I met Conlon

The reality is somewhat different to the film:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n12_v10/ai_15235108

Respected Historian Robert Kee complains that Jim Sheridan's film is "in parts a farrago of rubbish." He notes, for example, that in the film the missing alibi which prosecutors suppressed was .that of a homeless man Conlon met on a park bench, while in reality the alibi came from an assistant manager of a fruit and vegetable shop who claimed he saw Conlon on the night of the bombing. The dramatic license, according to Kee, was motivated by the filmmaker's desire for an outdoor scene, and presumably because a conversation with a homeless man is more dramatic than the testimony of a vegetable peddler. Even more serious distortions of the legal drama ultimately undermine, Kee argues, the credibility of a film which is about the suppression of truth. Kee was one of the first to expose publicly the injustices inflicted on the Guildford Four, and has lambasted the film for telling 'so many lies that it makes its central proposition about a miscarriage of justice questionable,' and of doing 'the work of those who may wish to prevent any more of the truth emerging'. Criticisms of the inaccuracies have also been raised by several of the Maguire Seven themselves.

The film also seemed to use dramatic license when it came to the somewhat distorted police interrogations, and the actual events which took place which are also the subject of dispute. The Court of Appeal even stated "that they believed many of Mr Hill's allegations of ill-treatment were untrue".

Although this didn't stop the film showing the police as little more than torturers. Perhaps this is hardly surprising given that it was later revealed that the films Co-Writer Terry George had served a jail sentence after being arrested in a car with an Irish National Liberation Army member in 1975.

The wicked Inspector Dixon, who falsifies evidence against the Guildford Four, is fictitious. The wicked IRA operative Joe McAndrew also is fictitious. Conlon's solicitor Gareth Pierce (played by Emma Thompson) is 90 percent fictitious, and the rousing speech she delivers at the Old Bailey is a complete invention. (Solicitors do not plead at the bar in Britain. Such people are called "barristers.")

Conlon's alibi -- that he was robbing a prostitute's flat the night of the bombing -- is less than perfect. In real life, he didn't rob the prostitute's flat until 10 days later. In the movie, Conlon and his father share the same prison cell, but in real life not only did they not share the same prison cell, they did not share the same trial.

"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story," say Hollywood cynics. But the people who made In the Name of the Father aren't cynics. Indeed, they present themselves as highly moral. But this much lying is unusual on the part of people who excoriate other people for lying.


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_n8_v111/ai_14900054

A tip off from Belfast named Hill as one of the Guildford Four, it was during subsequent questioning that Hill told of his friendship with Armstrong and Conlon. This led to there arrests and the search of the Mcguire household and subsequent discovery of significant traces of nitoglycerine (and the Mcguire Seven Case).

Hill according to Bishop and Malle in their book 'The Provincial IRA' (regarded as an extremely accurate and well researched work) was a member of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA, but had fallen out with the IRA after stealing weapons and the IRA had reason to believe he was also an informant (for which the penalty was death).

During one incident Hill took an Armalite rifle from an IRA arms cache, but ran into an army patrol and, after exchanging a few shots, dropped the gun. The IRA seems to have been suspicious of this story; they thought that Hill may have given the gun to the army, and that he could even be an informer. What ever the exact circumstances, Hill seems to have been in some trouble: wanted by the security services for his role in the Shaw affair (murder of Ex-British Soldier Brian Shaw), and, according to one former intelligence officer, 'in bad odour with the Provisionals'. He fled to England, where he kept his head down. During the week he worked on building sites; the weekends he spent with Gina Clarke (his Girlfriend at the time) in Southampton. Hill later claimed that he only confessed so that Gina Clarke, who was pregnant with their child at the time, would be released.

It is believed the IRA were the ones who tipped off police about Hill after the Guildford bombings. As well as the damming confessions and forensics, police also produced witnesses from the pub who vaguely remembered a strange man and two woman at the pub on the night of the bombings, who the police believed were Armstrong and Richardson, and another untraced woman. It was believed the second pub bomb was planted by Gerry Conlon while Paul Hill kept a lookout.

