Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

Oral evidence: Administrative scheme for “on-the-runs”, HC 177
Wednesday 9 July 2014

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 9 July 2014.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Mr Laurence Robertson (Chair); Mr Joe Benton; Oliver Colvile; Mr Stephen Hepburn; Lady Sylvia Hermon; Kate Hoey; Naomi Long; Jack Lopresti; Dr Alasdair McDonnell; Nigel Mills; Ian Paisley; Andrew Percy; David Simpson.

Questions 2251-2319

Witnesses: Cat Wilkinson and Michael Gallagher, Omagh Support and Self Help Group, gave evidence.

Q2251   Chair: Mr Gallagher and Ms Wilkinson, you are very welcome.  Thank you very much for joining us.  As you know, we are conducting an inquiry into the so‑called administrative scheme for on-the-runs.  We have taken quite a bit of evidence so far.  One thing we have been very determined to do is to take the views of victims and victims’ groups and relatives of victims, so we are particularly pleased that you are able to join us to discuss this issue today.  We have met a number of times, particularly with Mr Gallagher, but it might be useful for this Committee, and as this is a public hearing, if you could perhaps just briefly outline the work of your group and then we can go from there.  Just very briefly, though, please.

Michael Gallagher: I have got something written here, Chairman, and if I could just read it out it will probably explain.

Chair: Yes, sure. 

Michael Gallagher: First of all, good afternoon, Chairman.  We are grateful for the opportunity to give evidence to the Committee on this important issue.  The organisation that we represent is the Omagh Support and Self Help Group, in short the Omagh Bomb Victims Group. 

If I could first outline my moral authority to speak on this subject, my name is Michael Gallagher.  I am accompanied by Cat Wilkinson, who is my youngest daughter.  I lived through the Troubles and experienced many terrorist acts.  In 1973, two weeks before Christmas, our home was destroyed by an IRA bomb attack on the police station in Omagh.  We were also caught up in a number of cross-border incidents.  On 3 June 1984, my youngest brother, Hugh, was assassinated by the IRA.  His killers have never been caught.  He was 26 years old and married, with two children aged three and five.  On 15 August 1998, our only son, Aidan, died in the bombing of Omagh town centre.  His killers have never been caught.  Over the past 16 years I have been involved with the victims and victim-related issues.  We would like to share our members’ views, concerns and observations about the OTRs and the contrasting treatment shown to terror victims. 

As for the OTRs, I am not in the least interested in their politics.  I am concerned about truth, justice and dignity for those who have suffered.  By sending letters of assurance, the possibility of justice is denied to many victims and their basic human rights have been ignored.  We represent some very unhappy people who put their faith in Parliament, politicians, police and the legal system.  There seems to be no accountability mechanism working that stops politicians from ignoring the wishes of Parliament. 

I would like to draw your attention briefly to another type of OTR and how a European country such as Germany deals with criminals regardless of time.  If we now look at the case of Johann Breyer, an 89-year-old who lives in Philadelphia, USA, a former death camp guard who worked at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, between May 1944 and October 1944, the German Government has started extradition proceedings to have this man returned and face his past crimes.  The families of his victims have called for speedy extradition.  “The German court has to find late justice for the crimes of Breyer and for the victims and their sons and daughters… It is late, but not too late.”  The families have said, “Germany deserves credit for doing this—for extending and expanding their efforts and, in a sense, making a final attempt to maximise the prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators”.  This report appeared in the Irish News dated 20 June 2014, 70 years after the event.

I will now draw your attention to a report in the Sunday Mirror dated 8 October 2000, in which Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the Chief Constable, admitted to the Police Authority “that a list of 41 wanted Republicans did exist even though the NIO had denied it...Two weeks later, Secretary of State Peter Mandelson announced an ‘amnesty’ to 21 of the wanted suspects on the list. …‘The police is tasked with upholding the rule of law, not civil servants,’ said a source.”  This report appeared 30 months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, yet Germany is prosecuting a criminal 70 years after the event. 

It appears the Government were willing to do anything to placate the terrorist to the detriment of the victim.  This Committee has listened to former Government Ministers from the Blair Government.  We have heard excuses such as, “It was not a secret or an amnesty”, and we need to accept that it was deceitful and dishonest.  The truth is we were never expected to know about this had the Downey case not come to light.  We are asking for your help and support to hold those politicians to account for the untold damage they have done to victims and survivors by deceit and compounding their grief.  The sad thing is that many of them have now moved on to the House of Lords and are enjoying the privileges that go with that lifestyle.  We again thank you for listening to the voice of the victims.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed.  That was a very useful opening statement for us.  Thank you. 

Michael Gallagher: I do have the statement here and the supporting articles that are referred to, for reference.

Chair: Thank you very much. 

Q2252   David Simpson: You are very welcome, Michael and Cat.  Michael, we have met a number of times; it is my first time meeting your daughter.  I think everyone round the table will acknowledge certainly the impact that this whole campaign has had on you and other families that have been involved in it and the horrendous circumstances and the trauma that it has caused.  You have fought a very long and hard campaign, all of you, and you deserve credit for that.  I know maybe you have touched on it in your opening comments, but in speaking to other victims within your group, what was the reaction from those folk whenever you discovered that the scheme was in operation from 1999?

Michael Gallagher: When there was talk about putting this legislation through Parliament in 2005, I was very vocal in opposing this legislation, as were other victims.  I cannot speak for all of the victims, but I think the majority of victims who suffered from terrorism believed that the Government had parked, if you like, that legislation and we did not hear any more about it, as I have alluded to in the opening statement, until we learned about the Downey case. 

Q2253   David Simpson: That was the first time you knew of anything. 

Michael Gallagher: Absolutely.  We did not know this process was carrying on at all.  We elect our MPs to go and create laws in this building, but what we saw was, when the law was unpassable, when all the political parties in Northern Ireland except Sinn Fein disapproved of this law, the Government then went about trying to circumvent Parliament and get this legislation in through a backdoor mechanism.  It was pretty earth-shattering for the victims.

Q2254   David Simpson: Just briefly, because I know others will want to come in on a number of points, in talking to your colleagues within your group and maybe other victims’ groups, because of what has happened with the OTR scheme, do your colleagues believe that you have been denied justice?

Michael Gallagher: Absolutely.  Although we are here representing an organisation called the Omagh Bomb Victims Group, our members are quite extensive.  We have many members—many people who have family who have died in the security forces.  We are not engaged in any party-political politics; we accept everybody that comes through the door regardless.  The feeling was just being let down—just saddened that the Government have chosen to put the terrorists first and the victims second.  We all accept that people are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but it must have been earth-shattering for the families of those four young guardsmen who died to know that that was the end of the case, basically.  The Metropolitan Police believed that this man—we do not know what the outcome would have been—had charges to answer and they expected that to happen.  That is the end of it.  There are many other victims in Northern Ireland who feel the same.  We do not even today know the extent of the involvement of the people who have received the pardons and who have been given the letters.  Cat has got a particular concern about the Omagh bomb.

Cat Wilkinson: Mr Simpson, I just wanted to clarify something that you said in your opening remarks.  You said that it started in 1999.  Is that correct?

David Simpson: Yes.  We understand that the process and the administrative scheme was started in 1999.

Cat Wilkinson: Okay.  The information I have here is that the OTR issue, according to the Downey judgment[1], was first fully addressed in July 1998, which would have been prior to the Omagh bomb.  That is paragraph 8 of the judgment.  So, there was talk before the Omagh bomb—because I know you might not think that we would be affected by that. 

David Simpson: Yes.

Cat Wilkinson: I just have a wee question here.  In the Northern Ireland Office communication between the Right Honourable Lord Irvine of Lairg QC and Mr John Reid dated 14 May 2002[2], possible frameworks to deal with the on-the-runs by introducing an arrangement are set out in detail.  Could the Committee consider if the setting-up of this scheme impacted on the investigation into the Omagh bombing?  Could the Committee confirm whether or not the OTR scheme was extended to members of the RUC/PSNI who may have failed to act and who may have subsequently engaged in a diversionary process amounting to a cover-up of their failings as a result of the OTR scheme, allowing the perpetrators to escape arrest in the immediate aftermath?

Chair: We will have to take that one as a question that we can consider when we take further evidence, and it may be we have covered some of it already, but we will move on to that during the process of the inquiry.  Thank you.

David Simpson: Yes.  Thank you very much. 

Q2255   Lady Hermon: It is very good to see you again, Michael, and to meet your daughter here this afternoon.  Just to follow on from Cat’s question, speaking only for myself, it is my clear understanding from the evidence that we have received and the documents that we have read, in conjunction with the Downey case, that the OTR scheme was requested by the President of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, for the exclusive use—I do mean exclusive use—of Republicans who were on the run. 

David Simpson: That is right.

Lady Hermon: We have asked as recently as last week the Attorney-General’s Office, who know the recipients of the 228 letters, to confirm to us that it was a scheme used exclusively by Republicans and no one else had access to it.  That will be confirmed to us by the Attorney-General’s Office.  Perhaps when we have that information and are free to publish it, we would, with the Chairman’s permission and the Committee’s permission, extend that to you as well.

Michael Gallagher: Our concern is that the Government has set a precedent here.  Whilst we accept that Sinn Fein and the IRA have ceased, there is another kind of IRA that has not ceased.  Sadly that is why we are here today.  The worry for the families is if these people kill enough, will the Government say, “We have to talk to them” and will we then be in the same position as the families that are affected by the on-the-runs?  That is a major concern: that Government will cave in.  We accept these are difficult issues for the Government.  The Government has an obligation to try to bring law and order; they do have to talk to some people that we do not particularly like to talk to, but for us due process here has been ignored and our feeling is: if it happened once, could it happen again? 

I notice the language over the years has changed.  At the beginning of the Troubles, these people, whether they were Loyalists or Republicans, were called “terrorists”, then they were called “combatants”, and then, after the Good Friday Agreement, the lot that decided to carry on killing were called “dissidents”.  I am old enough to remember that people in the Soviet Union who spoke against the Government there were called “dissidents”.  Language is something that we seem to use when it suits us.  But that is our major concern: that a future Government will say, “Well, the Blair Government engaged in that, so it is quite legitimate for us to engage with the Real IRA” or whatever they want to call themselves at that time.

