Birmingham bombs: Were police warned?
Inquest finally opens 45 years after IRA pub attacks killed 21
SECURITY forces may have had advance warning of an attack ahead of the Birmingham pub bombings, a senior coroner said yesterday.
Inquests into the atrocities finally resumed yesterday with a minute’s silence for the 21 victims who died in the blasts more than four decades ago.
Jurors were told they would hear evidence of possible ‘forewarnings’ of the attacks at two city centre pubs, raising questions about whether steps which ‘ might have prevented the bombings’ could have been taken. But senior coroner Sir Peter Thornton QC reiterated that the hearing would not seek to attribute blame or identify the culprits.
Some bereaved relatives have previously said this decision threatens to leave the proceedings ‘utterly redundant’.
Sir Peter also admitted that some ‘documentation and detail... may have been lost or damaged’ since the blasts on the night of November 21, 1974.
At the start of proceedings, he asked those in court to stand before he read out the names of the victims, the youngest aged just 16, who died at the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs. This was followed by a minute’s silence at Bir- mingham Civil Justice Centre, where the inquests have been linked to form one over-arching hearing into all 21 deaths.
Sir Peter said possible forewarnings include evidence about a visit by a group of students to a city police station which had been planned for the night of the bombings but was cancelled earlier that day.
Jurors were told they will also hear details of a conversation about the attacks in a local prison a fortnight earlier and a witness who claims he overheard a conversation in another pub hours before ‘which he believes was about the bombs’.
Evidence about this pub conversation underpinned the decision to resume the inquests which opened but did not proceed after the wrongful convictions of the ‘Birmingham Six’ in 1975.
Jurors were told they would hear evidence from only a few eyewitnesses as some were no longer alive and others would be spared the potential ‘distress’ of reliving their trauma.
The court heard that the two pubs, only 50 yards apart, were destroyed on what had been a normal Thursday evening when busy with mainly young people.
Sir Peter said 12 of those who died were under 25, with ten killed in the ‘massive explosion’ at the Mulberry Bush under the distinctive 20- storey Rotunda building. Another 11 died in the Tavern in the Town in the basement of a building housing a tax office off the New Street shopping district.
Jurors were told they would hear of a telephone warning to the local newspaper made from a public kiosk by a man with an Irish accent using a code word.
The coroner said the bombings were the culmination of a two-year campaign of over 50 incidents in and around Birmingham, including bombings and fire- bombings, for which the IRA had ‘ broadly admitted responsibility’.
Julie Hambleton, whose sister Maxine, 18, died, attended the inquest with 15 other bereaved family members.
The hearing continues.
‘Massive explosion’