Conlon close to suicide as he suffered in jail
THE Guildford Four’s Gerry Conlon felt such despair after 12 years in a British prison that he was on the verge of killing himself, private letters to the Irish Government have revealed.
While languishing in HMP Long Lartin in England in 1987, seven years after his father Giuseppe had died in jail, Mr Conlon wrote about how he could not face another 18 years of ‘living hell’.
Mr Conlon, along with the rest of the Guildford Four, was released in October 1989 after his conviction was quashed. Mr Conlon’s father, Giuseppe, one of the Maguire Seven, was also falsely convicted in a decision that was later quashed.
The letter, dated May 10, 1987, and released by the Department of Foreign Affairs under the 30-year rule, was sent to the then foreign affairs minister Brian Lenihan.
In it, the west Belfast man reflected on the 30-year sentence handed down to him.
‘That means if nothing is done to help us I must face another 18 years of a “living hell”,’ he wrote. ‘I can assure you I do not intend to serve it, I would much rather join my dear father. I can see that if my plight is not resolved in the near future I will have to decide which form of protest I must take. This is not something I want to do but you can only suffer so much and to suffer it for something you didn’t do makes the suffering intolerable.’
Mr Conlon and the rest of the Guildford Four – Paul Hill, Carole Richardson and Paddy Armstrong – were given life sentences over attacks in Guildford, Surrey, which killed five people and injured 65.
At the time of their sentencing in 1975, the trial judge, Mr Justice Donaldson, told them: ‘If hanging were still an option, you would have been executed.’
In 1987, Mr Conlon pleaded with Mr Lenihan: ‘I hope the Irish Government will be able to do something to help us before another innocent person, like my father, dies from that terrible disease known as British justice.’
The handwriting was impeccable and belied the deep trauma Mr Conlon was suffering and the conditions of life in a-maximum security prison. He told Mr Lenihan he was grateful for the government’s efforts to get justice.
Mr Conlon died aged 60 in 2014.