‘Apology exceeded our expectations’

IT was a long time coming, but when Tony Blair issued the prime ministerial public apology to the Conlon and Maguire families for their wrongful imprisonment for IRA bomb attacks, it exceeded their expectations.

Mr Blair's apology and declaration that those jailed for the 1974 Guildford and Woolwich bombings deserved to be "completely and publicly exonerated" was what they had sought for years.

The apology was delivered in a TV statement in his office in the House of Commons and then in private to those wronged by the British legal system. He then shook their hands.