Another inquest into the past.
Julie Hambleton on the Birmingham pub bombings: ‘I owe it to my sister to fight’
It’s 42 years since the atrocity, and after a long campaign, a new inquest will open soon. But the sister of one of the victims fears that justice is still far away
Given that the wrong people were convicted, I can understand that the families will feel cheated of justice. However, we know what happened. Those responsible who are still alive aren’t likely to come forward and confess, so they aren’t going to be convicted, for there is no evidence to link them to the crime. Besides, this is likely to fall under the amnesty created by the Good Friday Agreement:
One of the difficulties Julie and her campaign have faced is the question of whether the bombings fall under the Good Friday Agreement, which included a vaguely worded understanding between the British and Irish governments for the early release of prisoners serving sentences in connection with paramilitary groups, but no amnesty for crimes that had not been prosecuted. The Birmingham bombings appeared to fall into a grey area of this already opaque understanding. For one thing, the IRA had never claimed responsibility for the attacks, for another there had been the unsafe prosecution of the Birmingham Six.
Even if it is decided not, it muddies the waters. Also, the possibility of a safe conviction after the passage of over forty years is unlikely.
What we don’t need is another expensive inquest or inquiry into what we already know. There are better things to be spending our money on. Sometimes, we are cheated of justice. That is life. Move on. Spending other people’s money raking over the past solves nothing and closure for a small amount of people is not worth millions of pounds of our money. Sorry, but it ain’t.