War, Terrorism and the Guildford Four

I am house sitting for a friend at the moment and amazed to find a DVD called ‘In the Name of the Father’ which is based on the trial of the Guildford Four.  I find it interesting how information comes out of the blue.  I will provide some of my impressions after watching the film.  My first thoughts were the occupation of Northern Ireland and my quick comparisons of the British Armed Personnel carriers to the South African Armed vehicles to suppress apartheid.   I then saw the community against the army as they pursued young men who had been wrongly targeted by the military. They thought the young guy on a roof had a gun (sniper) when in fact he was getting wood and then dancing around with a piece of wood pretending to have an air guitar.  They ran for their lives when the British shot at them and they darted in and out of alley ways. The community came out and protected them by forming a inccrowd and confusing the British soldiers.  It made me recall my time in Kashmir where the Kashmiri people were occupied by the Indian soldiers for decades. The people are often under house arrest and the youth go out on the streets and protests through stone pelting. The Irish did the same, used stones. I thought of the Palestinians as the images flickered across the screen.  Then I wondered why were the British occupying Northern Ireland, what was the reason?  I just did a search and yahoo answers came up with this quick overview (not sure how accurate but it does have references) …

“It’s not as simple as that. Ireland was formally incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801 but had been a legislative province since the time of the Tudors; say the 1550s. Throughout the 19th century, there were moves to grant Ireland independence within the British Empire, similar to New Zealand and Australia. The problem lay in the quite clear geographical split between Roman Catholics (in the South of the island) and mainly Protestants (in the north). The issue hung on for nearly 50 years without a decision being taken in Westminster. In 1916, the Easter Rising in Ireland showed that the Catholics were serious about independence and were prepared to take any steps to achieve it. Now, 1916 was in the middle of the Great War and most British politicians were prepared to offer Irish people independence on condition that they helped defeat the German-Austrian enemy in Europe, through an acceptance of conscription. That was agreed, more or less, and some Irish politicians pressed the issue as soon as the war ended.in 1918. However, the British government prevaricated and further violence broke out in 1920-21. As a stop-gap, Ireland was partitioned into two states from December 1922. Northern Ireland, known as Ulster, was to remain under direct British rule. The Irish Free State was set up in the south, with its own interim government to bring together two warring factions (literally – they were shooting at each other) led by Arthur Griffiths and Michael Collins.   The Irish Free State continued as an autonomous province in the United Kingdom until 1937, when a new constitution was agreed and the southern part of the island became the Republic of Ireland, not linked to the British Empire or the later Commonwealth.  So Northern Ireland (Ulster) has been an elective division in the United Kingdom since 6 December 1922, and continues to be so with its majority of Protestant electors.”

Source:

It appears perspectives of god were seen as different rather than different colours from the same rainbow emerging from the one light.  You see this often with any religious conflict, people lose sight of the virtues that gave power to the religion.  

Other interesting issues from the film ‘In the Name of the Father’ was the fact that the anti-terrorism legislation had been enacted only days prior to the Guildford four being arrested.  What caught my attention was when there was a belief in war, the thought of terrorism arose given bombings were occurring in both Belfast and London, the war zone was in suburbs. I thought about the enacting of laws to restrict justice and freedom.   I noted that judicial process was suspended so police could incarcerate suspected terrorists and hold them for 7 days.  I thought of the ASIO Act in Australia during the Iraq war and the fact that suspected terrorists or sympathisers could be held without trial for 14 days.  Given that Australia was not experiencing direct conflict on its own soil but rather a proxy war in Iraq as an ally with the US, it seems interesting that it was deemed necessary here.  So the suspension of civil liberties was an issue I considered.  The enemy within, comes to mind. Justice and war are just not compatible it seems when the ends justifies the means.  I always think of Gandhi stating that the means is what justifies the ends.  Thus the means you take to solve a problem must be just in the first place in order to have a just outcome.  Another way of putting that is intent, if you have an objective then the intent will indicate the outcome, that is not just in the short term but in the longer term. You can see that play out with the British reneging on giving Irish independence after the war. They paid a price. In other words, it matters what your intent is.  I see that as defining the outcome.

