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The Reunion

Factual: Life Stories

Series which reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history

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The Reunion: Birmingham Six

13/09/2015

Birmingham Six

BBC Radio 4 - The Reunion, Birmingham Six

Sue MacGregor's guests remember the campaign to free the Birmingham Six.

Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six joins three people who campaigned to free them and the brother of one of the victims of the IRA bombs they were convicted of planting.

The release of the Birmingham Six in 1991 was a landmark in British legal history. The six men had been convicted of bombing two Birmingham pubs in November 1974, killing 21 people in what was then the worst IRA attack on British soil.

But the Six always protested their innocence and their supporters spent 16 years campaigning for their release before the evidence against them was shown to be unreliable and their convictions quashed.

It had been a long hard struggle. In the early years the men and their families wrote to everyone they could think of, appealing for help: politicians, trades unions, church leaders and human rights organisations. Breda Power, whose father Billy was one of the men convicted, tells Sue MacGregor that at first no-one wanted to listen. For many years, they had the door continually shut in their face. Ann Farrell, daughter of Richard McIlkenny, another of the Six, says: "When you know that someone you love is in prison for something they haven't done, you never give up, no matter how hard it is".

Paddy Hill was one of the most vocal of the Birmingham Six in protesting his innocence, and eventually one of his letters was published in the left wing journal, Tribune. Chris Mullin, then a journalist, and later an MP, tells Sue MacGregor why he published the letter, and how he went on to investigate the case.

Also joining Sue is Brian Hambleton whose sister Maxine was killed in the Birmingham bombs and who is still campaigning to bring the real bombers to justice.

Producer: Deborah Dudgeon
Series Producer: David Prest

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

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