well, that's the theory. in practice, things go wrong. 50 years ago, six men were wrongly convicted and imprisoned for terrible ira bombings in birmingham. my guest writer and former politician, chris mullin, was instrumental in exposing this grave injustice. much trust was lost then. has it been restored? chris mullin, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me.

it's great to have you in the studio. this year marks the 50th anniversary of those terrible bombings in birmingham in the english midlands. bombs, of course, planted by the ira. you've been intimately involved in the case for many, many years, and, in fact, your book on the case has just been republished. does that indicate that you believe that case and its fallout still has enormous resonance in the uk? well, the ripples still spread outwards, even after all these years. two years ago, the west midlands police took me to the old bailey in an attempt to force me to disclose sources in this case. happily, thejudge threw the case out, so i don't suppose we'll be hearing about that again. the case did lead to some significant changes to the british criminaljustice system, and some of them have made things better. but we still have problems. we want to talk a great deal about that and changes

which indeed were very necessary as was exposed by this case. let us go back to the beginning, to november 197a. give me the context for this ira attack on two targets in birmingham. what was going on at the time? well, the ira had brought, as they would see it, the campaign to the british mainland, and they were planting bombs in many parts of britain at the time. when you say the campaign, it was their military campaign to get british forces, the british army, out of northern ireland. the army, of course, being there because of strife between the nationalist and unionist communities in northern ireland, which really kicked off in the late �*60s. yes, that's right. the pub bombings were the culmination of a series of about 50 bombings in and around the west midlands, all done by the same group of people and always targeted against property rather than individuals. and in this case, the targets

were not the pubs or the people in them. the targets were the tax office in new street, which was above one of the pubs, the tavern in the town, and the rotunda, which was a distinctive round office block in the centre of birmingham. and the other pub was in the base of that. and the idea was, apparently, that there should be a warning and there was a warning, but it came too late. it was botched. it came too late before the people could be evacuated and the results were horrendous. 21 dead and 200 injured. yeah. now, it's also, to understand what happens next, it's important to, i guess, get a feel for how much tension there was in england at that particular time. and to put it bluntly, how much anti—irish feeling there was, because there'd already been a number of bomb attacks on targets in england. a number of people had been

killed and it had stoked a great deal of anger. yes. and it led immediately to a big backlash against the irish community in birmingham. irish shops were attacked, irish businesses were attacked. individuals at the car plant who were of irish origin were attacked and had to be sent home. and there were calls, of course, for the death penalty to be returned. is it your belief that the police, who, of course, in the wake of this terrible bombing, immediately were under enormous pressure to find the culprits, the police, in a sense, were just determined to find some people, northern irish people, that they could hang this on, whether they were guilty or not? well, it's true that the police were under tremendous pressure to get results quickly, but it's true that the west midlands police had a record, as we subsequently discovered, of framing usual suspects,

and they relied very heavily on confession evidence. and one has to pinch oneself to recall that in those days, 1974, we were still convicting people and sending them away for life on the basis of unrecorded, unwitnessed, uncorroborated confessions in police custody, which were immediately repudiated once the suspect was out of police custody. in fact, in the 19505, we hanged people on that basis. it's important to get the timeline straight here. i mean, six men were picked up very, very quickly. they were trying to get on a ferry to go to northern ireland, but they were picked up by the police. they were held in custody and it seems, we now know, that they were very badly beaten up. they were physically abused. you could call it torture, i guess. and under that torture, four of the six ultimately signed confessions. when one looks at the trial, the original trial in

which these men were convicted of the murders, the trialjudge seemed determined to ignore any evidence that pointed to the beatings and the abuse. i'm looking at something that's quoted in your book, where the trialjudge said, "there was nothing inherently improbable that by "the monday morning of their custody, these men had taken "a decision to allege that they'd beaten themselves up "and then inflicted injuries upon themselves." yes, well... ..that was lord bridge. one thing i've learned from close observation of the highestjudiciary over the years is that you can be very clever and stupid simultaneously. and in his case, i think he's an absolutely classic case. was he stupid or was his motive just to make sure in his handling of the case and his ultimate summary to the jury, just to ensure that these men were sent down? well, you've got to understand why everybody was convinced they were the right suspects.

after these five men were arrested at heysham in lancashire — the sixth was picked up the next day. there was a forensic scientist. the home office forensic scientist, dr frank skuse, was called out and he tested their hands with a test that was only supposed to be a screening test, but on the basis of this test declared that several of them had been recently in touch with nitro—glycerine. and so, from that moment onwards, the police assumed that they got the right people. and that, i think, is what they would say, in their own minds, justified what did amount actually, yes, to torture. so you don't think that this was a bunch of police just picking up northern irish men and not really caring whether they were guilty? you believe that they did believe these six were the bombers?

yes, i do. there's another case, the guildford and woolwich pub bombings, that took place in the same year. and in that case, i think they knew from a fairly early stage they'd got the wrong people. but in this case, the birmingham case, i think they believed they'd got the right people. and thejudge, also, was unduly impressed by the forensic evidence. in fact, there was a forensic scientist who gave evidence at the trial saying there were alternative explanations for dr skuse�*s scientific tests, and thejudge destroyed him. but what's really striking, because, obviously, the six were convicted. they were all convicted with life sentences and sent to prison. but there were various appeals after that. there was a criminal case appeal, and then there was a civil case appeal. and there was an extraordinary statement from thejudge who issued the ruling in the civil case, lord denning, who came out with this statement. i mean, it bears repeating at some length. "if these six men win their appeal," said lord denning,

