Bombing was the greater injustice - Murder inquests

A BRITISH coroner has ordered fresh inquests into the IRA Birmingham pub bombings in November 1974. The decision was taken following a campaign by the relatives of the 21 people killed when bombs exploded in two pubs within ten minutes of each other.

Whatever the outcome of those inquests, the reality of pain and grief remains for the families and loved ones of those who were murdered by the IRA.

Shortly after the bombings, the inquests into the deaths were opened but immediately closed without any finding, because the men that the authorities thought to be responsible were in police custody.

Those men were the Birmingham Six who would have their convictions quashed in 1991 following one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

But the greatest injustice of all was conducted by mass murderers who bombed innocent people in our name, and the name of an all-Ireland republic.

We should never forget that.