Chris Mullin’s investigative book is a worthy read even now, so many years after the IRA’s deliberate for-years-denied mass-casualty anti-civilian Birmingham Pub Bombings.
The IRA’s Army Council initially denied the bombings even though the IRA bombers used the IRA’s most secret codeword – originated 15 months before in London by me – “Double X” – when they deliberately telephoned belated warnings to ensure a mass-casualty bomb outrage.
The problem with the focus on the Birmingham Six wrongful convictions has always been that the Birmingham Twenty-One innocent civilian victims of the IRA’s atrocity are sidelined and never get the attention they deserve.
Many people can name at least one member of the Birmingham Six – usually Paddy Hill – but almost no-one can name any member of the Birmingham Twenty-One – the Twenty-One Innocent Civilian Victims of the IRA’s Birmingham Pub Bombings.
Worse – with the eternal focus on the Birmingham Six wrongful convictions, the IRA’s LEADERSHIP that ordered the bombings – that created the IRA units that carried out the bombings – that supplied the ideology, the explosives, the detonators, the cash, the guns, the training, the sworn-in ‘Volunteers’ – that directed almost 30 years of terrorism – bombings and murders and maimings – that IRA leadership enjoyed almost no attention whatsoever and rode off into the sunset of the Secret Amnesty granted to the IRA’s Army Council leadership firstly by Irish Prime Minister/Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and shortly thereafter by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
In this article, I want to briefly concentrate on the Dark Side of Chris Mullin’s book – I’m reading the updated 2024 edition.
The Dark Side
Chapter 38 begins on page 329 with a number of startling and shocking claims:
There was no special secret about the identity of those who organised the Birmingham pub bombings. Many people knew, or at least had a pretty good idea. The identity of those who carried out the bombings was, however, a deeper secret.
Before August 1974, when the first major arrests were made, the Birmingham IRA was a fairly leaky organisation. In the pubs and clubs where Irish people gather there were many people who were not involved in the bombings, but had a pretty good idea who was.
As they would now admit, Johnny Walker, Richard McIlkenny, Billy Power and Gerry Hunter were certainly among those in a position to make an educated guess. It was dangerous knowledge and nobody asked questions. Many saw the bombings as a way of bringing home to British people what was going on in Northern Ireland. They condoned it as long as no one was getting hurt. And with the exception of an army bomb-disposal officer who was killed in September 1973, no innocent person was hurt in any of the Birmingham IRA’s fifty or so bombings that preceded the explosions at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town.
When I read this part of the 2024 version of the book, I was shocked – the implication of the sentence beginning “As they would now admit….” appears to suggest that specifically these 4 of the Birmingham Six were “certainly in a position to make an educated guess” as to those who were “involved in the bombings” if not as well in a position to know who was organising the bombings…
Note that Chris Mullin has now separated these 4 of the Birmingham 6 – Johnny Walker, Richard McIlkenny, Billly Power and Gerry Hunter – from the remaining 2 – Paddy Hill and Hugh Callaghan…
He has differentiated The Birmingham 4 who have more recently apparently been willing to make admissions from the Birmingham 2 who have apparently had no admissions to make.
What the f*** is going on here, I asked myself?
The journalist and later Member of Parliament who initially argued for the wrongful convictions of the entire Birmingham Six is now appearing to imply that Four of these “would now admit” that they had knowledge of those who were carrying out IRA bombings in Birmingham evidently before and even on the evening of the Birmingham Pub Bombings.
Mullin has also claimed that there was no special secret about the IRA leaders who organised the bombings – a strange claim since it appeared that nobody knew who organised the bombings for many years until Mullin himself belatedly identified some of them with the help of unidentified members of the IRA and with some help from one of the Birmingham Six, Johnny Walker.
Johnny Walker of the Birmingham Six had – during the court trial – named persons he believed to have been involved in the bombings.
Johnny Walker had petitioned the British Home Secretary with his list of names.
Johnny Walker had even sent a letter to the Irish Prime Minister/Taoiseach with the same list of names.
If you were to believe the police interrogators, Johnny Walker had also taken police around Birmingham to point out houses believed to have been used by the IRA to store IRA explosives and/or weapons.