A further witness for the prosecution was Brian McLoughlin, who had lived in the squat with Armstrong and Richardson. McLoughlin testified that Armstrong was always talking about bombings, and had once invited him to "do a pub". He said that altogether he had taken in about twenty parcels for Armstrong. He had once opened one himself, and found it to contain two guns and once, he had seen Armstrong opening one containing cartridges.

It should be noted there was no CCTV at the time, no DNA at the time and few witness accounts, the police were under tremendous strain to produce results and violence had errupted in Birmingham aimed at the 100,000 strong Irish Community there. Fighting broke out between Irish and English workers on the car production line at British Leyland in Birmingham, a Catholic School was burnt down and there were other such episodes.

The planting of bombs in Birmingham (Englands Second largest City) was the equivalent of going in to a crowded bar full of young people and students in the city centre (downtown) of Boston or Philadelphia and exploding bombs. The carnage was unbelievable, and emotions were obviously high. Coupled with other bombings at the time, including the M62 Coach bomb and Guildford there was now 40 innocent people dead, including two young children in the M62 bomb, and many hundreds terrible injured and maimed for life.

It was under this atmosphere that the police launched their investigations.

As well as the Confessions and the witness testimonies, there was also significant forensic evidence found in relation to the Mcguires:


The Mcguire Seven:

The evidence against the Mcguire Seven was based on a thin layer chromatography tests, carried out at the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment, which seemed to show that they had handled nitroglycerine. In fact Scientists at the 1976 trial said that they had been 'kneading' nitroglycerine.

An RARDE scientist told the May Inquiry (an inquiry in to the case) of the excitement. 'Never before had we seen so many positives on a plate at a reasonably high level of intensity. We just did not believe it . . .'

The evidence given to the Court of Appeal by the May Inquiry, led to four separate areas of doubt relating to the forensic explosive evidence.

First the thin layer chromatography test could also produce a positive result for another substance PETN, which was not then used by the IRA as an explosive (it is used in Semtex, which was then used by terrorists from the Middle East). The prosecution said that the test was unique for nitroglycerine, and that it could be distinguished from PETN by its rate of colour development. When the May inquiry examined the scientists' notebooks in 1990, it found that RARDE was very interested in PETN and that it knew 'throughout the trial that PETN was potentially confusable' with nitroglycerine.

The original trial was also told that second tests on samples from the Maguires was neither practicable or necessary. In fact follow-up tests were carried out to detect nitrotoluenes, which are typical explosives. They were all negative. The RARDE scientists failed to mention these tests at the original trial. The May report adds: 'Even then, when they first gave evidence to me, they did not tell me of the second tests.' Although as the test was deemed neither practicable or necessary, they may have also been deemed not Court worthy. Also the test for nitrotoluenes does not make the intial chromatography test any less valid.

Tests carried out for the May inquiry proved that the Maguires could have been innocently contaminated if, for example, they wiped their hands on a previously contaminated towel. This theory depended on the towel originally having been used by someone who had been handling explosives. No towel from the Maguire household was ever tested at the time.

After the inquiry's interim report, the Maguire case was sent to the appeal court. The appeal court overturned the convictions, but only on the third ground, leaving the possibility that someone who visited the household had been handling explosives.

As the May inquiry progressed it emerged that some test kits produced by RARDE for police to take samples from suspects had ether contaminated with explosives. Of course the difficulty in avoiding contamination must be considerable: RARDE not only makes test kits and carries out forensic tests on explosives, it also makes explosives on the same sites. Nevertheless a strict system of controls, using ether from the same batch in a blank comparison test, should have shown up the contamination. Whether these contaminated test kits were used on the Maguires is unknown.