The film highlighted that the Guildford four were picked up and interrogated through torture. They were forced to sign confessions. Gerry Conlon, whom the film was centred around was seen as the main culprit and the group were accused of being an elite group of the IRA (Irish Republican Army).  Both countries saw themselves at war and it was interesting when a nation or grouping is seen as the enemy, then even if innocent people are arrested, the perception is that they were guilty by being Irish.  In the court case the defence judge pointed out that one of his colleagues in the judiciary noticed him shake their hands and suggested he should wash them. Such is the nature of hatred, discrimination and group think.  

I remember here in Australia in 1981 when Lindy Chamberlain was charged with the murder of her baby daughter, Azaria. She claimed her daughter died because a dingo had taken then baby. There was disbelief in the media and the community about a dingo killing the baby, they preferred to believe she did it.  I recalled at the time how the public were quick to accuse her of murder, my gut feeling at the time was that she was innocent.  She was sent to jail and went through years of appeals. She had another child in jail. The pressure of the court system and this guilt hanging over her broke her marriage to her Pastor husband Michael. In the end she was acquitted.  So witch hunts can be easy when people just believe what others say and demonise the person they perceive as ‘bad’ or ‘evil’. It is easy to do. What if it was you? 

One part that was not detailed was how the Guildford four came to be reported to the police as suspected IRA terrorists. From the information in the film, it appears they had been set up by a British guy who resented Gerry Conlon fraternising with one of the women in the group house.  It was a house of hippies who had tossed out the rules and were into free love. They seemed an enlightened bunch (ha ha). The British guy who took an instant dislike of them from the moment they walked in, as as he noticed the woman he liked took a shine to Gerry.  He also resented they were Irish and he actually had gone to the police as an informant making out they were IRA, when they weren’t.  I wonder what happened to that guy. Is there follow up when a person deliberately accuses people of being terrorists under false pretences. I guess he got away with it. This is why justice must happen not be seen to happen. Another word for justice, a more accurate word is fairness. 

It was interesting to note in the film how they were demonised when considered guilty.  Not only did the Guildford four feel the hatred from the police, they experienced it then throughout the court case and finally when they were in jail.  It turns out that the actual bomber of the Guilford Hotel was arrested and he confessed to police that the Guildford four were innocent.  The most startling revelation was that the police knew before the trial they were innocent as Gerry Conlon and his friend Paul Hill had stated as their alibi that they were in a park the night of the bombing, as they had no money.  They met an old irish man Charles Burke on a park bench who had carved his name onto the back of it. He had been with them and knew they went to a hostel for the night. They mentioned to police that this man saw them. The police did in fact get a testimonial from this old man and then withheld it from the defence.  It was fascinating to see the prosecution make a case to prove that the Guildford four were guilty, when in fact they were innocent.  It turns out the police were corrupt and innocent people went to jail.  One policeman indicated they were Irish therefore guilty anyway.

I find myself turning to the wider issues of the British occupation and how the culture of violence was created.  I look at how religion was able to divide and call another religious group ‘protestant’ or ‘catholic’ as the ‘other’ or the ‘enemy’, or not like us.  I found it interesting to reflect on God and religion and the idea of love your neighbour, forgiveness and one of the most important ones – ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? ….  What we see in another is within ourselves is the point.  I marvel at how virtue and wisdom goes out the window in favour of group think and hatred.  It suggests religion is parroted (copied) but not deeply understood by many. I noted this with children I taught, who when asked about empathy said they knew it but could not understand it in their own lives, even though they had been taught at school.  We know it intellectually but it is clearly not felt and integrated as a life skill, that is, experiential education.  We graft onto ideals as conditioned thoughts but never really understand the depth of meaning. Thus, without ethics and values to hold people in alignment with love and truth, there is nothing to stop the violence.  Thus the violence starts, retribution becomes justice and then fighting escalates and the other becomes the ‘devil’ in the eyes of those harmed and violence spirals out of control.  I see this as the criticism, defence, attack and punishment paradigm of control.  We lose sight of our shared humanity and the power of conflict resolution and problem solving.  We see the power of discrimination (division) intensify when beliefs are unquestioned.   Violence begets violence in an endless cycle.  People have long memories and they suffer deeply at the loss of loved ones, it becomes part of the cultural story and if one sees history differently it can mean betrayal of some sort to the memory of those that died.  I can understand why people find it hard to forgive or look for the good, yet when we do, we start to change our feelings and then begin to imagine a new future emerge.  If only we were able to imagine through empathy what it must feel like to be the ‘other’ then perhaps we would find the sanity in the insanity of a war mindset transformed into peace and understanding.  