Q2256   Lady Hermon: That is a really important lesson for all Governments of all shades and complexions to understand; precisely.  I have noted down a few questions here.  Just following on from the point that Cat made and your response, Michael, are there people within your group—in fact, perhaps you yourselves—who have reason to believe that those who were responsible for the horrendous bombing in Omagh, in which 29 people, including two unborn children, were murdered, may have received OTR letters?  Is that a concern for you or for the members of your group?

Michael Gallagher: It is obviously a concern, but we have to look at the facts here.  When we have seen somebody of the standing of Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter say that the people who bombed Omagh should have been caught before the Omagh bomb, these are issues that concern us, because nobody in an official capacity has said to Norman Baxter, “What exactly did you mean?  Who knew what and when?”  Omagh is a very big can of worms.  I know we have talked about this before.  It is not just the British Government but also the Irish Government and the American Government that are involved here; all of these people are involved in cementing the peace process.  The current Prime Minister said less than a fortnight ago in relation to this particular case that we are dealing with that he did not want to “unpick” the Good Friday Agreement.  It concerns me that politicians are sometimes engaged where police and the prosecutor should be engaged.  The politicians are here to make good law and the police are there to make sure that law is carried out, but there has been a crossover there sometimes.

Q2257   Lady Hermon: You cannot see my handwriting from where you are sitting, but that leads me into the very next question.  You will probably know, if you have been following the evidence sessions with the Committee here, that when we had the very recently retired Chief Constable, Matt Baggott, and ACC Drew Harris in front of us[3], they explained to us that they had already commenced Operation Redfield with 19 senior investigators to review every single recipient—that means the 228 recipients—of the OTR letters.  Have you and other members of the group—and Cat, of course—sought a meeting with the new Chief Constable, George Hamilton, perhaps to discuss the remit of Operation Redfield and whether it could address some of the concerns that you have articulated here this afternoon?

Michael Gallagher: I am very grateful for the question, because I can show you correspondence over a two-year period where I have tried to have a meeting with the previous Chief Constable, Matt Baggott, to discuss a wide range of issues around the Omagh bomb, but the Chief Constable has repeatedly refused to meet us.  He cites the reason that the Police Ombudsman is carrying out an inquiry, which originated from the last Northern Ireland Affairs Committee involvement in looking at the Omagh bomb.  That report is imminent—really any of these weeks we should have that report.  But you are quite right; it is something that we will pursue.

Q2258   Lady Hermon: Perhaps after you have received that report, when you have got a new Chief Constable with a new attitude and the report of the Ombudsman already published, that might be an opportune moment to ask him about Operation Redfield.

Michael Gallagher: Absolutely.  Regardless of what we say here and what has happened to all of us in the past, we fully support the police and we fully support the intelligence service.  We have issues; these are well-founded and well-documented and with solid evidence.  The issues need to be dealt with.  At the moment I am engaged in a legal process to try to get the Secretary of State to overturn her decision not to have a public inquiry into Omagh.  We will always be on the side of law and order—that is where we sit in this—and we will diametrically be opposed to terrorism, wherever that terrorism is coming from.

Q2259   Ian Paisley: I just want to add my voice of welcome to you and thanks to you, Michael and Cat, for coming to the Committee today.  It is very beneficial for us to hear real voices about the effects of Government stupidity and Government wrongdoing, and I thank you for coming.  Can I ask you, Michael, about your brother, Hugh?  Hugh was murdered by the Provisional IRA, I believe.

Michael Gallagher: Yes.

Ian Paisley: I think you said that no one was ever held accountable or amenable for that serious and awful crime on your family.  Do you think his murderers have got one of these letters?  Is that your suspicion as well? 

Michael Gallagher: Just to give a bit more background, Hugh had been a member of the security forces and the Provisional IRA had a particular policy of murdering Catholics who joined the security forces.  That was really the cause of his death.  The culture and climate in Northern Ireland has been—and the people from Northern Ireland will understand this very well—that when there is a murder, somebody will immediately say, “I know who did that”, but we do not have the burden of evidence that is needed in a court of law.  In my brother’s case, I have been told that the people who were responsible for his death in that area and also the deaths of a number of other security force members themselves became victims of the Troubles.  We have no way of verifying that whatsoever. 

I met with the HET, because it was that period when they had worked up to 1984.  We met with them.  They gave us some detail.  Some of the detail was contradictory to what we understood the situation was, and some of the information that I had, when I told them, they had never heard of before.  That was the only meeting we had.  The HET then was stood down because there was a report that said that they were looking favourably on deaths that were caused by the security forces as opposed to civilians.  As far as I know, the HET is not up and running yet, but we had an initial meeting with the HET.  They shared some information, which we were grateful for, but it was alarming to know that some of the things that we were told they did not know about.  We are trying to work through that, but my mother and father have since passed away at early ages, and I am sure Hugh’s death had a great impact on them, as it does on all of us. 

Ian Paisley: I am sure it did.  Absolutely. 

Michael Gallagher: I am very grateful for the words that you have said.  The victims are the people who have to pay the price.  We have paid the price for peace.  It was agreed that these people would only serve if two years and yet they were not even willing to serve two years; they wanted scot-free.  From a victim’s point of view, that is galling and very difficult to deal with, particularly after what we had to deal with.  When our son died, he was 21, and when we made a claim for compensation we had to go through a process—a very degrading process—where a forensic accountant looked at what his income and what his outgoings were.  They were actually acting like loss adjustors.  You would not buy a second‑hand car for what we got for the death of Aidan.  Money is not an issue, but when we read the Downey report and look at the expense that the Government has gone to to try to make sure that people who have caused some of the most horrendous crimes in Western Europe can walk away scot-free, there is something morally wrong about that. 

Q2260   Ian Paisley: Thank you for that, Michael.  It is my impression that whenever this OTR fiasco was revealed post the Downey judgment, the instant reaction of a number of victims was, “Oh, I wonder if the person who murdered my loved one got one of those letters”.  Am I right to have that assumption or is that naïve of me?

Michael Gallagher: Absolutely.  The question is: how widespread was this practice?  How many other people are walking about with this letter?  I can think of a number of lovely people who lost their families down through the years.  They are wondering, “Have these people got this letter?  Are we never going to get justice?”  What you are taking away from the victim is hope.  We still have hope, even though it is 40 years, even though it is 16 years.  Why do you want to let these people off the hook?  I want to make sure that they are looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.  Why would you give them a letter and say, “You can go now and enjoy yourself and get on with your life”?

Q2261   Ian Paisley: Do you agree with me, then, that it is in the public interest that we get to see and know as much about this scheme and who is involved in it as is possible?

Michael Gallagher: I would go further than that.  I believe that the agents of the Government who were responsible for putting this together should have to face some sort of sanction for doing this.  We all talk about human rights.  This is the most basic denial of human rights that victims can get: the denial of justice.

Q2262   Ian Paisley: I can piece together part of the answer to my final question from what you have already said to me, Michael, but I want to give you the opportunity to express it.  What would you like the outcome of this Committee report to be?

Michael Gallagher: As I said earlier, it is important that the people who tried to circumvent legislation in this House are exposed.  There should be some sort of sanction on them.  There should be some sort of rule that when people commit murder, as I have indicated in the opening speech, like Germany, regardless of the time—because it is a deterrent issue as much as anything else.  The people who are currently murdering in our country see that the Government is weak and willing to bend: “If we kill enough people, they will talk to us and we will get what we want”.  Ronan Kerr was murdered in March 2011: in our time, a young policeman going on duty; a decent human being wanting to serve the community.  A bomb was put under his car.  There is no real justice for Ronan Kerr and his family.  We have seen David Black, a prison officer—a very difficult job in our society; not many people would want to take it on.  He left his family every day and he did his work, and yet two weeks ago the only person who was in custody in connection with his murder was released.  We see terrorists murder at will and get away with it.  It certainly does not restore public confidence in the justice system. 

Cat Wilkinson: Can I just add to that, if you don’t mind?  I just want to say that I think it is about building confidence again in the statutory bodies.  Reading the Downey judgment, it gives you no confidence in the police service.  That is why we changed to the PSNI.  To read that the constable that was investigating the Omagh bomb was involved in not giving proper and accurate information in regards to the Downey case to get the letter just blows you out of the water.  You do put your faith in these services and if they are not working properly there needs to be openness and accountability and it needs to be looked at again, because the confidence in the community has really gone. 

Lady Hermon: Can I just interject and correct one little minor point that again has been revealed to us in evidence?  That is that the letter that was issued by ACC Sheridan from PSNI headquarters, unbeknownst to him, was altered by the Northern Ireland Office.  The gentleman from the Northern Ireland Office is mentioned in the Downey judgment.  That alteration by an official in the Northern Ireland Office appears not to have been revealed in the Old Bailey before the judgment was made.  I just have to put that on the record. 

Cat Wilkinson: Okay.  Again, that would be accountability as well; we would want to see that person brought to account for changing those things. 

Lady Hermon: I agree entirely. 

Chair: We have a bit more to find out on that issue yet.

Lady Hermon: Yes, we do.

Q2263   Dr McDonnell: To some extent the question that I was going to ask has just been asked.  Maybe I will ask it again and draw you out further.  What can the Committee do to help your group?  What would you like the Committee to do further, or to test out further, about on-the-runs?  If we could think through just the next steps that you would like to see happen, you have discussed the generalisation of you want to see justice and you want to see honesty and all the rest, but is there anything practical in this inquiry that we can strengthen or reinforce to bring some comfort to the Omagh group?

