Birmingham pub bombs families’ plea to Priti Patel
RELATIVES of victims of the Birmingham pub bombings have called on the Home Secretary to give a firm commitment within weeks on holding a public inquiry.
After speaking to Priti Patel on Zoom, the families of those killed asked her “to indicate when she will provide a written decision” before the May local elections.
Ms Patel agreed to the video meeting yesterday after a request from West Midlands mayor Andy Street.
Bombs planted in the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs exploded on November 21, 1974, killing 21 people and injuring 220 more. A flawed investigation by West Midlands Police led to the wrongful convictions of the Birmingham Six — one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
In 2019 an inquest found a botched IRA warning was responsible for the slaughter.
However, the coronial process was described as “unsatisfactory” by some of the bereaved for not prompting criminal charges against any of the perpetrators.
The Home Secretary said: “I recognise the desire of the victims’ families and the wider community to see those responsible brought to justice.”
Julie Hambleton, a lead member of Justice 4 The 21 and whose older sister Maxine died, said it was “another step to truth, justice and accountability”.
She added: “We urge the Home Secretary to a meeting with us within a month’s time when lockdown restrictions will be lighter so that we may discover whether she is going to give us what our loved ones deserve, which is a full statutory inquiry.”
The families criticised publication of a written Home Office ministerial response to a question from Labour’s Birmingham Edgbaston MP Preet Gill relating to any possible inquiry — without any notice and less than 24 hours before their meeting — as “insensitive and inept”.
In the response, published on the parliamentary website, Kevin Foster, Home Office Minister for Future Borders and Immigration, said it would be “inappropriate” to make a decision to hold a statutory inquiry into the bombings while the police investigation was still active.
When relatives raised it with Ms Patel, she told the families it “was a standard response when there is a live police investigation”, according to their lawyers.