The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

1974, saw some particularly horrific bombings. The Dublin, Monaghan and M62 atrocities have been adverted to. Later in the year the Provisionals carried out no-warning pub bombings at Guildford, on 5 October, and at Birmingham, on 21 November. In the former, five people were killed and fifty-four injured. In the latter nineteen died and 182 were injured. The outrage which followed these terrible deeds, and the pressure on police to obtain convictions, resulted in innocent people being sentenced for all three mainland bombings. Their ‘unthinkable suffering handed down in the name of justice’1 has since passed into the lexicon of British injustice in Ireland. Judith Ward, who was afflicted by psychiatric problems, was freed in 1992 after eighteen years, having been falsely imprisoned for the M62 bombing. The Maguire Seven, jailed in 1976 on trumped-up charges of handling explosives used in the bombings, served sentences of between four and fourteen years. One of the Guildford Four, Giuseppe Cordon, died in jail. His son Gerry served fourteen years, after a file which contained evidence that he had been in London on the night of the Guildford bombing was marked by the prosecuting authorities: ‘NOT to be shown to the defence.’2 Conlon said that he signed a confession after being threatened by a police officer that ‘…an accident would be arranged for my mother and sister. He said that if a soldier shot my mother it would be put down to an accident and British soldiers were neve...