Michael Gallagher: When we met the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, that was one of the questions that Victor Barker, whose 12-year-old son James died in the bomb, asked him.  We did not know about the OTR issue but we knew about the Good Friday Agreement and the privileges that the prisoners were granted as a result of that.  My wife and our three children went and voted for the Good Friday Agreement and we felt that any sane person wanted peace.  Looking at it now, it is difficult, because had I the right to put an X down to release the murderer of another woman’s husband or another woman’s son?  Victor’s point was: “Will these people be given any privileges?”  The Prime Minister said, “No”.  There should be some sort of law that if you commit murder and the case is proven against you, you serve the time unless there is some particular reason for a royal pardon.  That is an isolated incident.  Sean O’Callaghan was granted a royal pardon and I was always told that Sean O’Callaghan was the only person—that is how it was told to me—ever to receive a royal pardon.  His evidence, or his intelligence, if you like, helped save some members of the royal family and he gave a valuable insight into the workings of the Provisional IRA and therefore helped to bring that conflict, if you call it a conflict, to an end.  I just feel that there should be some reassurance after all of this given to the people that there will be no future amnesties.  You can dress this up in whatever words you want to use—whatever the terms that they can use to make it maybe not as stark.  For me, that is important.

Q2264   Dr McDonnell: Part of what we are doing here is opening this up and opening it out to the point where such an amnesty in the future would be very difficult, but would that satisfy you, if that was the only thing coming out of this report?

Michael Gallagher: That would be a very positive and reassuring thing to the victims—that there will be no more amnesties, or no more comfort letters or whatever phrase you want to use.  The weight of evidence needed to bring somebody in a criminal prosecution is pretty high.  If they are convicted, then they should serve the sentence; there should not be any political concessions made.  We thought we made our political concession when the gates were thrown open and 350 prisoners, both Republicans and Loyalists, who were properly convicted—they were not political prisoners; they were people convicted in a court of law with proper evidence—were released in the interests of the Good Friday Agreement, for the greater good of us all.  Yet that still did not satisfy those who were engaged in that horrendous period of violence.  They wanted the people who broke out of jail or the people who managed to get out of the reach of the authorities to get a clean slate and carry on with their lives, and I think that is wrong; it is morally wrong. 

Q2265   Jack Lopresti: Michael and Cat, thank you for coming.  We have heard previous witnesses in this inquiry say, “You should not look at this scheme—or these letters in particular—in isolation.  You have got to view it within the context of the ongoing peace process.”  What would your response to that be?

Michael Gallagher: My response is quite a simple response, really.  This was a very one-sided agreement.  I am talking about, as you say, the cocktail of issues that both Governments had to deal with.  There was one missing element that was not there, and that was the victims.  The victims were never considered until after the event.  There should be lessons for other countries that go through a similar process.  Once those hostilities, conflicts, terrorism—whatever you want to call it—end, the victim feels that the shackles are lifted from them and they can speak then.  After the Good Friday Agreement, we have seen a mushrooming of victims’ groups and individuals who are prepared to stand up and speak because they are no longer under the same threat as they had been.  I think the victims should have been introduced.  The paramilitaries had their representatives at the table and, if you read the documents, as I have, you will see it is quite clear that they have been very progressive in pushing their own agenda, but nobody was pushing the agenda of the victims.  For me, that was the missing element. 

Q2266   Oliver Colvile: Thank you very much indeed for coming.  You have my heartfelt condolences for what you all went through.  When was the first you knew that there was a special scheme to try to let these people off?

Michael Gallagher: As I said earlier, the Government had decided to try to put legislation through in 2005.  At that time, I was very vocal, along with a number of others, because we felt it was wrong.  We thought that died a death then.  As I said earlier, the first time we realised that there were comfort letters, get-out-of-jail cards or whatever you want to call them issued to people who were involved in terrorism was after the Downey case.  We had absolutely no idea prior to that whatsoever. 

Q2267   Oliver Colvile: Forgive me.  On 19 May 2013, Downey arrived back in this country at Gatwick Airport.  He was arrested by the police and he said, “I do not know what you are talking about, because I have got these letters from the police”.  Did that register with you at all?

Michael Gallagher: That was the first time I heard the man’s name—Downey.  Obviously I very much remember the attack on the guards in Hyde Park.  It was good news that they had got somebody for that crime, but then there was talk of, “He has got a letter that the Government have given him saying that he is immune from prosecution”.

Q2268   Oliver Colvile: So you were aware of that letter when Downey came back into the country. 

Michael Gallagher: Only through the media at that time.

Q2269   Oliver Colvile: That is interesting to know.  Did that set any bells ringing inside you?  Did you suddenly think, “Oi oi.  This guy has got a letter, so we had better find out what is actually going on”?  Did you then contact anybody to say, “What does this letter mean?”

Michael Gallagher: To be honest, I did not contact anybody at all.  I was just so shell‑shocked that the Metropolitan Police had what they believed was good evidence—whether it proved to be or not we will never know now—to then read through the judgment and learn how things panned out.  I do not know if you know the circumstances of how Downey actually got off the hook in this.  He was described by the PSNI as not an on-the-run because he was living in the Republic of Ireland.  Even though Sinn Fein gave his name on a list, the police officer, who I know personally, in the PSNI wrote in his report that “Downey is not on the run; he is actually living in his own community.”  What strikes me is: why would Sinn Fein have given his name if they believed he was an on-the-run and yet a PSNI officer is saying, “Well, actually, he is not an on-the-run”?

Q2270   Oliver Colvile: My suspicion as to what happened is that Sinn Fein ended up by putting the names in; as I understand it, the PSNI drafted a first letter; when they were asked as to whether or not he was required anywhere else in the country they looked at it but they did not say what the result was either one way or the other.  I think it is an amazing muck-up, if I am quite frank and honest with you.  I am curious to know whether or not you were aware, because there are one or two people who were in very senior positions who were involved in this who, when I have said, “Excuse me, but what happened on 19 May 2013?” have said, “We know nothing about any of that”, and it rather passed them by.  I am very surprised that something that was obviously quite so important was something that was rather forgotten about.

Michael Gallagher: Yes.  These were very senior police officers.  They should have been professional and proficient in what they did.  But when they called the operation “Rapid”, that says it all to me.  It is saying, “We have got to work through this process as quick as we can”.  Do you want to say something on that, Cat?

Cat Wilkinson: Just in relation to your question about when we found out exactly, personally I had no idea until the end of the trial and the information came into the public domain.  That is when we started to receive a lot of our members calling into the office and phoning.  We feel in the Omagh bomb case that you get to a certain level where you cannot get any further.  I have friends who have been bereaved in the Enniskillen bombing who have been trying for years to get a public inquiry and there has always been that hold-back.  Now, any time that you are going for something truth-and-justice related, you are wondering whether there is that kind of mechanism in between you and whether that is why you are only getting to a certain level.  There is always going to be that fear there that there is no way past that.  We have got to a certain level where we now have to go and seek justice ourselves.

Q2271   Oliver Colvile: I do not think this is the case, but do you think one of the reasons why they did not want to have a public inquiry is that they knew very well that these letters were knocking around?

Cat Wilkinson: I do not know if it is the on-the-run letters that are stopping the Omagh bomb coming to light, but there are other issues that would be as mischievous as that that we do not know about.  Maybe after 15 years’ more campaigning, after the 16 years, we will find out.  The fear is we will be back here giving evidence again. 

Oliver Colvile: And your assumption—

Cat Wilkinson: Yes; there could be other issues—the OTRs could be the tip of the iceberg.  That does not rule anything out; after you find that out, they could absolutely have done any kinds of deals.

Q2272   Oliver Colvile: Do you know how you can now try to get justice for your families?

Cat Wilkinson: The only way that we can see we can get justice is ourselves, through the civil courts. 

Michael Gallagher: The court process.

Cat Wilkinson: Yes; through the court process.  We do not have very much faith in any statutory body to help us; we have to try to help ourselves.  It is appalling that victims’ groups now have to arm themselves to learn and re-educate themselves.  They are just bereaved parents and injured parties, and now they have to be legally minded and they have to arm themselves with all this information.  It should be done for them.  That is why we pay our taxes.  It was fed into this system that was eating up this money that could have been used for public inquiries.  We are being told all the time about the expense of public inquiries; I would like to know the expense of this scheme that has been run over so long.  It is just appalling.  It is unbelievable.  I have only read this judgment today; I only read it on the plane on the way over.  If somebody put that into more simplistic terms for more members of the public, I think there would be more of an outcry. 

Lady Hermon: I agree entirely.

Cat Wilkinson: It is a bit like the 1998 agreement; it was deliberately ambiguous because they did not want people to know what they were signing for.  Definitely, if people realised what was in this, you would have a lot of people at your door.

Oliver Colvile: My advice is if you are going to go down the route of civil litigation then what you should make sure you do is work with other groups who are equally as affected.  I rather agree with you; the idea that you have got to take civil litigation in order to be able to get justice for your families I find rather difficult too.  Thank you very much indeed.

Q2273   Kate Hoey: It is good to see you again, Michael, and welcome to Cat.  We have not seen the names either of any of the big long list.  Do you think there is a general feeling amongst the victims that that list of names should be made public, or do you take the view that has been given to us that this would put some of those people at risk?

Michael Gallagher: You mean the people that have got immunity?

Kate Hoey: Yes.  The list of names that got a letter.

Michael Gallagher: The people that have got the letters are usually people who have been engaged in armed Republican activity for a very long time.  They usually live in pretty secure areas.  Very few people would be prepared to tackle some of these people who have been involved in that type of activity.  I think there would be more risk to the victim than there would be to the alleged perpetrator.  So, I do not see any reason, because quite a lot of these people, whether they are Republican or Loyalist, are quite proud of their past and they wear their past like a medal on their chest.  I do not think it would be to their detriment.  If people are given immunity, at least the victims, or the victims’ families who are affected, should know.  They should come and say, “Your brother was murdered and the person who the police suspect was involved—he has not been tried—was Joe Bloggs but the Government, in the interest of moving things on and creating a peaceful society, has given him this immunity or said to him they will not pursue that issue”.

Q2274   Kate Hoey: Do you think, then, that the victims and, indeed, ordinary, decent Northern Ireland citizens would find it very strange if at the end of this inquiry, in which we are hoping to get to the bottom of a lot of things even if we cannot come up with solutions that are going to end up changing what has happened, this Committee of the House of Commons—a parliamentary committee—was not able to see the list of names?

Michael Gallagher: Dr Alasdair asked earlier on for some things that could be done that are positive and could help.  The least the Government can do is tell the victims who are relevant to that individual, “We are not going to pursue this person in the future” so that victims will know where they stand.  That is an important thing.

