BIRMINGHAM SIX

Birmingham Six

Birmingham Six

My interest in miscarriages of justice arises from a long-standing concern with the Birmingham, Guildford and Woolwich and Maguire cases, both as a Member of Parliament and in my previous incarnation as a journalist. My attention was first drawn to these cases in 1976 and 1977 by Peter Chippindale, who was at that time a journalist on 'The Guardian'.

In that capacity he covered the Birmingham trial, the trial of the IRA unit captured at Balcombe Street and the appeal of the Guildford and Woolwich defendants. Mr. Chippindale told me at the time that he thought the wrong people had been convicted of the Birmingham, Guildford and Woolwich bombings. He said this on the basis of his attendance at court.

I first publicly discussed the possibility that the Birmingham defendants were innocent in an article in 'Tribune' on 14th October, 1977. Subsequently, along with Charles Tremayne and Ian McBride of Granada Television, I carried out a detailed investigation into the Birmingham case which resulted in a series of television programmes between October, 1985, and July, 1990, and my book, “Error of Judgement” in July, 1986 .

I first expressed the view that the Guildford Four and the Maguires were innocent in an article in 'The New Statesman' on 1st January, 1982. Subsequently the same view was expressed in much more detail in a book, “Timebomb” by Grant McKee and Ros Franey in 1988, and in a Yorkshire Television programme.

For some years I have also taken an interest in the case of Judith Ward, who at the time of writing is in the seventeenth year of a thirty year sentence for the M62 coach bombing. It is my considered view that she is also innocent .

Many are desperate, having written to anyone who might conceivably help (Paddy Hill, one of the Birmingham Six, wrote several hundred letters to people who he hoped might be able to assist before he succeeded in attracting sustained interest in his case). I am troubled by the fact that there exists no organisation which both enjoys public confidence and has the resources necessary to investigate claims of innocence. I know that my concern is shared by others such as Ludovic Kennedy and Gareth Peirce who, like me, are also inundated with people claiming innocence, but who also lack the resources to cope with such claims. I am in the process of preparing a dossier of some of the cases that have come to my attention which I propose to submit to the Home Secretary, the Lord Chancellor and as an Appendix to my evidence to the Royal Commission.

Although, as the Prime Minister said in April, 1990, we do not have trial by television in this country, it remains an unhappy fact that a victim of a miscarriage of justice is far more likely to successfully overturn a conviction if he or she can first attract the attention of a television company, rather than a lawyer. That this is so is a matter of record in ...