Tireless battle to win justice for the 21 killed
JULIE Hambleton was just 11 when her 18year-old sister Maxine died in the Tavern on the Town bomb attack.
After the Birmingham Six, wrongfully convicted of the crime, were released in 1991, Maxine’s brother Brian started a lone effort for a reinvestigation. But Miss Hambleton, now 54, said it was in 2009 that the fire within her was truly ignited over the fact nobody had been brought to justice.
Last year she recalled the moment, saying: ‘There was news of all these public inquiries … excuse my language, but there is no other way of saying it – “What the f***?” Twenty-one people were murdered in Birmingham and no one seems interested. I felt angry to the extent that I nearly put my boot through the telly.
‘So I sat down and wrote a letter to the chief constable of West Midlands Police, Chris Sims. I had a response six weeks later … basically saying he was too busy to talk to me.’ After a failed bid to get action from her MP, Miss Hambleton set up a petition in 2011 for a parliamentary debate on the issue. That led to a BBC documentary, and a JusticeForThe21 website was set up.
In 2014, police said the case would not be re-opened unless new evidence came to light. The force admitted it had lost more than 30 pieces of evidence.
In June last year, a coroner agreed to reopen the Birmingham verdicts.