Cat Wilkinson: I feel that it would be of no benefit to the victims because it would re‑traumatise a lot of victims who maybe had a name in their head that had been involved in their murder or something.  It would just cause re-traumatisation for them.  But I feel it is really important that the Committee gets sight of these names, because you are the ones who are going to be looking at whether this information was based on fact or looking at these cases and the information that was provided by the PSNI regarding their status.  I feel like you need to have access to all that information to properly investigate that that was done right and to give us confidence that you have done your job properly. 

Q2275   Kate Hoey: That is very helpful.  You mentioned the PSNI and mistakes that were made there.  Some of the evidence that is coming out to our Committee is that the Northern Ireland Office made huge mistakes in this and that perhaps there might be a tendency somewhere up there in the establishment to blame not particularly senior members of the PSNI for mistakes.  Did you see the evidence that Lord Goldsmith wrote to the Secretary of State about eight months before[4] Downey got his letter saying that Downey was wanted for serious terrorist offences?  Did you hear that?

Cat Wilkinson: No. 

Michael Gallagher: I think I recall that.

Cat Wilkinson: Did you see that?

Michael Gallagher: Yes, I think I do recall that.

Cat Wilkinson: There were other incidents, other than the Metropolitan Police, when it went down into the HET report; they wanted them to put him on the alert in 2008 as a suspect.  They found through their evidence that he was culpable for a double-murder and connected possibly to the Enniskillen bomb and others.  They are saying that it is just the Metropolitan Police, but when they looked at their own systems internally, those cases were picked up by the HET.  How could they have been missed before they said that, “You are free; we are not looking for you”?  I do not understand how they came to these conclusions. 

Q2276   Kate Hoey: That is the point that we are trying to get to the bottom of; it does not seem, personally to me, that this could just have been a mistake by one person.

Cat Wilkinson: No.  And why was it done in such a secretive way?  They did say that it would be better for it to be done in covert conditions rather than be too open—keeping it under the radar, basically. 

Q2277   Lady Hermon: Mr Adams specifically asked the Prime Minister for it to be an “invisible” scheme. 

Cat Wilkinson: He did, yes.  Yes; an “invisible” scheme is the word. 

Lady Hermon: I can assure you members of this Committee were every bit as shocked about the revelations in the Downey judgment as you have articulated this afternoon.

Kate Hoey: And I personally was—and many of us were—shocked that the Attorney General did not appeal the case. 

Cat Wilkinson: Yes.

Q2278   Kate Hoey: One final thing.  You have probably heard, because I think it was covered in Northern Ireland, that Gerry Kelly has basically said that he is not prepared to come to this Committee[5].

Michael Gallagher: Yes.

Kate Hoey: What do you think the victims will read into that—that Gerry Kelly does not want to come?  He will go in private to Lady Justice Hallett, but he will not come in public to this Committee.  How do you think that will be interpreted?

Cat Wilkinson: He was on The Nolan Show a couple of days after.  I cannot understand why he would go on The Nolan Show publicly to talk about these OTR letters and now will not even come in front of a Committee who maybe he would feel a bit pressurised to speak in front of.  It is just incredible that he would not be here.  He obviously cannot be compelled to be here, which is another worry—that you are not going to get the proper information.  At the end of this, how strong will the report be—for the victims as well—because you do not have those powers to compel? 

Q2279   Kate Hoey: There are things that could be done, but Mr Kelly might quite like the publicity.  Do you think victims’ groups generally will read into that that Mr Kelly has something very deep to hide?

Michael Gallagher: I find it very disappointing, because, when you read the report, Mr Kelly is the person who takes the names to the Northern Ireland Office, and there seems to be a lot of interaction between the Northern Ireland Office and Mr Kelly.  The NIO is an office that I have been very dubious about for a very long time.  They seem to be controlling a lot of things.  I hope that the senior civil servants of the period are willing to come before this Committee and share their knowledge on that subject.  Even at the height of the Troubles, when they committed some of the worst imaginable atrocities, Sinn Fein had no difficulty in coming out and taking responsibility for those actions, yet here, not to come before the Committee and assist them—and he is somebody who could greatly assist the Committee in answering many of the questions—is very disappointing.

Q2280   Kate Hoey: Does it make it sound a bit hypocritical when he and other members of Sinn Fein have been going on about people not wanting to engage in the Haass process when he will not engage in one aspect of what is very important to the victims? 

Michael Gallagher: As I said earlier, we are not involved in any politics whatsoever, but I felt that they had been very imaginative and progressive in developing their politics, which is amazing because they were undemocratic and then they completely embraced democracy.  The problem with democracy is there are a lot of things in democracy I do not like but because I am a democrat I have to accept them.  I think it shows Sinn Fein and Mr Kelly particularly in a bad light when it comes to putting forward their particular argument.  I am sure they have many things to say about this issue.

Q2281   Naomi Long: Cat and Michael, it is good to have you with us this afternoon.  I just really want to ask you a couple of questions, and they more relate to the impact that the revelations have had on you and other members of your group.  When we spoke to other victims’ organisations who came to give us evidence, a number of them said that they found it was the secrecy surrounding the scheme that had really done the most damage; the scheme itself, if it had been open and transparent and there had been proper oversight, whilst they were not happy with it, would not have caused as much damage.  Cat, I think you said you do not believe that anyone necessarily who was involved in the Omagh bombing would have been involved in receiving such a letter, but at the same time it has clearly impacted upon you, knowing that these letters have been given.  Could you just maybe explain why for you the letters and the secrecy particularly surrounding them have been so important in terms of how you feel about the situation?  It is important that we get that on the record.

Cat Wilkinson: Absolutely; it is about the secrecy.  There are secret deals being done and they say it is for the better good and the victims, to be honest, are always the last thought in their mind.  It is really disheartening, because you just feel there is no end to what you could find out.  A lot of our members who would be coming in are people who are relatives of RUC officers—ex-security—murdered by the IRA, who are saying to us that they are really nervous about dealing with statutory bodies anyway because there has always been that tension there between victims and statutory bodies and the trust issues, which has definitely been broken down more.  Even with the Government, which you put your trust into as well, things perhaps have to be done behind closed doors that we do not need to know about, but not something so major as to let people away with murder.  They tried before, in 2005, to do it openly and it failed; when you read this, they kept trying every angle to get round it.  It is the secrecy, but I think it is just the fact that they would belittle the value of humans’ lives so much.  You would not rule anything out from anybody when you read stuff like this; it just takes your confidence away.

Q2282   Naomi Long: You have said very eloquently that you feel that your trust in terms of the statutory agencies, but specifically in terms of the Government, has been broken.  Other victims have spoken of feeling betrayed by the fact that this was done behind their backs, essentially, and in secret.  How does that impact on you in terms of where you are with your own campaign for truth and for justice?  How do you think it impacts more widely in terms of how people feel the Government, as custodians of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process, are able to be honest brokers in that situation in terms of what has happened over this?  The reason I am asking you this question is that we have had a series of people who were Secretaries of State and held posts and offices who do not seem to comprehend the damage that has been done.  I think it is quite important for people to understand the damage that has been done to public confidence in terms of how these things are handled in order that a lesson is learned in terms of how to handle what will be equally difficult things moving forward. 

Cat Wilkinson: Something to come out of this inquiry is accountability at the end of it as well.  If I in my organisation was operating in the way that I was reading about these NIO officers conducting their business, I would not last a day.  I just cannot believe that they are just getting to keep going on and doing—sorry, I just cannot think; my head is away.

Michael Gallagher: They tried scheme after scheme to get round this.  You just start to wonder, after what we have had to go through and the treatment that we have had at the hands of Government officials, whether they would have gone through half of this for the victims.  I do not really think so.  My wife and I raised three children and I always said to them, “If a policeman comes to this door on your account, you will know about it”.  That is the way I was raised.  When I see people in Government who are willing to make behind‑the‑scenes deals for some of the most bloodthirsty murderers you could imagine, it shakes the confidence of the ordinary person on the street.  A lot has to be done to restore that confidence.  There has to be some sort of statement saying that this type of behaviour will never be repeated.  All the fine things that we think about in life—honesty, trust, integrity—go out of the window when you start to read this report.  I was sitting beside Cat on the plane and she was saying, “I do not believe this”.  It is that type of document.

Q2283   Naomi Long: In terms of rebuilding trust, you have said some of the things that you would like; you have said you would like accountability in terms of what happened and who was responsible and so on.  Do you believe that in order for trust to be restored the letters themselves need to be formally rescinded in some manner and removed from having any weight at all, if that indeed is possible?  I have to say it is unclear whether that is even possible, but do you feel that it is necessary that whether or not that can happen is explored?

Cat Wilkinson: It depends if they are valid.  Maybe some of them were investigated properly and there was no reason for them to be looked for and they were fine to come back to the jurisdiction.  It is case by case.  But we need to find out the exact wording on some of these letters, because some of them were different.  I was getting confused reading it saying one thing that was on the letters and then his was different from the others.  I would like to know exactly what kinds of assurances were given; I think that is the important part. 

Naomi Long: I think we all would.  Thank you.

Chair: We are near the end of the session, but very briefly, Sylvia. 

Q2284   Lady Hermon: First of all, it was very good of both of you to read the Downey judgment.  We did have a witness—a retired very senior police officer—who did not read the judgment before they came to give us evidence, so thank you very much indeed for having the good grace to do that for us, though it is a devastating judgment.  Could I just ask you what it is you are hoping for from Lady Justice Hallett’s report[6], which will be published next Thursday, 17 July?  Lady Justice Hallett was asked specifically to look and check that there were no further errors like those that had appeared in the Downey judgment.  What would be for you a good outcome from the Hallett report next week?

Michael Gallagher: When you say “look that there are no further errors”, I think that the whole process needs to stop and needs to be reviewed.

Lady Hermon: It has stopped.

