Secret documents reveal wrongly convicted prisoners’ fight for justice
THE Birmingham Six, falsely accused of carrying out the pub bombings that killed 21 people, volunteered to undergo hypnosis, take truth drugs and submit to lie detector tests in a desperate bid to prove their innocence, previously secret documents reveal.
One of them, Paddy Hill, accused successive Irish governments of abandoning them in their fight for freedom, the newly-declassified state papers show.
In an angry hand-written letter from his cell in HMP Gartree on September 10, 1987, he said they had been offered nothing but false hope and false promises.
In it he penned the iconic words he would voice so emotively on the day he was freed after nearly 17 years behind bars.
“The British system doesn’t know how to spell the word JUSTICE, never mind dispensing it,” he wrote. The damning assessment of those who incarcerated him is almost word for word the message he delivered when he grabbed a microphone on the street outside the Old Bailey after finally being freed in March 1991.
At the time of the letter, Paddy Hill had been in jail while four different taoisigh (Irish prime ministers) took office: Liam Cosgrave, Jack Lynch, Garret Fitzgerald and Charles Haughey.
He said that governments had done little or nothing to support him and the five others.
“The only thing successive Irish governments have done is help to keep INNOCENT IRISHMEN in prison,” he wrote.
The Birmingham Six – Mr Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker – were wrongly jailed for life in 1975 in England for the 1974 IRA bombings of the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern In The Town. After protracted campaigns, their convictions were eventually quashed in the appeal court.
Mr Hill’s two-page letter to Senator Paschal Mooney, forwarded on to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, has just been released by the National Archives, along with a tranche of other files relating to the notorious case, under the 30-year rule.
It reveals deep and justifiable anger at his incarceration – at that time he had served 12 years.
Mr Hill accused Irish politicians of lacking courage and questioned why a cross-party delegation wanted to see him in prison.
“I won’t be seeing any representatives of any Irish party. As far as I’m concerned they are all a load of s***,” he wrote.
“I had enough of them when they visited us at Long Lartin and they still haven’t had the courage to publicly declare that we are innocent and that we were TORTURED + FRAMED for something we knew nothing about.”
He went on: “We learned a long time ago that we could expect little or no help from the Irish Government and everything to date bears that out. “The only thing they have done for us is to give us FALSE HOPE and FALSE PROMISES. We got this far without the help of the Irish Government and we will prove our INNOCENCE without their help.” Several weeks later, then tanaiste (deputy head of government of Ireland) and foreign affairs minister Brian Lenihan told Senator Mooney why the government had not publicly supported the Birmingham Six.
“It is preferable, in my judgment, for the Government’s view to be con- veyed, as a general rule, privately to the British Government,” he said.
In a separate open letter earlier that year, Mr Hill said that the Birmingham Six were willing to undergo hypnosis, the truth drug and lie detector tests to prove their innocence.
He attacked the Irish Government for what he said was a lack of courage towards their case. “If they do not act publicly then the possibility of us ever being free is very slim,” he said.
Another of the Six, Mr McIlkenny, wrote to the government from Wormwood Scrubs on August 22, 1987.
He warned that ratification of an extradition treaty between the UK and Ireland was a “grave mistake” while they were still in prison.
“Justice cannot be bought. If this extradition treaty is signed on December 1 then I feel strongly that we and the other innocents can say goodbye to any chances of freedom no matter how strong the evidence on our behalf,” he said.