Relatives of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombings have said “England’s biggest unsolved mass murder of the 20th century” should be at the top of the government’s list as they renewed their calls for a public inquiry on the 50th anniversary of the atrocity.
On 21 November 1974, 21 people were killed and 220 injured when bombs exploded in two Birmingham pubs, in an attack widely believed to have been orchestrated by the Provisional IRA.
Six men who were convicted of the bombings in one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history had their convictions quashed at the court of appeal in 1991. No one has been convicted since.
The families of those killed are fighting for a statutory public inquiry to find out why no one has been brought to justice and say that, as time goes on, people are dying without getting answers about what happened to their loved ones.
“It wears you down because we’re all getting older. Surely there could be no greater service for Keir Starmer and his home secretary than to give us a statutory public inquiry,” said Julie Hambleton, whose 18-year-old sister, Maxine, was killed in the explosion at the Tavern in the Town pub.
“Is 50 years not long enough? We have, quite rightly, seen public inquiries for things like Grenfell, the Manchester arena bombings, the Salisbury poisonings – so our question is, where is ours?
“I believe the British establishment have an unwritten motto, which is, if you ignore them, they’ll go away. But we cannot in good conscience continue to live our lives and not fight for those who no longer have theirs. We are their voice.”
On Thursday a memorial event will take place outside New Street station in Birmingham, followed by a service at St Philip’s Cathedral. The prime minister said he would not be able to attend and would send the West Midlands mayor, Richard Parker, instead.
Hambleton said: “This year I think is going to be the most difficult. We have supporters flying in from all over the world, complete strangers who want to help and pay their respects to people they didn’t know.
“The public inquiry isn’t only for us and the 21, it’s for everyone affected by this.”
George Jones, whose father, Cliff, was killed in the Mulberry Bush pub while on a break from his job as a postal worker at New Street station said: “It gets more poignant every year, and this year it will be especially so.”
Jones said he could still vividly recall the moment he heard about the bombings on a news flash on TV, and the alarm being raised when his father failed to come home from work. “It was very traumatic, losing him in such a public way,” he said. “It completely changed our lives for ever.”
He said their push for justice had been hindered by the rapid changeover of ministers in recent years. “I’ve lost count of the number of home secretaries and government officials we’ve gone through, and each time you have to start from the very beginning. And that’s painful. It really is. It’s draining,” he said.
The security minister, Dan Jarvis, told parliament in October that he and the home secretary would consider requests for a public inquiry as soon as possible, but there has been no formal commitment.
In May, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery was launched with the power to investigate deaths related to the Troubles, but there have been calls for it to be scrapped after judges in Belfast ruled the government had too much veto power over what material investigators could release.
Hambleton said the Justice for the 21 campaign group had no faith in the commission. “We will not have anything to do with it. It has only been introduced so the state can control the narrative,” she said.
Reflecting on the loss of her sister, who was killed seconds after entering the pub to hand out invitations to her housewarming party, Hambleton said: “She’d be 68 now, she could have had grandchildren. I mean, who knows, she could have been a lawyer because she’d received a letter after she was killed to say she’d been accepted into university to study law.
“So many of the victims had their whole lives ahead of them.”
A government spokesperson said: “Our deepest sympathies remain with all those who continue to be affected by the horrific pub bombings in Birmingham in 1974.”