Michael Gallagher: Whatever we have said, there is nobody more resilient and compassionate than victims because we have suffered.  We are not unreasonable.  We understand that there are some things that have to be done that are very unpalatable for us.  You cannot ignore a case where there is evidence sitting on a file to bring someone before a court of law for a serious crime and say, “Because it is politically expedient, we can put that away and not action that case”.  I get the sense here that this was an unblock.  When you name an operation “Rapid” you are saying, “Let’s get through this as quick as possible”.  To me, that is what they were doing; they were just making the problem go away.  It is a major problem.  The Prime Minister described it as an anomaly.  If they had have worked it through in a more rational and reasoned way, I do not think we would have been here.  I think it is a case of the Government of the day thinking that they could ride roughshod over the wishes of Parliament and the other political parties.  I feel too that the Opposition should have been stronger.  After all, the job of an Opposition is to challenge the Government of the day.  I think if they had been more robust, this particular Government would not have got away with what they did.

Chair: We will have to end this particular session—we are out of time—but it has been very useful to us.  Thank you very much, both of you, for coming.  Thank you. 

Michael Gallagher: Thank you, Mr Chairman.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Brian Hambleton and Julie Hambleton, Justice4the21, gave evidence. 

Q2285   Chair: Thank you very much for joining us.  You heard my preamble earlier, so I do not think there is any need to go through that.  Can I just say that there may well be a vote at about four o’clock?  If we are still in session then, we will have to suspend for 15 minutes and then come back, so that may happen.  Thank you very much for joining us.  Again, would you like to just tell us a little bit about your organisation and make a brief opening statement?

Julie Hambleton: Okay.  First of all, my name is Julie Hambleton and this is my brother, Brian.  We would like to thank each and every one of you, Chairman, and all the members, for inviting us today.  For us, this is a monumental day.  We feel as though we have waited all our lives for this moment and this is highly significant to us.  I do have an opening statement that I hope will be of interest to you. 

First, we would like to thank the Chairman and all Committee members for giving us the opportunity to be heard, and the comments we are going to make are those of our family.  We would like to extend our sincere condolences to all those families affected by all terrorist atrocities over the years.  We share your loss and grief. 

I am the youngest of six children.  This is our sister, Maxine.  We brought a picture of her, because names are bandied about left, right and centre and there is never a face to put to a name.  We think it is really important that you see who our sister was.

Lady Hermon: Yes.  She was beautiful. 

Julie Hambleton: Maxine was murdered on the evening of 21 November 1974.  I was 11 years old.  For each and every one of us, the moment we lost our lovely, kind, generous and intelligent sister is seared into our memories until the day we die.  We miss her today, as we have done every day for the past 40 years. 

Justice, in the context of the Birmingham pub bombings, is the use of authority to uphold what is just and to administer the investigations, establishment and uphold the principles of laws set by precedent and to treat all before the law fairly and decently.  The basic principle that all are equal before the law has been conveniently and deliberately ignored.  The authority of the United Kingdom has blatantly discriminated against the many seeking justice for this crime.  The United Kingdom has witnessed, as such, a total corruption of justice in this matter and has the affront to continually insult living victims, relatives and the murdered souls, to dishonesty and venal expressions of mock hand-wringing.  Perhaps these hands are dipped in blood.

21 innocent people were blown up and murdered that night in Birmingham.  A further 182-plus people were injured.  Many became amputees and many have suffered horrendously for the last 40 years.  Our sister was blown to pieces.  The 21 were innocent people, ordinary people; people like your brothers, your sisters, your nieces, your nephews, your cousins.  They were citizens of the United Kingdom: only ordinary, decent, law-abiding people—obliterated.  Now the authority of the state dares us and challenges us to wipe all of this from our collective memories and to presumably go away very quietly because it suits some politicians who have failed to grasp the enormity of the precedents they wish to impose.  Law is set by precedent.  This is just a green light for the next generation to get away with it.

The outrage of the Birmingham pub bombing was obviously not in Northern Ireland.  The jurisdiction of the investigations is not bound by the Northern Ireland Executive, the Good Friday Agreement, peace processes or any other mechanism of state applicable to the culture and history of the Northern Ireland Office or any other current reconciliation process.  The Birmingham pub bombings is a murder investigation.  It is not a war crime, because no terrorist organisation has ever admitted their involvement.  It is a murder investigation with enough evidence to gain conviction.  Why, therefore, are certain papers apparent to these murders consigned to a 75-year secrecy order?  This was effected in 1994 by the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Barbara Mills, the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, and the then Prime Minister, John Major, who put a 75-year public immunity interest order on the case, including the files of Guildford, the only criminal cases in British history to receive this.  What is covered in these papers marked “most secret”?  Why is it that these papers have been retained from any viewing?  We would like full access and disclosure to these papers, as is currently being considered by the Prime Minister from Gerry Conlon’s dying wish.

Our campaign was born out of sheer frustration, in particular with all the public inquiries taking place, none covering the lack of action regarding the Birmingham pub bombings, and what helped intensify our frustration was when the current Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police failed to even acknowledge receipt of the three letters I personally addressed to him.  What has helped to further fuel our frustration is that the current Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has failed to even acknowledge the four letters personally sent to her in the past 30 months.  The same can be asked of the Leader of the Opposition and our Prime Minister.  Even Shami Chakrabarti, who leads the quasi-political organisation Liberty, who sat next to the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland at a recent state banquet given in honour of the Irish President, fails to respond to a formal letter.  The current Home Secretary responded to a letter from the Archbishop of York in the most derogatory terms of reference.  Is it all part of some mystifying collusion? 

Crucially, why has the investigation team of the West Midlands Police lost over 20% of the evidence in the biggest mass murder in England’s history of the 20th century, including the third bomb, which failed to detonate?  Why has this missing evidence become placed into our possession?  Why?  It must be deduced that if anybody wants to implement a terror regime, they should make sure the crimes are the biggest mass murder of the 21st century and they will get away with it.  After all, our justice is set by precedent. 

Examine the precedent wishing to be set by the servants of the state in this instance.  The machinations of this racket called British justice and the collusion of the serving and previous political class fail to grasp that human emotion and endeavour can never be diminished.  Where would we have been without these during world war one and world war two?  No one is giving up because it suits Peter Hain and Tony Blair.  We have the right as members of the European Union to seek and embarrass the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in another domain, to which the United Kingdom must answer.  If the Government and previous Governments wish to appear to continue to deliberately mislead decent, honest and truthful elected politicians and compromise the integrity of elected Members of a democratic assembly, that agenda is now fully exposed to all, as our experiences demonstrate and by the practices of the OTR letters, which have come to light by accident.  Such glib and utterly crass statements as the Select Committee have taken from witnesses to only pursue prosecution for matters after the Good Friday Agreement beggar belief.  What other country in the world would pursue such vile injustice to its citizens because it suits some political parameters? 

Alongside our request for the 75‑year PII to be lifted, other outcomes we would like to see the Select Committee inquiry to confirm on our behalf, please, are:

Question one: considering the revelations in Chris Mullin’s book, Error of Judgement, in particular potential allegations that there was a bomber living in Dublin whom Mr Mullin visited, could it be confirmed if this alleged suspect has ever travelled into the United Kingdom and been allowed to proceed without being arrested for this involvement in the Birmingham pub bombings?  Could the Committee confirm if this alleged suspect, or any suspect suspected of the bombings, ever received a letter of administration under the OTR scheme?

Question two: could the Committee inquire from the West Midlands Police Chief Constable whether any alleged suspect, deceased or currently living, received an administrative letter under the OTR scheme?

Question three: the Prime Minister wrote to Mr Adams following the 5 May negotiations at Hillsborough Castle[7] stating, “If you can provide details of a number of cases involving people ‘on the run’ we will arrange for them to be considered... You have also questioned whether it would be in the public interest to mount any prosecutions after 28 July 1998 for offences alleged to have been committed before the Good Friday Agreement… I would be willing to have these matters considered rapidly… Decisions are, of course, a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General.”  I believe that was in reference to John Downey.  Could the Committee disclose if the Birmingham bombings case was one such case pre-1998?  In the interests of disclosure, could the Committee disclose this communication to the families confirming the same?

Question four: considering the impact this scheme has had on victims, could the Committee confirm whether or not the OTR scheme was extended to members of the West Midlands Police who have failed to act either before the bombings or after the bombings, either by intentional act or omission of their office?

Question five: considering that the rule of law has been deeply undermined by the covert method of the scheme, could the Committee give an undertaking to provide the Birmingham pub bombings families with the fullest disclosure permissible of any legal implications of the OTR scheme affecting or impeding the West Midlands Police duty to bring to justice those responsible? 

Finally, we have met with many kind people of all political persuasions and religions on the mainland, in Northern Ireland and from the Republic of Ireland, all of whom have suffered tremendous torment and distress.  If only the witnesses to this Select Committee could have stood in the same rooms and witnessed the sheer distress that continues through their lives as they purport to abandon the simple concept of common law and justice.  The expression of support from those who find the ignorance of the past 40 years since the bombings in Birmingham abhorrent has been, and still is, overwhelming.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank our incredible supporters from Birmingham, Wales, the north and south of the UK and Ireland, and all those who have travelled far and wide to stand shoulder to shoulder with us during the past years.  Their support keeps us strong.  We have also received tremendous support and counsel from many political and learned figures of all political hue.  Our campaign has received recognition from Her Majesty the Queen in very thoughtful and touching private correspondence.  She is the defender of the faith.  Her servants have failed the Crown before and now wish to wane before it.  We await any questions you may wish to ask.  Thank you.

Chair: Thank you very much for a very moving account of the situation and also very searching questions. 

Q2286   Ian Paisley: Julie, thank you for the very powerful statement you have put on the public record today, and I am glad that we have been able to facilitate the opportunity.  You said something very striking at the beginning: that this was a real opportunity for you today and that you had waited for this opportunity for so long.  I am certainly glad that this Committee is facilitating that, because we see it from one side but you feel it every day and therefore that is important.  Some of the things that you have put on the record today probably show that there is room for a very separate inquiry into what has happened in your own case.  People once talked about an “appalling vista”; you have kicked over a stone of maggots today.  Mr Chairman, I think, following from what Julie has said, we should write to the three people who she named—Yvette Cooper, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition—and ask them to do the decency of replying to a letter from a victim in the United Kingdom.  I think we should do that, but that is another matter.

I assume you are going to say “yes” to this, but, given what you have said, Julie, do you feel that mainland victims—and excuse me for calling you a “mainland victim” but you are our mainland—in a perverse way are even more forgotten?