Johnny Walker claimed that one of three co-defendants sharing the dock with the Birmingham Six, Mick Murray, had been one of the IRA bombers who threatened him to keep his mouth shut or else he and his family would suffer the consequences.
After Walker made these names public, he was quoted as saying his life was “not worth a plugged nickel”.
I was speaking with one of the remaining Birmingham Six this evening whom I have known for 48 years and I pointed out Mullin’s claims about him and the other three – he stated that he was SHOCKED and SURPRISED at the claim by Mullin that he would have known anything about the IRA bombers at the time – and said that he had no recollection of ever having been interviewed by Mullin in relation to the book and had no idea how Mullin reached this surprising conclusion – a conclusion which he utterly rejected.
He had not noticed this paragraph in the book until I mentioned it to him.
Mullin has apparently “reverted to type” in the sense that even now – latterly – the Englishman is dividing the Birmingham 6 into 4 versus 2 – two absolute goodies (Paddy Hill/Hugh Callaghan) and the suspect 4 – Johnny Walker, Richard McIlkelly, Billy Power and Gerry Hunter.
There were always people who believed that Johnny Walker and Richard McIlkenny were involved with the local IRA unit in Birmingham.
Before the IRA’s Birmingham Pub Bombings in November 1974, neither Sinn Féin nor the IRA were illegal in Britain – nor was membership of Sinn Féin or the IRA a crime – it was only AFTER the IRA’s Birmingham Pub Bombings that legislation was rushed through to proscribe the IRA.
There was evidence of a kind about Johnnie Walker – supplied by Walker himself in various petitions, letters and statements – that connected Walker to knowledge of IRA activities.
There was no evidence linking Richard McIlkelly that I am aware of other than that he was close to Johnny Walker for some years before their arrest.
I have never heard that Billy Power or Gerry Hunter had any such knowledge.
I had involvement in the Birmingham Six case since I met some of the Six in Wormwood Scrubs in 1977.
I was the person who involved Gareth Peirce in the case, as well as Bishop Edward Daly, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, Cardinal Basil Hume, Lord Longford, Labour MPs Andrew Bennett and Phillip Whitehead and others.
I was the person who got Paddy Hill writing letters rather than going on a nihilistic hungerstrike to the death.
Only Chris Mullin can clarify his new 4/2 division of the Birmingham Six and claims about those we could now rightly refer to as The Suspicious Four versus The Unsuspicious Two.
Mullin has once more placed the emphasis on the Birmingham Six rather than on the Birmingham Twenty-One.
That’s the core of the problem with the ongoing focus on the Birmingham Six or latterly the Birmingham Four – not only do the Birmingham Twenty-One get sidelined, the IRA’s leadership that was in control of all of the IRA’s murders and bombings in Ireland and Britain escapes entirely any investigaton, scrutiny, naming or prosecution.
The Even Darker Side
Chris Mullin was a journalist who investigated what he believed were the wrongful convictions of those who became known as The Birmingham Six.
This was a good deed in every way.
In order to further his investigations into the IRA’s long denied atrocity, Mullin gave IRA terrorists (and any of the IRA’s supporters who helped him) promises that while he would investigate the IRA to uncover the innocence of the Birmingham Six, he would not name any of the terrorists he might identify while they were still alive and – obviously – still liable to prosecution before the courts for mass murder of 21 innocent civilians.
Mullin based his unwillingness to name terrorist mass murderers on a mix of his journalistic claim to protect sources and the unbreakable quality of his word as his bond – a bond given to illegal terrorist bombers.
In my opinion, this was a dumb and immoral deed.
Imagine for a moment if Mullin had set out to clear the names of Six wrongly convicted paedophiles and worked with organised paedophile rings in Bradford – say – to prove their innocence.
Would he have similarly held to a promise to blatant law breaking child mass rapists (and their supporters) that he would never name the ACTUAL child rapists while endeavouring to prove the innocence of the wrongly convicted child rapists?
Would his journalistic source protection and word as his bond override the claims of the innocent child victims of mass rape to a right to protection from rapists and future rapes and to the expectation that all good citizens would strive to protect them and to see that their rapists would face lawful prosecution and punishment before the courts?
To see the mass child rapists put away to prevent them from further mass rapes?
