The Birmingham Six – Free At Last
After 16 years of protesting their innocence, the cases against the Birmingham Six have collapsed and the men have been freed. The six men were in English prisons since 1974 because, in the words of Shane McGowan, they were caught “being Irish in the wrong place and at the wrong time.”
The Court of Appeals in Britain, which has been examining the case since last August, announced that the police evidence against the Six was no longer credible.
This evidence included traces of “explosives” on the men’s hands which could have been caused by cigarettes or playing cards, written confessions from four of the men which they say were beaten out of them, and documents which the court now says were falsified by the police.
Since then, the West Midlands police Serious Crimes squad, whose members were instrumental in the Six’s conviction, were investigated and charged with assaults and framing of suspects, and the IRA have always maintained that the six have no connection to them. Perhaps the most infamous quote came from an appeals hearing in 1977 when the presiding judge, Lord Denning, said that if the appeal succeeded, “It would mean that police were guilty of perjury that they were guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were involuntary and were improperly admitted as evidence and that the convictions were erroneous…. This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say ‘It cannot be right that these actions go any further.’”
But thanks to the efforts of countless Irish and Irish-American groups, members of both the British Parliament and the U.S. Congress, and legal associations from all over the world, the case did go on. When the Guildford Four, who also claimed they were wrongfully jailed in England for IRA pub bombings at around the same time that the Six were picked up, had their cases dismissed because of flimsy evidence in October 1989, it seemed like only a matter of time before the Six would be freed as well.
The Six – Paddy Joe Hill, Gerry Hunter, John Walker, Hugh Callaghan, Richard McIlkenny and Billy Power – are all by now middle-aged men, some of whom have children who are adults themselves now. To the British justice system, their case has been another major embarrassment, as they are living proof of what can happen to people in England who happen to have an Irish brogue.
Haughey Holds Onto Power
Ireland’s Taoiseach, Charles Haughey was supposed to have been down for the count after last November’s presidential election, when his Fianna Fail party lost control of the presidency for the first time in history A political scandal erupted prior to the election, and Haughey fired his defense minister, Brian Lenihan because of it.
Lenihan lost his bid for the presidency, and many people blamed Haughey.
But it now appears as if the “Lenihan Factor” is over.
After a winter of calls for Haughey’s resignation and rumblings within the ranks of Fianna Fail, Haughey emerged victorious with the coming of spring. His popularity has catapulted upwards, and his own party now seems firmly behind him.
All this was not achieved without sacrifice however, as Haughey has gone to great pains to change his party’s image to make it more appealing to young people. He reshuffled his cabinet, and in the coming June local elections he said that he hopes to run younger candidates and a few more women too presumably in an attempt to shed the party’s popular image as an “old boys’ club.”
And the election of Mary Robinson to the presidency seems to have taken an effect on Haughey’s policies towards such sticky subjects as divorce and birth control. His party has taken an uncharacteristic turn away from the conservative Catholic line, as he has hinted that it will be considering reforms in social legislation, such as an amendment to the law which bans divorce in Ireland, and that it will not object to the loosening of restrictions on the sale of condoms.
The condom issue in particular has been a very hot one lately indeed, with one store in Dublin being fined £500 because it sold condoms to people under the age of 18. There have been many calls to lower that age to 16, and also to allow condoms to be sold in places other than pharmacies, which is where they’re restricted to now.
Whatever happens, it’s a sure bet that Haughey who some political analysts thought was dead in the water, will ride out the troubles for at least another time being and retain control of his party and of the Irish government.
Furor Over Gays at St. Patrick’s Parade
New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade hit the front pages of newspapers across the country this year when a New York-based Irish lesbian and gay group was barred from marching by the parade committee.
The committee, which is a sub-group of the New York State Ancient Order of Hibernians, barred the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization because of “physical and municipal restrictions,” namely that the city had demanded the “world’s largest parade” be kept to a length of four hours. The city’s mayor, David Dinkins, tried to mediate a compromise by offering the committee an extra hour, at a cost of $100,000 to the city so that the gay group as well as about 30 other groups which were said to be on a waiting list could march.
But when the committee turned down the offer, the gay group claimed that they were being unfairly discriminated against, and many New Yorkers, especially those who were fed up with the way the parade committee has managed to run the parade into some sort of a controversy every year in recent memory agreed.
When a renegade division of the A.O.H., Division 7 tried to avert a confrontation by inviting the gay group to march with them, and then Mayor Dinkins announced that he would not be marching at the front of the parade but back with the gay group, the table was set for a raucous parade. The Mayor who had not been doing too well in popularity polls at the time anyway was greeted with a chorus of boos and jeers, and had a couple of beer cans thrown in his direction by people who did not like his supporting the entrance of a gay group to the parade.
And five members of the parade committee on the reviewing stands decked out in top hats and tails, turned their backs on the mayor and the gays as they marched by.
Although the parade was unfortunately marred by controversy, Mayor Dinkins has said that he will be working with the parade committee as well as the national leadership of the A.O.H. so as to avoid a repeat of this year’s debacle on Fifth Avenue.
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