Julie Hambleton: Yes.  We have been utterly and totally forgotten.  Our local newspaper, the Birmingham Mail, who are fantastic supporters of ours, give us our own column every fortnight of a Friday to help support our campaign.  In one of them I wrote that we feel as though the senior management of West Midlands Police and, I have to say, certain parts of our current and previous Governments wish that we had been buried next to our dead.

Lady Hermon: That is dreadful. 

Ian Paisley: That is awful, yes.

Lady Hermon: That is how you feel, though.

Julie Hambleton: Yes.  They completely ignore us.  We have a memorial in Birmingham.  Do you know how long it took to get that memorial to remember 21 people who were murdered en masse?

Lady Hermon: I am going to be horrified.

Julie Hambleton: 25 years.

Q2287   Ian Paisley: I asked this of our previous witnesses, and the reason I am asking is that I want to get these things on the record.  Am I right to assume that whenever you heard of the Downey case what sprung to your mind was, “That must be us.  The letters must be about us as well”?

Julie Hambleton: We only heard about the Downey case, to do with the OTR letter, this year, alongside everybody else. 

Ian Paisley: So did we.  That is when we first heard of it. 

Julie Hambleton: Yes.  My sister I think summed it up best.  We wrote to Lady Justice Hallett, who I have to say wrote a lovely letter back in response to what we sent.  Jane, my sister, put it in the best terms.  I was at work when I heard and I felt as though—excuse the pun—I was going to implode and turn to dust, as if we literally were nothing to anybody.  If an alleged murderer can, where there is evidence—apparently there is purported evidence against him, with fingerprints on the ticket from the car parking—walk out because he has got a letter, for us this is the nadir of our justice system, without any shadow of a doubt.  What is the purpose of our politicians setting legislation only for them then to not follow the same legislation that they have implemented?  What is the point in having law in the first place if no one is going to follow it?  That is exactly what it looks like to us with these OTRs. 

Q2288   Ian Paisley: In the Birmingham Mail article on 2 March it states that “Paddy Hill has claimed that police sent secret letters promising immunity to two of the men responsible for the 1974 pub bombings”[8].  Do you know the names of the people that Paddy Hill is talking about there?

Julie Hambleton: No, but if I did I would tell you.

Q2289   Ian Paisley: Do you think one of those names is the person in Dublin that you mentioned in your statement?

Julie Hambleton: I do not know.  You would have to speak to Paddy Hill.  We do not know.  We only know what you know from when that was printed.

Q2290   Ian Paisley: Have you made any approaches to Paddy Hill about those comments?

Julie Hambleton: No.  After that was printed, I had a phone call off one of our local radio stations who asked me to comment on it, and she said that Paddy had retracted what he had said.  I do not know what he knows and I have not asked him, and he has not forwarded on what he may or may not know to me.  If you want the answer to that, you are going to have to ask him.  The thing is, when we have spoken to him, he has said that the names that he believed to be the men who did it he passed on to West Midlands Police.  I do not know if you know, but we had a meeting with the Chief Constable.  I wrote to him in 2009 and he did not respond; he got his inspector to respond, basically telling me he is too busy for the likes of me—he was too busy to talk about the biggest mass murder in England’s history in the 20th century.  I wrote back telling him how contemptible I thought he was and he got his sergeant to respond.  This is the sort of contemptible behaviour that we are being treated with.  We are like lepers.  We have not killed anybody.  I have never even had a parking ticket.  We have done nothing wrong.  We have not caused life threats or caused anybody to have any of their limbs amputated.  I have never even hit anybody.  We are treated as if we are lepers of society and all we want is justice for our sister and the other 20 victims.

Q2291   Kate Hoey: On what you have just said, which is very moving, what do you think underlies this ignoring of your whole campaign over many years?

Julie Hambleton: We think it is a cover-up.  The more we delve in, the more we believe they knew who did this.  The Serious Crime Squad at the time was so tainted—and its history is still tainted—and West Midlands Police do not have the cleanest slate as it is, with Hillsborough coming up and lots of other things; their reputation is in the gutter.  I would imagine that if the truth were out as far as the Birmingham pub bombings are concerned they probably would never recover; they probably would have to re-name West Midlands Police.  I do not know how, in all honesty, the Chief Constable got his job, because he is a complete and utter waste of time.  When we finally got to meet him in April, this is what we were provided with, which tells us absolutely nothing.  It tells us exactly what we already know.  They promised us we would have meetings with them—the Assistant Chief Constable, Marcus Beale, who is also under investigation for withholding evidence.  You could not make this stuff up.  They promised us that they would be sending all the vital evidence off to the Netherlands to be forensically tested.  At the meeting, we pressed the Chief Constable on whether anything went.  He said, “Yes”.  I said, “What went?”  He would not answer.  In the end, I said, “Do you see this glass?  If this glass was part of the third bomb, can you tell me if that went?  Did that go to be DNA tested?”  He went, “Have I not just answered that question?”  I went, “No, you have not”.  I said, “Did you send any physical evidence?” and he went, “No”.  They lied to us.  They continually lied to us.  They have sent no physical evidence to be tested forensically.  They had 168 items of vital evidence; they have lost 35, one of which is the third bomb that did not detonate on the night.  What are we supposed to make of that?

Q2292   Ian Paisley: They lost the bomb.

Julie Hambleton: They lost the bomb.  We are not thinking about a piece of paper here; it would have been—I do not know—like that.  Actually, I will show you a picture of it, if you want.  That is the makings of it.

Q2293   Kate Hoey: I understand what you are saying in terms of you feeling there has been a cover-up and the incompetence and whatever else within the West Midlands Police.  I do not know whether you have had support from local politicians, but that does not explain why there has not been the widespread campaign and support from politicians for some more inquiry when there was for other terrible—

Julie Hambleton: Nobody wants to touch us. 

Q2294   Kate Hoey: Why?

Julie Hambleton: I do not know.  I wish I could answer that. 

Q2295   Lady Hermon: What about the local MPs in the Birmingham area?

Julie Hambleton: Our local MP said that he was going to contact his friend Keith Vaz to see if he could set up a public inquiry; we have heard nothing. 

Q2296   Kate Hoey: I support what my colleague said.  Obviously we will have to discuss it in the Committee, but there is a separate issue that may well be something that we can look into.  In terms of the on-the-runs and the letter, you are presumably not surprised that there has been a cover-up on all of that. 

Julie Hambleton: No.  Not at all, no.

Q2297   David Simpson: You are very welcome.  I understand you were on Radio Ulster this morning expressing your venom and I understand you did very well.  Those are the reports I am getting back from Northern Ireland, so you put your case across very well.  You expressed your anger in that radio interview and listening to what you are saying today we can hear that anger and frustration that is coming out.  The same line of question that I put to Michael and his daughter in relation to the whole criminal justice system: how do you feel that victims have reacted to all of this?  Do you believe that justice, because of this, has evaded you?  In other words, you may never get justice because of this. 

Julie Hambleton: We never, ever take the view that we will never get justice, because otherwise there would be no point in carrying on.  We will fight until our dying day.

Chair: Order.  We will have to suspend there for 15 minutes.  We will resume at 16.14.  Thank you. 

              Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

              On resuming—

Chair: We will re-start the public session.  We were with David.

Q2298   David Simpson: Julie, you were in full stream.  I mentioned justice evading you, a victory from the Government or a result that maybe the whole system had failed your family and other victims and that justice wold never be achieved.  You had said that you would never give up on that because you have to have a focus and a goal for that.  Could you express just very briefly what elements of the scheme that has been uncovered have caused the most distress to yourselves as a family and to other victims that you have come in contact with?

Julie Hambleton: The letters themselves and the secrecy.  It is as simple as that.  The fact that it was secret, even though Peter Hain was denying it was secret.  It was; nobody knew about it.  Even you did not know about it.  The fact that we have got politicians who are doing secret deals behind the scenes with people who are alleged terrorists-stroke-murderers and giving them letters to say, “If you get arrested here, you will be alright”.  It is just beyond our comprehension.  If I went out and I did the vilest thing a human can do—to kill another human—I would expect to be found, arrested, put through the courts, and to do time.  Is that not what our law states?  Is that not what the Magna Carta states: no man should be above the law?  It appears that the OTR issue is casting aspersions on our judiciary and there is a two‑tier justice system.

Q2299   David Simpson: When you look at the Downey case and when you look at what happened in the court, do you believe as a family that there was political interference?

Julie Hambleton: Yes, absolutely.  Without a shadow of a doubt.  I watched the evidence from Peter Hain.  He was—

Lady Hermon: You are choosing your words carefully.

Julie Hambleton: He was—

Lady Hermon: Unusual?

Julie Hambleton: It was almost as if he did not know who had issued the letters even though he was taking claim for helping to implement the scheme.  He was trying to blame everybody else for sending the letters out.  He knew about them; others knew about them; but nobody else knew about them.  What does that say?  If that is not political interference, then what is?

Q2300   Lady Hermon: It is very good to see you back again.  Thank you very much.  I know that you have come to previous hearings and sat in the public gallery, but to have you give evidence today is very welcome indeed.  I should say at the very beginning that I had a particular interest and concern at the time of the Birmingham pub bombings because my elder sister had gone to teacher-training college in Birmingham.  She fell in love with a young student who was right beside her who lived in Birmingham and they settled in Birmingham and stayed there.  At the time of the bombings in Birmingham—we did not have mobile phones 40 years ago—it was a great worry to find out if they were safe.  They were; most unfortunately for you and for your family, your sister had been—I think you said—blown to pieces, which is appalling and shocking. 

I tried to take down the key bits.  Did you mention a public interest immunity certificate that was issued in 1994?  Did I get that right?

Julie Hambleton: It was not known as that then; that is what it has been changed to now.  It was put under embargo for 75 years in 1994 by Barbara Mills, the then Director of Public Prosecutions. 

Q2301   Lady Hermon: And the reasons given for that?  And you did not seek reasons at that time, or you were not given them. 

Julie Hambleton: Nobody told us. 

Brian Hambleton: We have questioned the West Midlands Police Chief Constable on many occasions about this and they deny knowledge of this entirely.

Q2302   Lady Hermon: So they deny knowledge of it or—

Brian Hambleton: Of the 75-year embargo. 