I suppose it depends on whether you view the IRA’s mass-casualty anti-civilian bombings as somehow politically acceptable and somewhat justified – you bless the mass-murdering IRA terrorists with a professional benediction of journalistic source protection and a personal honourable gift of word as bond.
No mention of professionally or personally honourably protecting the innocent civilian population from further bombing outrages from IRA terrorists who recently bombed and would likely continue bombing in the future – they were to be protected from identification both by the innocent victims’ families and by the police and courts.
It was a case of Protect the IRA terrorists first and foremost, and forget about the innocent civilian victims of bombings by allowing the IRA terrorists to continue as before – to allow the IRA bombers to perhaps continue bombing into the future endangering other innocent civilians…
This is – by any measure – a pretty darkened version of ethereal journalistic separation from the wider innocent civilian population with a distinct personal ‘honour’ leaning toward a group of self-appointed IRA terrorist bombers who cared little whether their bombs killed one or twenty-one or a hundred and one innocent civilians.
Even the argument that the IRA’s own leadership’s subsequent admission that the IRA was a load of bollocks when they disbanded most of the IRA to secure the secret amnesty from Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair – this admission by the IRA leadership that the IRA should no longer exist, could no longer exist, should never have existed at all – even this IRA self-abhorrence and self-abnegation did not move the proud Mullin to dissolve his dumb claim to source protection and his honourable gift to IRA terrorists who were never honest or honourable…
According to IRA leader Gerry Adams, the IRA no longer existed – so why would a promise still hold to a corporate terrorist body now dissolved and amnestied by two governments?
Where was the threat of prosecution post secret Tony Blair/Bertie Ahern “On The Run” letters and post both governments’ secret deal with the IRA’s Army Council that prosecutions were over?
Naming names was never going to lead to any prosecution – the IRA had been amnestied, absolved and awarded Mi££ions in Peace Dividends in Northern Ireland – it was game and War Over.
But like Hiroo Onoda – the last Japanese soldier on the lonely desert island holding out and still fighting World War II decades after the cessation – Chris Mullin upholds his proud promise to dishonourable IRA terrorists who murdered civilians wholesale and who couldn’t care a detonator for honour.
To Name or Not to Name
For a man who cavils at the very idea of naming a mass-murdering IRA terrorist who is hiding out even now guilty of the murders of 21 innocent Birmingham civilians, Mullin has no qualms about naming four of the Birmingham Six into a newly suspicious Admission Category – without even informing these four that he was intending to do this.
So it’s okay to nominate four of the unsuspecting innocent Birmingham Six into a category of suspicion without their knowledge or agreement, but it’s not okay to nominate the last of the IRA Birmingham Pub Bombers because of a promise made to the IRA’s terrorist leadership [now dissolved?] and owing to a journalistic protocol he believes to be higher than the law of the land and of more importance than the claims of 21 innocent civilian Birminghan victims’ families to truth and to justice…
Going After Monkeys or Organ Grinders?
But the other problem with Mullin’s approach was that everyone got caught up in the search for the IRA’s monkey front line cannon fodder Volunteers who planted the bombs…
But why not search out and identify and prosecute the IRA’s leadership that gave the orders for the bombings?
In an interview with leading journalist Mary Holland back then, IRA Army Council member and leader David O’Connell/Dáithí Ó Conaill offered a warning to British civilians three days before the IRA’s Birmingham Pub Bombings:
The IRA Army Council’s warning couldn’t have been clearer – the IRA was going to increase the civilian casualties to pressure the British government to withdraw from Northern Ireland.
We said last week in a statement that because of the terrible war in Ireland, they will suffer the consequences.
Mary Holland:
Will you escalate that campaign?
David O’Connell:
We will.
Why go after the dancing monkeys when the Organ Grinders were well known to both the security forces, to the Irish and British governments and to the security services who were regularly negotiating with the IRA’s Army Council leadership?
Why only seek to name and prosecute the cannon fodder front line IRA volunteers who were under orders and not the IRA leaders who gave the orders and directed international terrorism for 30 years and who escaped all prosecution?
You’d have to ask the IRA Terrorist Amnesty Duet of Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair…
And wait another 70 years for the answers…
The Irish Peace Process 