FAMILIES bereaved by the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings marched through the city centre this week, renewing their call for a judge-led public inquiry.
Supporters of the Justice4the21 campaign walked from Hagley Road to West Midlands Police headquarters in Snow Hill.
Twenty-one people were killed and more than 200 injured when bombs exploded at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town on November 21, 1974. Among those killed was 18-year-old Maxine Hambleton.
Her sister Julie Hambleton remains scathing about the families’ treatment by public representatives.
“Politicians claim to care for victims of crime with their empty platitudes and yet their action, or lack of, tells us something completely different,” she said.
The British government rejected calls for a public inquiry last year, saying the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) offered the best route to answers. Campaigners disagree.
“Only a judge-led public inquiry can give us the answers that we desire most,” Mrs Hambleton said. She added: “Successive governments have used silence as their weapon to conceal the truth. All of us have been left with no truth, no justice and no accountability.”
Campaigners have also questioned whether the Birmingham bombings should be dealt with under the Troubles legacy framework.
“We have never been part of the Good Friday Agreement and we still do not know who bombed Birmingham,” Mrs Hambleton said.
Lorna Evans, whose uncle Jimmy Craig was killed, said younger generations of relatives must continue the campaign.
“It’s about more than just identifying the perpetrators,” she said. “It’s about honouring the 21 victims. It’s also about understanding the failures in our justice system by our police and by our government so it never ever happens to any other families going forward.”
The march took place on Thursday, September 24, the first of two days of events marking the International Day of Birmingham.
The Birmingham bombings
SIX Irishmen, who became known as The Birmingham Six, were wrongly convicted of the bombings and spent 16 years in prison before their convictions were quashed in 1991.
The IRA never formally claimed responsibility for the bombings. A 2019 inquest found that an inadequate coded warning, attributed to the IRA, contributed to the deaths. The caller was not identified, and no one has ever been convicted of carrying out the attacks. Men alleged to have been involved were named during the 2019 inquest, but the evidence was insufficient to prosecute. No one has ever been convicted for carrying out the attacks