In the Name of the Son - The Gerry Conlon Story by O'Rawe Richard Depp Johnny

Author:O'Rawe, Richard,Depp, Johnny
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785371400
Publisher: International Specialized Book Services
Published: 2017-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

Nine

On the day after the Guildford Four had walked out of the Old Bailey, the British government had appointed Sir John May to lead a public inquiry into the convictions of the eleven people charged with the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings.

Sir John bared his teeth in July 1990 when he forwarded to the government his Interim report on the Maguire Case. In this report he criticised the trial judge Sir John Donaldson’s handling of the Maguire Seven case and questioned the credibility of the forensic evidence that had been presented to the court. What is more, he recommended that the Maguire Seven case should go back to the court of appeal. When this occurred, the court of appeal quashed the convictions of the Maguire Seven, on 26 June 1991.

It was looking good for an even-handed report until, on 30 July 1992, Sir John met the Home Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, and the Attorney General, Sir Nicholas Lyell, and at that meeting a decision was taken that Sir John should not publicly examine the roles of senior police officers, lawyers and those involved in the Guildford Four convictions. The grounds put forward for this fundamental departure was that evidence, which may have been given in public to Sir John’s inquiry, could have proved prejudicial to the defences of the three police officers who had been charged (and subsequently acquitted) with attempting to pervert the course of justice in the Guildford Four case. So, from being a public inquiry where evidence submitted by all parties to the inquiry was open to scrutiny, it went to a closed session, where only Sir John May could put questions to Crown witnesses and hear their responses.

Alastair Logan, the solicitor for the Maguire family, and Carole Richardson and Paul Hill, had always been highly critical of the move from a public inquiry to a closed court: ‘The consequences of that [closed session] was that neither the defendants nor their legal representatives were entitled to be present or to know what evidence may have been given to him [Judge May].’ Suspicions of an establishment cover-up were further aroused when the British government slapped a 30-year embargo on the secret evidence given to Judge May. Commenting on the embargo, Logan said: ‘We have no explanation, firstly as to why it [the embargo] was changed [to 75 years], or any explanation as to why it should be embargoed anyway. After all, it was a public inquiry. I don’t feel that justice is seen to be done if there are secret deals going on, secret parts of Sir John May’s Inquiry, and secret documents held by the government.’1

Gerry Conlon believed that he knew why the embargo had been imposed and extended: ‘The government knew, right from the start, that we were innocent. They knew we had nothing to do with the IRA, but they didn’t care. That’s why they have a 75-year immunity order on our case. Because they want all the people involved to be dead before they release our files.

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