patrick Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Gerald Hunter, Richard Mcllkenny, William Power and John Walker – were arrested. After three days in police custody, four of the men had confessed to the crimes.

A type of forensic test, known as a Griess test, had also returned positive results for nitroglycerine on two of the men’s hands. According to a forensic scientist named Frank Skuse, this meant the men had handled explosives.

At their trial in 1975, the men claimed that the police had beaten the confessions out of them. Even a superficial examination of the statements obtained by police showed they were riddled with inaccuracies.

A Home Office explosives expert testified that everyday items like cigarette packets and playing cards, which the men had handled, could cause a positive Greiss test. But in court, this evidence was rubbished. All six were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

It took 16 years and two failed appeals before the convictions of the Birmingham Six, as they came to be known, were finally quashed. Their 1991 appeal exposed major flaws in the police evidence, concerns over the treatment of the men during interrogation, and the unreliability of the Griess test. The six men were freed, but the damage was irreparable.

Almost all victims of wrongful conviction suffer significant and lifelong psychological, emotional, behavioural and physical trauma as a result of their ordeal. The Birmingham Six were no different.

A snapshot of their trauma was outlined by psychiatrist Adrian Grounds when he assessed two of the men after their release. He found that their ordeal had left them with the most severe form of post-traumatic stress disorder, of the kind he had only ever before observed in brain damaged accident victims or victims of war crimes.

Their families will have suffered profoundly as well, bearing the stigma of association and enduring emotional and psychological strain. Research on wrongful convictions reveals such trauma extends even to exonerees’ children, who often face bullying and develop mental health issues, including eating disorders.

Generational trauma can also ripple through families, affecting those who never even knew the exoneree but bear the emotional legacy of the injustice nonetheless.

Victims and families

The pain suffered by the Birmingham Six and their families is mirrored, however, by that experienced by the victims of the original bombings and their families.

While the swift arrest and punishment of the Birmingham Six could not undo the horrific events experienced, knowing that justice had been done may have brought some form of closure. But with the 1991 quashing of the convictions, old wounds were inevitably reopened.

For victims’ families, such revictimisation can trigger feelings of guilt, helplessness and shock, potentially more intense than after the original crime. And for the families of those harmed in the Birmingham pub bombings, subsequent generations have continued to suffer as they continue to campaign for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

Yet, there will inevitably be more victims of the criminal justice system’s handling of the pub bombings case. When someone is wrongly convicted, the true perpetrator of the crime remains at large.

Offenders who get away with serious crimes rarely cease their activities. In fact, they often commit additional acts of violence, creating even more victims of the original wrongful conviction.

Miscarriages of justice also harm the public purse. The average cost of a prison place in England and Wales currently stands at more than £50,000. While this is relative to inflation, taxpayers in the 1970s and 1980s spent a fortune keeping six innocent men in prison for 16 years.

They have since spent a sizeable sum on subsequent police reinvestigations into the case. And there is the possibility, in the future, that a costly public inquiry will take place.

If this weren’t enough, the justice system itself is also a victim of wrongful convictions like those of the Birmingham Six. Wrongful convictions erode public trust in our justice system to get it right.

Indeed, around the time that the convictions of the Birmingham six were quashed, several other high-profile miscarriages of justice were revealed. As a result, there was a crisis of public confidence in criminal justice. This led to a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice and the creation of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice in Northern Ireland, England and Wales.

Those closest to the events of November 21 1974 have undoubtedly continued to suffer in the most unimaginable ways over the last 50 years, not least because the Birmingham Six are yet to receive an apology from the state. And the victims of the bombings and their families are yet to see the true perpetrators brought to justice by the state.

This case underlines the fact that wrongful convictions have a ripple effect – in other words, we are all the worse off when they happen.

Sam Poyser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.