In this moment I think of Byron Katie and how she indicates all war should be put down on paper and all negative thoughts inquired into.  The Work is about establishing what is the truth, allowing our inner self to bring up our own answers.  We can’t necessarily know the truth of events that are bigger than us, but we can examine our negative thoughts and ask ourselves ‘is it true?’, ‘can we be absolutely sure that it is true’? ‘how do I feel how do I react when I believe the thought?’, ‘who would I be without the thought?’, ‘how would I treat people’?, ‘Can I find a stress free reason to keep the thought’? and then turn it around, that is try on your own judgement on yourself and reverse it.  I’ve done The Work and it is not comfortable to wear your own judgment (imagine the person you level it at).  Yet it takes courage to look for truth to find your negative thoughts are the enemy.  Thoughts are thoughts, people are not who you think they are, it is not possible to fully know another, we only hold our projection of who we think they are.  Yet when these thoughts are unquestioned we are absolutely sure we are right and we defend to the death our truth.  It is interesting we cannot surrender for the love of truth.  I am starting to undo my own prejudicial thoughts, my own erroneous judgements and slowly I am becoming more peaceful as I start to accept a world is happening as it is, in reality, yes I may want it to be different, in my case more loving, but at times it isn’t.  So why fight what is, why not create a future based on positive thoughts today and watch them manifest into the future.  When I chose to study peace, instead of protesting I chose to create peace education.  When I thought of what peace really meant, I realised the clown was the perfect archetype as it represented unconditional love and fun (light heartedness).  It was innocent like a child. As a clown I was able to see only through the eyes of love and saw all people as my family.  It completely changed the way I saw life.  I saw happiness as the goal rather than being right or better than someone else.  It has been a powerful experience in my life.  So now I am working on clearing war from within myself now and starting to question my thoughts.  I still have a ways to go to undo the conditioning, but at the very least, I am aware, and that is the beginning of peace. For me, this is the real peace process that finds resolution as the experience of love and happiness.  I send to the British and Irish people love and happiness and may they find empathy in standing in the shoes of the other.  To extend the hands of friendship and real resolution to past conflicts.  Most of all, I send them inner peace.

Here is an overview by Wikipedia.

The Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven were the collective names of two groups of people whose convictions in English courts in 1975 and 1976 for the Guildford pub bombings of 5 October 1974 were eventually quashed after long campaigns for justice. The Guildford Four were convicted of bombings carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the Maguire Seven were convicted of handling explosives found during the investigation into the bombings. Both groups’ convictions were eventually declared “incorrect and unsatisfactory”^[1] and reversed in 1989 and 1991 respectively after they had served 15-16 years in prison. Members of both groups were not compensated for these years in prison.^[2]

Contents

Guildford Four[edit]

The Guildford Four were charged with direct involvement with the IRA attacks. They were:

After their arrest, all four defendants confessed to the bombing under intense amount of coercion by the police.^{[citation needed]} These statements were later retracted, but nonetheless formed the basis of the case against them. They would later be alleged to be the result of coercion by the police, ranging from intimidation to torture—including threats against family members—as well as the effects of drug withdrawal.^[3] Conlon argues in his autobiography that a key factor in his purportedly coerced confession was the fact that strengthened anti-terrorism laws passed in the early 1970s allowed the police to hold suspects without charges for up to a week, rather than the previous limit of 48 hours, and that he might have been able to withstand the treatment he had received had the original time limit been in effect.^[4]

