Curious and curiouser. The relatives of the victims want to re-open the Birmingham Bomb inquest on the basis that much new evidence has come to life.I was writing recently about the fact that there always seems to be a parallel story running beneath the “official” story that we are constantly being fed . One narrative is deemed suitable for current popular consumption at the given time and another fable than may have more hoary , jagged truths sticking out of it like bramble spines is hidden away from prying eyes. A story to be approached more gingerly and preferably with gloved hands.
The Birmingham bombing in 1974 was a calculated act of terror aimed at making plenty of impact in the UK. The thinking being that blowing up the economy of Belfast and Norneverland, while bleeding Britain dry , wasn’t going to make any difference to the complacency of everyday life in Britain . Something closer to home would be deemed a blow of greater significance.So it happened that one of the targets was a pub in Birmingham. The IRA claimed it but the the powers that be arrested and imprisoned six innocent men for the deed.They were eventually released after much abuse and many years in prison, when their cases were quashed in 1991.
Now it seems that even at this stage there was adouble-agent working within the IRa who had warned prior to the bombing .It has been floated that these six men were known to have been innocent from the very first but were deemed expendable to protect the “mole” working undercover within the security forces.
Ashley Underwood QC, who represents some victims’ families, said there was “reason to believe it’s the case that :
“There is reason to believe the gang of murderers had an informant in their ranks and that the police knew in advance.”
“And there is reason to believe the police had sufficient time, between the telephone warnings and the first bomb going off, to evacuate – and that the emergency services could have arrived earlier – but that records about those things were falsified.”
Depending on your political persuasion , you might believe that either this was a gang of heartless murderers with evil intent or a cooly efficient blow against the empire by Irish republicans. The result is much the same in that many innocent people died in a bomb blast and six other innocent men spent the best part of two decadesimprisoned unfairly.
There has always been talk that the real perpetrators were never caught and now we have another reason to wonder just why that is.
Hot on the heels of the “Stakeknife” double-agent intrigue comes this latest chapter of possible chicanery. It’s is becoming very evident that the British Government have a lot of very interesting stories on the back-burner. I wonder how many more will bubble to the surface in these coming months.
more bad apples ?
The whole orchard is rotten, Antonio and always was from the very beginning.
Possibly we are now beginning to learn why Tony Blair changed the rules on inquiries, and Cameron has put a total block on them.
They could see how the dirty tricks scabs of their intelligence world would be picked and picked until some ‘vista too awful to contemplate’ would be laid bare.
The old saying ‘Your sins shall find you out’ may be coming into play – hopefully!
Blair told Ahern that the paper trail on the coverup of the Finucane murder went all the way to the Thatcher cabinet table. At that time several of the politicians involved were still in positions of power. Which is why Blair then told Ahern that there was no way in hell there was ever going to be an inquiry.
More recently was Cameron’s quote about the civil servants of the day still being in place. So there won’t be an inquiry. That quote was subsequently retracted, but it’s consistent with the above. And Blair’s reneging on following through on Corey.
Is there any IRA operation that wasn’t penetrated? Presumably Bishopsgate & Baltic Exchange weren’t. But I would no longer be surprised if it transpired they were.
there have been three developments in the case including 1) new potential forensic evidence, 2)a book by a former IRA spymaster Kieran Conway (who has been interviewed by police) , and 3) a first-hand account from a now dead West Midlands fireman Alan Hill.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/birmingham-pub-bombings-police-may-have-been-tipped-off-by-ira-mole-before-deadly-blasts-a6865601.html
Reading this site has been a revelation to me! Given the narrative that IRA = good, Brits = bad, we can only assume that the Brits carried this out and blamed it on the IRA! I am sure in other news stories re-hashed recently that the saintly IRA couldn’t have planted the bomb on the bus full of SCHOOLCHILDREN that Arlene Foster was on. It was probably a Brit who was trying to kill that wee Catholic girl on the bus all along.