This was not some conspiracy, the problem lay in the fact that traces of explosives were found on the hands (and rubber gloves) of many of the accused (the Mcguires). This is what Forensic Experts concluded at the time. It's questionable if any of the Mcguires or the Guildford Four would have been sent to prison without this forensic evidence showing bomb making activity in the Mcguire household (the Mcguires being relatives of the Conlons). The validity of the tests is now in hindsight questionable, but at the time police and officials did not have reason to question the work of the leading explosive experts from RARDE. This is the real evidence that led to the miscarriages of justice, this evidence was utterly damming at the time. It also should be noted that when the Court of Appeal dismissed the cases, it did so on the premise that their were explosive traces but this may be due to a visit to the Mcguire household rather than the Mcguires themselves, which is hardly the ringing endorsement of absoloute innocence the film potrays.

As noted earlier there was no Inspector Dixon, this charachter was ficticious, as were the conversations between Conlons solicitor and the ficticious Inspector Dixon or Government Officials and Inspector Dixon. There was no records officer off sick, and there was no tramp or park bench (ficticious and made up for the film), and the prostitute robbery recounted in the film occurred ten days after the Guildford Bombs, so was not a useful alibi, as the film seemed to imply.

The key to the Guildford Four's movie appeal is that the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense. In fact, it did no such thing. The prosecution communicated all evidence to the defence exactly as it should have.

The Mcguire Seven and Guildfour Four cases were two seperate court cases, not one as shown in the film, and Paul Hill was serving a life sentence already for the murder of Brian Shaw when the 'Guildford Court Case' proceedings started at the Old Bailey in London. Gusieppe Conlon and Gerry Conlon were never together in prison or on remand as shown in the film, and like the rest of the film much of the prison scenes are pure fiction.

During the trial of the Balcombe Street gang in February 1977 the four IRA men instructed their lawyers to "draw attention to the fact that four totally innocent people were serving sentences for three bombings in Woolwich and Guildford". They were never charged with these offences. However, no evidence has ever been presented that proves the involvement of the four men, they never actually admitted any personal responsibility, and the IRA never identified the true perpetrators of the attack. It should be noted that it was the IRA who originally implicated the four, and that the IRA would have killed Hill if they had had managed to get to him whilst he was in Southampton (he had stolen weapons from them and was believed to be an informant). Also the forensic explosive evidence suggested that the convictions were safe, and that the Balcombe Street Gang could be trying to free fellow terrorists, believed to be an active IRA service Unit. However if the Balcombe Street gang had admitted to the bombings and provided some evidence to back up their assertions, then the Guildford Four and Mcguires would have undoubtedly been released (despite the damming forensic evidence) but they didn't at the time and have never done so. Apart from some vague statement the Balcombe Street Gang had given to their lawyers there was little else to base an appeal upon at the time, and certainly no new evidence.

Finally the Court of Appeal (Criminal) is seperate from Government and the legislative. The Court consists of an Independent Group of Judges and legal experts that looked at the evidence according to the Law and from a purely independent judicial viewpoint. These cases mainly collapsed due to the possibility of cross contamination of forensics rather than any dramatic events.

http://www.criminal-information-agency.com/article.php?article=59

Whilst I have every sympathy for Gerry Conlon (and his father Gusieppe) and the other innocent people imprisoned. I have just as much, if not even more sympathy for the families of the 40 people killed and the hundreds who were badly injured in the bombings at the time. The city centre pub bombing in Birmingham, Guildford and Woolwich and those left dying on the side (including children) of the road after the M62 Coach bombing.

Furthermore I have every sympathy for the family of Brian Shaw, a soldier who left the army and married a girl from Belfast. Shaw was kidnapped by the IRA, tortured, tried by an IRA Court and then executed. Malcolm Shaw (a Church Minister) and brother of Brian Shaw remains convinced that Paul Hill played a central role in his brothers murder. As Brian Shaws widow Maureen Hall said of Hill's release - "We have to live with this decision, but we do not have to agree with it".

what, not even Paul Hill ?