They were convicted in October 1975 for murder and other charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment, mandatory for adults convicted of murder. Richardson, a minor at the time of the bombings, received an indeterminate At Her Majesty’s Pleasure sentence for murder, but a life sentence for conspiracy. Mr Justice Donaldson, who also presided over the Maguire Seven trial, expressed regret that the Four had not been charged with treason, which then still had a mandatory death penalty.^{[citation needed]} At the time, the normal practice was for judges to be consulted by the Home Secretary when considering release from a life sentence, rather than giving a tariff at trial, but the judge, believing he might be dead by the time they were released, recommended 30 years for Conlon, 35 for Armstrong and until “great age” for Hill.

There was never any evidence that any of “The Four” had been involved with the Provisional IRA. Furthermore, they did not “fit the bill” in terms of lifestyle. Paddy Armstrong and Carole Richardson, an Englishwoman, lived in a squat, and were involved with drugs and petty crime.^{[citation needed]} Conlon likewise asserts at several points in his autobiography that the IRA would not have taken him due to his record for shoplifting and other petty crimes, and that he had, in fact, been expelled from Fianna Eireann, a Republican youth organisation with strong ties to the Provisional IRA.^[4] Paul Michael Hill was born and raised in Belfast in a mixed-religion marriage and as a boy he participated in the widespread rioting at the time.^[5]

Alibis[edit]

On the night of the attacks, Richardson was in London seeing the band Jack the Lad at the South Bank Polytechnic. She was unable to recall this upon being arrested, but witnesses came forward. However, the prosecution put together a version of events in which she left for Guildford at high speed by car. Hill and Armstrong also presented alibis, Hill’s placing him at Southampton. A witness named Charles Burke placed Conlon at a London hostel, but his evidence was not presented at trial.

Maguire Seven[edit]

The Maguire Seven were charged with possessing nitroglycerine allegedly passed to the IRA to make bombs after the police raided the West Kilburn house of Anne Maguire on 3 December 1974.

They were tried and convicted on 4 March 1976 and received the following sentences:

Giuseppe Conlon had travelled from Belfast to help his son, Gerry Conlon, in the Guildford Four trial. Conlon, who had troubles with his lungs for many years, died in prison in January 1980, while the other six served their sentences and were released.

Appeals[edit]

Both the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven unsuccessfully sought leave to appeal their convictions immediately. Despite this, a growing body of disparate groups pressed for a re-examination of the case.

In February 1977, during the trial of the Balcombe Street ASU, the four IRA men instructed their lawyers to “draw attention to the fact that four totally innocent people were serving massive sentences”, referring to the Guildford Four.^[6]Despite claims to the police that they were responsible ^[6] they were never charged with these offences, and the Guildford Four remained in prison for another twelve years.

The Guildford Four tried to obtain from the Home Secretary a reference to the Court of Appeal under Section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 (later repealed), but were unsuccessful. In 1987, the Home Office issued a memorandum recognising that it was unlikely they were terrorists, but that this would not be sufficient evidence for appeal.^{[citation needed]}

Quashing of the Guildford verdict[edit]

In 1989, a detective looking at the case found typed notes from Patrick Armstrong’s police interviews, which had been heavily edited. Deletions and additions had been made, and the notes had been rearranged. These notes, and their amendments, were consistent with hand-written and typed notes presented at the trial, which suggested that the hand-written notes were made after the interviews had been conducted. This implied that the police had manipulated the notes to fit with the case they wanted to present.

