Families of pub bomb victims ‘in limbo’ after Rudd delays decision Home Secretary refuses to clarify position on legal aid for new inquests
HOME Secretary Amber Rudd told relatives of the Birmingham pub bombing victims that they will have to continue waiting for a decision about legal funding for new inquests into the deaths – despite summoning them to London for a meeting.
The families are campaigning for financial assistance to ensure they are properly represented when a coroner’s court investigates the murder of 21 people in 1974.
They had hoped that the invitation to meet Home Secretary Amber Rudd in her House of Commons office meant that a decision would be announced.
But instead, Mrs Rudd told the campaigners that she had not come to a decision.
An announcement will be made by the end of the month, the Home Secretary said.
Julie Hambleton, the leader of the Justice4the21 campaign, said afterwards: “The meeting did not produce the expected results but she listened to us and she listened to our arguments as to why we need funding and why we need to be legally represented.
“On that basis a line of communication has been established and she will make a decision before the end of this month.”
While the campaigners hope that the right decision will be made, she admitted that the delay meant that lawyers representing the families could not proceed with vital research to prepare for the hearings
“We are left in limbo again. We just have to sit and wait and hope for the best and hope that the Home Secretary Amber Rudd does the right thing by 21 innocents who were murdered in cold blood.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This afternoon the Home Secretary met relatives of victims of the tragic 1974 Birmingham pub bombing. The meeting was private and was to enable the Home Secretary to hear from the families directly.
“A decision about funding costs will be announced in course.”
The families were accompanied to London by members of their legal team KRW LAW LLP from Belfast who, up until now, have been acting free of charge. legal due
Ahead of the invitation to see the Home Secretary Amber Rudd, the bereaved families wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Theresa May to ask for their case to be treated like that of the Hillsborough disaster, when relatives of the 96 football fans who died there received funding for legal representation at the inquest into the 1989 tragedy.
Birmingham and Solihull Senior Coroner Louise Hunt made a historic ruling in June that resumed new inquests should examine the deaths of the victims.
She made her decision after receiving “significant” new information suggesting West Midlands Police missed two potential warnings of the bomb attacks.
The police have already set aside £1 million to fund their legal team when the new inquests take place.
Ms Hunt has called for a preinquest review hearing to be held in the autumn.
IRA bombers struck at The Mulberry Bush and The Tavern In The Town pubs in the city centre on a night of horror on November 21, 1974, leaving injured.
Ms Julie Hambleton’s older sister, Maxine Hambleton, then 18, was one of the victims of a blast which ripped through the underground Tavern in the Town bar, minutes after a bomb destroyed the nearby Mulberry Bush at the base of the city centre Rotunda.
The bombings are widely accepted to have been the work of the Provisional IRA, with the terrorist group’s former intelligence director, Kieran Conway, recently describing the attacks as “an absolute disaster”.
A botched investigation by the force led to the Birmingham Six being wrongly jailed for the crime.
However, the men were freed in 1991 after their convictions were ruled unsafe by the Court of Appeal.
In 1974, inquests were opened after the attacks.
However, the process was overtaken by the criminal inquiry and the later wrongful convictions of the Birmingham Six, so the inquests were never resumed. 21 dead and 182