Q2303   Lady Hermon: Right.  But does the 75-year embargo exist?

Brian Hambleton: Everybody else knows about it apart from the West Midlands Police.

Julie Hambleton: Paddy Hill’s QC, Gareth Peirce, told us when we went to visit her and it is in all of the newspaper reports.  Also, it refers to the men known as the Guildford Four.  Their files were also put under the 75-year embargo.  Apparently Mark Durkan MP has put a request in and asked a question at PMQs a couple of weeks ago, asking the Prime Minister if Gerry Conlon’s dying wish will come to fruition to have the 75-year embargo lifted for people that Gerry Conlon named to see the files.  We want exactly the same.

Q2304   Lady Hermon: And the Prime Minister has gone back to Mark Durkan on that point. 

Julie Hambleton: I do not know.  He has not responded to anything we have sent him. 

Lady Hermon: This is the Prime Minister rather than Mark Durkan. 

Julie Hambleton: The Prime Minister.  We sent him a dossier over a year ago; he has not responded to that.  This year I sent him another letter asking him if he was aware of whether anyone known to be involved in the Birmingham pub bombings was given an OTR letter.  He has not responded to that either.  I have had no response from any MP I have written to.

Brian Hambleton: Anything to do with the pub bombings in Birmingham is lying forever under a very heavy concrete carpet, to the point where at the meeting on 7 April this year to finalise whether they were going to re-investigate or re-inquire—they keep changing the title—we knew what the conclusion would be of the West Midlands Police but the Chief Constable, in a very long, drawn-out scenario of lies and deceit, lied through his teeth about different things that we knew.  Right from the beginning he told us he was sending items to the Netherlands to the renowned world laboratory that does that kind of thing.  We questioned why it could not be done in Birmingham.  If you go on their blog, you are blinded by the light of what they achieve and how they have achieved conclusions to other cases with DNA profiling.  He said he did not want the public to think anything untoward would happen with any of the items in relation to the Birmingham pub bombings, so he was physically sending them to the Netherlands, but, at the meeting, as previously my sister said, they denied they sent them.  All they sent was the incomplete complication of papers, which was read—we do not know whether it was read by the scientists in the Netherlands or Birmingham—and the answer was that they were satisfied with what they had read.  Apparently that cost £1.3 million.  When we questioned that in the meeting, it was a very heated exchange, as I am sure you can imagine.  Then I said, “Well, obviously it was not the Birmingham Six who bombed Birmingham—they were let out in 1991—but we have the names of the five people who did and you do as well”.  After much tossing and turning of words, just before the end of the meeting, he said, “Well, yes, we have those five names”.  I said—

Julie Hambleton: Two of them are dead.

Brian Hambleton: Yes; two of them have died.  I said, “Can we cross-reference?”  He has gone, “No”.  I said, “Why not?”  I said, “And the other side of the coin is Chris Mullin.  Why have you not arrested him, with his great knowledge of what has gone on and all the people he has met?  He knows the Birmingham pub bombings.”  He came out with an answer that was very derisory.

Julie Hambleton: He said, “Well, he just does not want to come in”. 

Brian Hambleton: Yes.  As though he has got the option. 

Julie Hambleton: Yes.  At the end, I asked the Chief Constable if they were going to re-investigate and he went, “Well, no.  With the passage of time…”  I said, “I know you are a policeman, but there is no statute of limitations on murder in this country, thank heavens.  You are the police, are you not?  It is your job to go looking for new evidence.”  He said, “Yes, you are right”.  I said, “So why are you not?”  He said, “Well, the passage of time”.  I said, “If everybody goes with your methodology, nobody would get put away.  Stephen Lawrence’s killers would not be in prison, and what would be the point of the Met Police currently investigating Yewtree?” 

Brian Hambleton: Another important part of the story is that on many occasions we have sent witnesses of the day to the police to give statements and help them and they have told us afterwards, luckily, that they were questioned by officers, nothing was ever recorded—no witness statements or anything—and they were sent on their jolly way, to the point where we put our own personal sign out on our blog site for witnesses to come forward from the day—

Julie Hambleton: Who might be able to offer assistance.

Brian Hambleton: Which turned out to be of great fruition.  We are not political people, but I have always wondered why the IRA never admitted to bombing Birmingham and, without going too deeply, now I know, because we have very credible witnesses of the night of the bombings and their story of what really happened is on a different time scale from the West Midlands Police’s story.  There are some very dark forces at work here.

Q2305   Lady Hermon: Could I make a suggestion?  We have the Birmingham Mail report that Ian Paisley mentioned to you earlier, and as you explained in reply to him, Paddy Hill has said he is not quite sure that what he said to the Birmingham Mail is indeed accurate.  He appears to have retracted what he sad about—

Julie Hambleton: That is what I was told through a third party, but I do not know; I have not spoken to Paddy Hill directly about it.

Q2306   Lady Hermon: Yes.  If there is ambiguity around whether this is the case or not, may I suggest this?  It was the Police Service of Northern Ireland and previously the Royal Ulster Constabulary who were first asked to deal with these OTR letters—the 228.  They will know, and they are reviewing, all 228 cases.  This is Operation Redfield.  There is a new Chief Constable there, George Hamilton.  They are the police service—not the West Midlands Police Service—who were involved in the OTR scheme.  You have nothing to lose; let us put it that way.  It may be useful—

Julie Hambleton: We did write to the PSNI and we also wrote to HET nearly two years ago.  We had a letter from Matt Baggott’s Assistant Chief Constable—a very nice letter—telling us that we fall outside their geographical remit.  Last time I looked, Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom.

Lady Hermon: I am happy to report it is still today part of the United Kingdom.

Julie Hambleton: Yes, but they said they could not help us. 

Q2307   Lady Hermon: That correspondence would have pre-dated, I assume, the Downey judgment. 

Julie Hambleton: Yes. 

Lady Hermon: Now that we know a secret scheme has been operating since at least the year 2000, the RUC was involved and it became the PSNI, I think it would be well worth the two of you writing, or your group writing, to the newly-instated Chief Constable and asking him just to clarify whether he is willing to confirm—he does not have to give the names; probably data protection or whatever other reasons will be given about that—if anyone who received an OTR letter was suspected of involvement in the Birmingham pub bombings.  You have nothing to lose by writing and asking for that information.  As I say, the names they may wish not to disclose because of whatever reasons they are going to give you, but certainly to confirm whether or not they were involved.  I think they are obliged to tell victims whether the OTRs were involved in bombings, shootings or other incidents that took away the life of your sister forever and changed your family forever.  The very least they can do is to confirm “yes” or “no”, which might be helpful. 

Julie Hambleton: Yes.  Thank you, yes; we will.

Lady Hermon: Then those of us who are able to will work in tandem with Mark Durkan and see what reply comes back from the Prime Minister after the question. 

Chair: We are pressing these issues ourselves.

Lady Hermon: Yes.

Q2308   Chair: Could I just come back to what Mr Hambleton said a moment ago about the IRA not claiming responsibility for the bombings?  Could you say a little bit more about that?

Brian Hambleton: The IRA have never claimed responsibility for the Birmingham pub bombings, which led me down a different path two years ago.  I spent thousands of hours doing my own investigations and what I found out is very disturbing.  Sitting here talking to you, it would be so easy for me to—some people would say—cast aspersions against the authorities.  I remember going back to work two days after the Birmingham pub bombings.  As I say, I delivered my sister to her death on the night; I drove her to the city centre.  I witnessed a situation where my boss of the business I worked for at the time phoned the police on my behalf, because I was in a state of shock.  The police came to question me about what I had heard, which was relevant to my sister’s death, and they listened and they did nothing.  I gave them information—a vehicle; a registration number—and they did nothing.  I had no reason to think about why until the last two years.  It has kind of related to our new witnesses that have come forward who we sent to the West Midlands Police.  As the lady and gentleman said before, we have to believe in the law, who protect the people of the land, so anything the police do we are behind them.  We have to have law and order in this country, but where we are concerned, with the fight for justice for our sister, we have been let down by every avenue so far and every door we knock we are turned away.  Our local MPs do not want to touch us.  They listen to the story, we send them away and we never see them again.  The police want to put us in a cupboard.  We are completely side-lined.

Q2309   Chair: What is the relevance, though, to the IRA not claiming responsibility?  Are you suggesting it was somebody else?

Brian Hambleton: In the 1970s you obviously know that the British Government was trying to discredit the IRA in every way that they could.  Birmingham is not Northern Ireland; it is the mainland.  We are always viewed as a second city and lower than that, but the 1970s was a very dark and dismal decade, and at the time I think Birmingham was used as a soft touch to do what happened related to the Troubles.

Julie Hambleton: What you have got to understand is that on that night—I was only 11, but because of what we learn as we go along—that was the first year when they had late opening hours before Christmas, and Thursday night was pay day.  It was on a Thursday that—believe it or not—many people from the Irish community would go drinking in these pubs.  People send us information all the time; we get emails sent to us saying all sorts of things.  They say, “Why would the IRA kill their own?”  Mind you, they killed a lot of their own in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland.

Lady Hermon: Yes, they did.

Julie Hambleton: I believe that there were more Irish Catholics killed that night than British or English or whatever other nationality. 

Q2310   Oliver Colvile: Thank you very much indeed.  It is a heart‑rending story you have been telling and I am very sorry to hear the difficulty you have had trying to get this to have any kind of hearing whatsoever.  You were saying this is the first time in 40 years that you have been able to voice your very great concerns.  I would be grateful if the clerk might just confirm with me that anything that you are saying during the course of this afternoon is covered by privilege of Parliament and that, frankly, you could not be prosecuted or anything like that for whatever you say here. 

Chair: We do use that privilege with respect, though.

Oliver Colvile: I am just curious, so I am going to probe a little bit, then.  You think that the IRA may not have been responsible for this.

Julie Hambleton: We do not know.  We are just keeping our options open.  We do not want to be casting aspersions on one group when it might be somebody else.  We do not know.  Nobody has come forward.  This might sound odd, but it would be nice for someone to say, “Yes, we did it”, just so we know.  From there, we could move forward to find out who actually built the bombs, who okayed it, who planted them and so on and so forth.  It would be a start.  As it stands, with the politics that were in play at the time, nobody has put their hands up and said, “Yes, it was us”.  We are left between a rock and a hard place.