An appeal was granted on the basis of this new evidence. Lord Gifford QC represented Paul Hill, and others were represented by human rights solicitor, Gareth Peirce. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, said that the police typescripts were either a “fabrication by the police from start to finish, invented by some fertile Constabulary mind” or a “contemporaneous manuscript note … reduced into typewritten form [and] then amended here and there in order to improve it; and, finally … reconverted into manuscript by the various Surrey officers involved so that it could be produced as a contemporaneous note”.^[7]

Either way, the police had lied, and the conclusion was that if they had lied about this, the entire evidence of the police was unreliable. The Four were released on 19 October 1989, after having their convictions quashed. Fifteen years had passed since their arrests,

Paul Hill had also been convicted of the murder of a British soldier, Brian Shaw, based on his confession while in the custody of Surrey Police. He was released on bail, pending his appeal against this conviction. In 1994, the Her Majesty’s Court of Appeal in Belfast quashed Hill’s conviction for Brian Shaw’s murder.

Quashing of the Maguire verdicts[edit]

On 12 July 1990, the Home Secretary David Waddington published the Interim Report on the Maguire Case: The Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the convictions arising out of the bomb attacks in Guildford and Woolwich in 1974,^[8] which criticised the trial judge Mr Justice Donaldson and unearthed improprieties in the handling of scientific evidence and declared the convictions unsound recommending referral back to the Court of Appeal. The report “strongly criticise[d] the decision by the prosecution at the Guildford trial not to disclose to the defence a statement supporting Mr Conlon’s alibi.”^[9]

The convictions of the Maguire Seven were quashed in 1991. The court held that members of the London Metropolitan Police beat some of the Seven into confessing to the crimes and withheld information that would have cleared them.^[10]

Aftermath[edit]

Neither the bombings nor the wrongful imprisonment resulted in convictions. The bombings were most likely the work of the Balcombe Street Siege gang, who claimed responsibility. They were already serving life sentences, but were released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Three British police officers—Thomas Style, John Donaldson, and Vernon Attwell—were charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice,^[11] but they were each found not guilty.

On 9 February 2005, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair issued an apology to the families of the 11 people imprisoned for the bombings in Guildford and Woolwich, and those related to them who were still alive, by saying, in part: “I am very sorry that they were subject to such an ordeal and injustice… they deserve to be completely and publicly exonerated.”^[12]

Paul Hill married Courtney Kennedy, daughter of assassinated American senator Robert F. Kennedy, and niece of assassinated president John F. Kennedy, although they have subsequently separated.^[13] He has had a televised meeting with the brother of Brian Shaw, who continued to accuse him,^[14] and has travelled to Colombia to attend the trial of the Colombia Three.^[15]

Gerry Conlon’s autobiography Proved Innocent was adapted into the Oscar and BAFTA Award-nominated 1993 drama In the Name of the Father, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Emma Thompson, and Pete Postlethwaite. The film depicts Conlon’s attempt to rebuild his shattered relationship with his father, but is partly fictional: for example, Conlon never shared a cell with his father. He is reported to have settled with the government for a final payment of compensation in the region of £500,000.^[1] His mother Sarah Conlon, who had spent 16 years campaigning to have the names of her husband and son cleared and helped secure the apology, died on 20 July 2008.^[16] Conlon has given support to Tommy Sheridan in relation to the charges brought against him.^[17] He has been reported to have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and had involvement with drugs in the aftermath of his release.^[18]

Paddy Armstrong had difficulty with drinking and gambling. He later married and moved to Dublin.^[18]

Carole Richardson married and had a daughter soon after her release. She has kept out of the public eye since then.^[18]

The autobiography of the youngest member of the Maguire Seven, Patrick Maguire, My Father’s Watch: The Story of a Child Prisoner in 70s Britain was released in May 2008. It tells his story before, during, and after his imprisonment, and its impact on his life and the lives of his family.^[19]

See also[edit]

• Birmingham Six
• “Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six,” a song by The Pogues in support of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Life for a life sentences to warn the IRA – A report on the sentencing phase of the original trial, The Guardian, October 23, 1975
• Miscarriages of justice
• Summary of the cases from the BBC
• Justice:Denied’s review of the book and movie version of In the Name of the Father
• Background to the Irish cases