This month 50 years ago - on 21 November 1974 - two bombs exploded in the heart of Birmingham city, killing 21 people and injuring over 200 more.
Most of us are familiar today with those bombings, not primarily from the perspective of the 21 innocent lives so cruelly taken, but mainly by the gross miscarriage of justice of convicting six men for those crimes they had nothing to do with.
By 1974, the IRA had extended its campaign to Britain, with many explosions occurring in Birmingham and its surrounding area in the West Midlands leading up to the more deadly ones in November 1974. A week before the Birmingham bombings, on 14 November, IRA member James McDade was killed when the bomb he was planting prematurely exploded in Coventry. Tensions were running high as McDade’s funeral arrangements were interrupted by the authorities. His body was finally flown to Ireland from Birmingham on the afternoon of 21 November.
Hours later, two of the three bombs that were planted in Birmingham city centre exploded, resulting in the worst bombings in Britain since the Second World War Blitz over 30 years earlier. The first explosions went off in the Mulberry Bush pub, at the base of the Rotunda tower complex, a well-known landmark of the city, shortly before 8.30pm, leading to the deaths of ten people. Minutes later, another pub was struck, the Tavern In The Town on New Street, resulting in eleven deaths.
One of the victims, 30-year-old Michael Beasley, a regular at the Mulberry Bush, earlier had told Mary Jones, wife of the pub licensee, that “he found a lucky pixie charm on the bus on the way to town that night and he gave the charm to her”. She kept it on her person thereafter.
The youngest victim, 16-year-old Neil “Tommy” Marsh was walking past the Mulberry Bush with his friend Paul Davies when the blast from inside killed both of them as it burst through the door onto the street. There is no photograph remaining of Tommy.
The youth of the victims is striking. Seven of the 21 victims were under 20, another five aged between 20 and 25. The oldest was 54. So much potential wiped out in a moment. There is a good chance most of the victims would still be alive today, 50 years on, had they not been in the pubs that night.
Two brothers, Desmond (20) and 23-year-old Eugene Reilly were amongst the victims. They were in the Tavern In The Town celebrating the news that Desmond’s wife was pregnant. Their parents were from Donegal. Their mother Bridget subsequently claimed she was “discriminated against in the years after her own sons’ murders because of her Irish accent”.
Talented footballer, 34-year-old James Craig, moved from Northern Ireland to Birmingham when he was 15. He was the last to die from the bombings, dying on 9 December 1974.
Two friends Jane Davis (17) and 18-year-old Maxine Hambleton had just returned from working in France and were distributing invitations for a housewarming party when they were killed in the Tavern In The Town blast. Maxine died without knowing she had won a place into university. She would have been the first person in her family to do so. Jane wanted to be a nuclear physicist.
Stanley James Bodman (47), who was killed standing in his regular spot in the Mulberry Bush, had previously reassured his family that there was little risk of him being caught up in a pub bombing as “the targets in those days were thought to be political or military targets, not public”. His son stated in an inquest in 2019: “We certainly got that wrong.”
Birmingham City Football Club season ticket holder Lynn Bennett (18) was killed in the Tavern In The Town. She was on a blind date with 21-year-old Stephen Whalley-Hunt who was also killed, both having met through NME’s lonely hearts club. Stephen’s mother wrote later, “Before I had Stephen, I had given birth to two other children, both of whom I lost at birth. So, when Stephen was born alive and well, my husband and I could not have been happier…it is just too difficult and painful for me to recall any memories I have, because it is too traumatic to remember.”
The British prime minister Harold Wilson, who had been in Dublin on the day of the Birmingham bombings for the funeral of Irish president Erskine Childers who had died suddenly on 17 November, appealed to people not to embark on a campaign of reprisals against the Irish community because of the Birmingham bombings.
His appeals went unheeded by some, with the Irish Centre in the city attacked, as were Catholic churches and schools. Irish workers were sent home. Irish customers were refused service. Most egregiously, six men were abominably treated by the British justice system who seemed hellbent on pinning the crimes to someone, regardless of whether they were guilty or not.
Most of the victims are unfamiliar to us today, certainly less so than the names of Hugh Callaghan, Paddy Hill, Gerry Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker. That is no fault of the so-called Birmingham Six, but of the way they were treated by British authorities from the moment five of them were arrested on their way to Ireland to James McDade’s funeral.
As investigative reporter and later Labour MP Chris Mullin, who did more than anyone for the Birmingham Six cause, meticulously explains in his book Error Of Judgement: The Birmingham Bombings And The Scandal That Shook Britain, the six men were brutally beaten, threatened, deprived of sleep and food, before false confessions were attained from some of them. They were failed by the police, by the judiciary and by politicians for years who kept the men in prison when it was increasingly clear all six men were innocent. They were finally released in 1991 after their convictions were quashed by the British Court of Appeal.
By wrongfully convicting innocent people, it has made it more difficult for the victims and their families to secure justice. It is a campaign that continues to this day through groups such as Justice For The 21 who are actively seeking a public inquiry to help ease the trauma they have endured over the last 50 years.