Q2311   Oliver Colvile: So what you would like us to do is to put pressure upon the authorities to undertake a full inquiry—a proper inquiry. 

Julie Hambleton: Please, yes.

Oliver Colvile: Right.  In order to dispel any concerns that you may have as to who—

Julie Hambleton: We would also like it to be investigated; we would like the perpetrators caught.  We do not know who did it.  If we do not know who did it, there is no point saying, “The IRA did it”.  Who did it?  Why is nobody looking for them?  Why are our police not investigating and looking for the mass murderers of the biggest unsolved mass murder in England’s history of the 20th century?

Brian Hambleton: What is even more painful for me is that night is seared on every day of my life.  My life did not continue from that day.  It is like planning your life in a book of pages; my life has stayed on that page.  My sister was a very powerful lady in my life; she was our stand-in mother at the time as well.  To think that she is not here and there is no one answerable to her murder and that of 20 other people—I cannot even begin to think of the words or the sentence to put together.  She had just been accepted into the University of Leicester to study law.  It is just abysmal.  I really cannot think of the most powerful words to use.  It is the fact that the authorities do not want to pick up our case whatsoever.  With all my own personal investigations, the story does come together like an old spy novel or film.  It is easy for me, talking to learned people like yourselves, to make these comments without giving you my information or clues, hoping you can join my dots together, if that makes sense.  The police are our enemy, whereas they should be helping us.  They have done a pretty good job on the public of Birmingham since 1974.  They have actually got away with murder.  I am not saying they did it; it is such a massive cover-up.  Unfortunately for us, we have to work off the shirt-tails of other people’s misery when we see the word “cover-up”, like in the latest cover-up, because we have no power.  No one wants to take up our gauntlet; we have to do it ourselves.  It is very painful and exhaustive.

Q2312   Oliver Colvile: I do not know whether this is appropriate—and no doubt the Chairman will say otherwise—but I wonder whether or not we might have a conversation in private with you so that you can share with us—

Chair: That is fine.  Private conversations beyond the Committee are up to individual Members.

Oliver Colvile: If you wish to come and see me and have a chat with me about it, I will do what I possibly can to try to help.

Julie Hambleton: Thank you. That is very kind.

Brian Hambleton: Thank you. 

Q2313   Oliver Colvile: Can I just ask one final question?  Can you just put in context the Birmingham murders that took place?  Were the Guildford murders followed as well?  Was there any kind of investigation into what happened in Guildford?

Julie Hambleton: No.  When the Guildford Four were released, they did not look for the real perpetrators of that crime either.

Q2314   Oliver Colvile: Right.  I was slightly involved in the Brighton bombing. 

Julie Hambleton: Brighton there was, yes.

Oliver Colvile: I left the thing about 10 minutes beforehand. 

Julie Hambleton: Good for you.

Oliver Colvile: Yes; I was very lucky.  I am interested to know which ones have not been pursued.

Julie Hambleton: Guildford was not; they did not re-investigate Guildford.  In 1993 West Midlands Police had another investigation, but they ran out of money.  21 people are dead and they ran out of money. 

Oliver Colvile: Okay.  All right.  Thank you very much indeed.

Q2315   Dr McDonnell: I thank you for your evidence.  I am very, very impressed, to put it mildly, with the sincerity and the emotion with which you have delivered your evidence.  Certainly I have been very impressed by the integrity of what you say.  I am really trying to think ahead and trying to figure out what the Committee might do to help you, or what I might encourage the Committee to do to help you.  One of the things that is coming through to me here and I get very clearly is—and I welcome the fact that we have relative privilege here—that there may have been dark forces, as you rightly suggest, somewhere in this, but you have also mentioned five names.  Are those names dark-forces names or are they names of IRA-type suspects?

Julie Hambleton: They are IRA.

Brian Hambleton: They are IRA, but one of them has always been referred to as “Mr X”.  Mr X, as far as I am concerned, with my information, was British secret services.

Julie Hambleton: Undercover.

Brian Hambleton: Undercover.

Julie Hambleton: He had infiltrated the IRA.  We have since found out that he was also posthumously made captain. 

Lady Hermon: Posthumously?

Julie Hambleton: Yes.  He had got this background that he had gone AWOL twice, and that is how he played his way into the infiltration of the IRA.

Q2316   Dr McDonnell: Without too much pressure or weight on you, what you are suggesting here to us is that basically—

Julie Hambleton: It is all out there.  It is in the public domain.  What we are saying is not secret; it is out in the public domain.

Q2317   Dr McDonnell: Yes.  To go back to Guildford, somebody did admit responsibility for Guildford from an IRA background subsequently—years later—in my understanding, whereas Birmingham was not claimed; somebody—I do not know whether it was the Balcombe Street—

Julie Hambleton: Did they do time?  Did they go to prison?

Dr McDonnell: No.  It was some crowd that were caught for something else or involved in something else and admitted Guildford.  I think there was so much embarrassment over framing the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six that there was a certain amount of, “Let’s not go down that road again”.  That is different from yours; nobody was ever formally identified or charged in any situation.

Julie Hambleton: No.  The last investigation was in 1993.  We are just laypeople.  We are an ordinary family.  You would not believe how ordinary we were, but because the authorities are not prepared to do the job that we pay them for and they are employed to do, they forced our hands.  We just got sick to death of no one stepping up to the plate to fight for people who are not here to fight for justice themselves.  That is all we are trying to do: to fight for people who cannot do it themselves because their lives have been obliterated for no reason.  Maxine would have celebrated her 58th birthday on Sunday just gone.  She could have had children.  She could have been a barrister.  We would not be sitting here.  I do not know whether any of you have lost anybody to terrorism, but you cannot explain the feeling of utter loss.  The night we were told, which was the day after, I remember as if it had just happened five minutes ago.  I was 11, but my world fell apart.  None of us are the people that we should have been, because Maxine was the glue that held us together, because she was so significant in our family. 

Q2318   Dr McDonnell: One final question, Chairman, just very simply.  I know you have covered some of it in your statement.  I would hope that the statement will be read into the record in some shape or form, but would you just recap what you would like us as individuals or as a Committee or an inquiry to do for you before we close?

Brian Hambleton: I just cannot thank you enough, Chairman, and all you learned ladies and gentlemen who have given us the time to listen to our plight.  Any help at all. 

Julie Hambleton: Any help that you can give us or advice or guidance you can offer us.  We are just laypeople; we know nothing.  We are literally learning as we go.  We have done nothing wrong.  We have got nothing to hide.  We literally have to wear our hearts on our sleeves.  We have kept it together today.  It is very rare that one of us does not break down, but this is so important we knew we had to stay extremely strong.  We are not fighting just for Maxine; we are fighting for 20 other people.  We are fighting for 19 other families, because you have to remember one mother lost her two sons that night; her whole family was wiped out in a night.  They were Irish Catholic.  That poor woman.  The wife of one was expecting at the time.  We have met the son, who never knew his dad and never knew his uncle.  His life is devastated on the back of it.

Brian Hambleton: We have a two-foot-square concrete monument in a churchyard in the city centre of Birmingham with 21 names on that took many years for its standing.  The council did not want it on their property, so it eventually ended up on consecrated ground, which is St Philip’s churchyard in the city centre of Birmingham.  We just made some simple inquiries a couple of years ago about who paid for it, who designed it and who gave it permission to be where it was.  The answer to all those simple questions was, “We do not know”.

Julie Hambleton: They do not know.  There is no paperwork.

Brian Hambleton: That monument says everything about our campaign. 

Julie Hambleton: Everything about our campaign.  Nobody knows anything. 

Lady Hermon: And you do not know who paid for it.

Brian Hambleton: No.  No one knows anything. 

Julie Hambleton: No.  There is no paperwork trail. 

Lady Hermon: Is it the names of all those who died?

Brian Hambleton: Yes.

Julie Hambleton: Yes.  Maureen Mitchell, who was one of the survivors of the Mulberry Bush pub bombing—she was so badly injured that they called the priest to give her her last rites, but she did survive—fought for 25 years to get that erected, and then we fought last year with the council to get it conserved.  It looked like it was 100 years old; it was only 13 years old.  We have had it all cleaned and had the gold plating put on the names, because you could not see the names.  It is almost as if Birmingham is ashamed of its dead.

Q2319   Lady Hermon: What about an annual service of thanksgiving for the lives of those lost?

Julie Hambleton: We have an annual service—we have an annual memorial—but it is 40 years this year, so this is going to be a huge year.  We are planning for a commemorative concert.  This is going to be a happy occasion to remember them while they were alive, but also it is going to give us as a family, on behalf of the other families as well, an opportunity to thank the emergency services and the taxi drivers.  I do not know whether you know this, but on the night it was the taxi drivers who saved the injured, because there were no ambulances.  I think there were only two ambulances—very similar to Hillsborough, strangely enough—and it was the taxi drivers who took the injured to the hospitals, otherwise there would have been a lot more dead.  There were only two police officers on the scene.

Brian Hambleton: There is a very large sinister story attached to this evening.

Julie Hambleton: Yes.  The journalists were on strike.  There were only two police.

Brian Hambleton: There were no police; no ambulances; journalists on strike.

Julie Hambleton: It was most bizarre.  Most, most bizarre.

Lady Hermon: It is a very compelling story and account you have told us this afternoon.  It is deeply moving.

Julie Hambleton: Everything we have told you is fact. 

Lady Hermon: Yes.  I found it deeply moving.  I am just horrified it has taken such a long time for you to have just a public hearing—to come into a Select Committee and just to tell your account.

Julie Hambleton: We have been ignored by everybody at every turn. 

Lady Hermon: I am very sorry to hear that, because that increased the pain for you. 

Chair: We are pleased that you were able to come and see us.  Thank you.

Julie Hambleton: Seriously, as Brian has said and as I said at the beginning, thank you all for allowing us to come here today.

Chair: We will take on board what you have said and we will have private discussions about all of it.  It has been very useful to us.  Thank you very much indeed. 

              Oral evidence: Administrative scheme for ‘on-the-runs’, HC 177                            34