I’m amazed a man of your intelligence wastes his time reading such a rubbish site, CC….
Well Concerned Citizen…we’ll hardly reduce it all to some simple addition.
.but..
“.Depending on your political persuasion , you might believe that either this was a gang of heartless murderers with evil intent or a cooly efficient blow against the empire by Irish republicans. The result is much the same in that many innocent people died in a bomb blast and six other innocent men spent the best part of two decades imprisoned unfairly.
There has always been talk that the real perpetrators were never caught and now we have another reason to wonder just why that is.”
…You’ll surely agree it would make for interesting reading if a “brit”, as you’ll , no doubt ,call him ,was also a fully paid up member of the PIRA and was by default also responsible for bombing all those people and in essence also imprisoning those six innocent men..
.Me ? I find that kind of thing fascinating….
“I am sure in other news stories re-hashed recently that the saintly IRA couldn’t have planted the bomb on the bus full of SCHOOLCHILDREN that Arlene Foster was on”
You know as well as the rest of us CC that the target was a UDR man who was injured. True, even from a Republican perspective that was a horrible risk to take but from my knowledge I know of no school children that was hurt.
In other news CC, how many CHILDREN, not just school children, have been killed due to the British invasion of Iraq? How many Boer CHILDREN were killed in British concentration camps through starvation? How many Mau Mau CHILDREN were killed (and raped) by the British in the 1950’s? How many CHILDREN were killed during the famine in India where 26 million people died and the British deliberately ignored and neglected the situation? That last one was strange…..didn’t they do exactly that in Ireland during the Great “Famine” where British ships were exporting 4 times as much food during the “famine” years from Ireland to England than the years before it?…..
Estimates of CHILDREN, and children alone, killed by the British run into the tens of millions CC.
So yes, some would say its fairly accurate to say: Brits = bad, IRA = good.
it’s spelt: “intelligence”, Jude. (But good point).
Well spotted, CC. Of course it was a deliberate mistake in order to sift the wheat from the chaff…:)
I was thinking that meself Jude …bells were ringing and hounddogs were howling …but then I drop the odd clanger meself in my haste and abandon .I sometimes even make up brand new words and nobody notices!
I was watching the BBC and ITV news last night and when it came to the Birmingham Six both of them said that the Birmingham Six conviction was a “miscarriage of justice”, implying in some way that it was all one big “accident”. It certainly was no accident, those 6 individuals were deliberately imprisoned by the British Government knowing full well they were innocent and they were only released do to the pressure from millions of people who supported the Birmingham Six campaign for freedom.
The Birmingham Six, along with the Conlon family, were brutally treated during their time of imprisonment by prisoners and the prison staff themselves. As we know already in the Conlon case each of them were beaten and tortured over a number of days in order to sign confessions and not one, NOT ONE, of those police officers, just like the vast majority of British soldiers who murdered people here, have been sent to prison, why? because they were ordered to do what they did by the British Government and now the British Government are breaking international laws by preventing Justice and protecting them.
The Birmingham bomb was just like Bloody Friday, warnings were given by the IRA and there was enough time to empty the area and prevent civilian casualties but the British Government deliberately ignored the warnings in order to cause atrocities to combat the IRA strategy of causing economic damage and disruption. If the IRA wanted to murder many civilians they could’ve easily have done so by planting no warning bombs like Unionist paramilitaries did. So it makes no sense for the IRA to give warnings if they wanted to murder innocent civilians and cause carnage.
Ryan
What happened to the Birmingham six was a disgrace there is no doubt about that.
However what you state as fact has yet to be proved.
The lawyer for the victims families says “there is reason to believe..” in referring to the warnings given.
Perhaps you should keep an open mind until we hear what evidence she has?
If the PIRA did not want to murder civilians,why were they leaving bombs in crowded pubs in the first place? No empty factories or bridges to blow up?