"it'll mean the police were guilty of perjury "and that they were guilty of violence and threats, "and that the confessions were involuntary "and were probably improperly admitted in evidence "and that the convictions were erroneous. "now, that is such an appalling vista," said lord denning, "that every sensible person in this land would say, "�*it cannot be right for this legal action "to go any further.”' well, i think lord denning was thinking two things. one, he was very concerned, as indeed all the senior judiciary were and perhaps still are. so this was the establishment absolutely saying, "we can't afford to admit a mistake"? that's kind of what he's saying, though i'm guessing he, too, had in the back of his mind the forensic tests, which told him that, as far as he was concerned, told him they had been in touch with explosive, and therefore that whatever happened to them, and he wasn't that concerned about what happened to them, could at least be explained by.

now, i said the timeline was important, so i've tried, you know, together we've sketched out the bombing, the trial, the fact that six men are in prison, desperately appealing, proclaiming their innocence, but not being listened to by the system. and then you, chris mullin, get involved, with others. i was a freelance journalist, an impoverished freelance journalist in the late �*705. a friend of mine, peter chippendale, who was a guardian journalist, had attended the trial, and on the basis of his attendance at trial — this was in 1975. he was also talking to some of the relatives of the six men. he said he thought they'd got the wrong people. so my interest was aroused from that time onwards, but i wasn't in a position to do anything about it since i didn't have the resources. the other thing peter chippendale said to me is, the only way you're going to crack this is to find the actual bombers and they'll be somewhere in ireland. you are convinced you did find the actual bombers, aren't you? oh, i know i did. they told me what they did. i mean, several of them did, anyway.

but let's take it bit by bit. so eventually i found a publisher who was... i was an investigative journalist, or i liked to think i was, so eventually i found a publisher who commissioned a book. but i still didn't have the resources to do very much about it. and then i persuaded my friend ray fitzwalter, who was the editor of world in action... that's where the tv comes in. ..to take me on temporarily, to see if we could come up with anything different. and we made three programmes. the first went out in october 1985 and it dynamited the forensic evidence. the second one blew a hole in the confession evidence. and the third one was an interview with one of the actual bombers. ultimately, you talked to all of the four men who were involved in the birmingham bomb plot, two of whom you believe planted the bombs which killed the people in the pubs, two of whom... made the bombs. ..had perhaps different roles. two of whom... two men made the bombs and two men planted both bombs in both pubs.

the first person i went to see was michael murray, who... his name had been in the frame for a long time, though. he served a prison sentence for involvement in the other bombings in and around birmingham, but nothing was ever pinned on him in relation to this, although he was put on trial alongside these six men. and one can only think that the reason for doing that, since two of them worked in the same engineering plant as him, was to try and make it look as though they were all part of the same gang, as it were. now, i went looking for murray, who by this time had been released from prison, and he was very difficult to persuade. he didn't want to talk to me. in fact, he said to me halfway through, "i don't like you very much, mr mullin. "as far as i'm concerned... "you're a member of the labour party. "as far as i'm concerned, "that's part of the establishment." well, why did any of the four men talk to you? imean... well, i said to them... i said to them, "look,

we can't bring back the dead, "but you know they've got the wrong people "and i think we can do something about that." oh, you mean you think these men, who were the bombers — at least. . .you're absolutely convinced they were the bombers — these men had some sort of a conscience about the fact that there were six men locked up for life who hadn't carried out the bombing but were yet convicted of it? yeah, i think some of them did. yes, certainly, yes. murray... murray, when he agreed to talk to me — this would be in 1986 — gave me a detailed account of what had happened. he agreed that he was the... he said he was the man who made the bombs and that he'd made the botched warning call. but i realised after i... i interviewed him three times, and after i got all that detail, i realised you could go on knocking down the confessions and the forensic evidence till the cows came home, but to prove that they didn't do it, you had to actually find the people who had done it. and that's the path i set out on. here's the thing. and here's one of the continued sort of sensitivities

and difficulties, perhaps, in your handling of your information and your role in the case. in 1991, as you've already indicated, the forensic evidence began to weaken and collapse. as the reputation of the west midlands police sank ever further and it was clear that they had abused their position in all sorts of different ways, ultimately, the appeals court could not any longer sustain these convictions. the six men were freed. but you then, and in all of the years since then, have refused to name the fourth bomber. now, you call him the young planter of one of the bombs, at least. why, given that, you know, the case still matters, those who were innocent are now out, why are you not prepared to divulge what you know about who actually is guilty? well, in this latest edition to the book, i have actually named three of the four people... i understand that... ..two of whom are dead and one of whom is still alive.

in a sense, that's the point — "two of whom are dead." there is one man out there whom you have refused to name, although you know his identity, you've indicated he lives in ireland. there are still many relatives of those killed, murdered in birmingham who are desperate forjustice. yes, i... i only was able to interview these individuals on the understanding that i wouldn't name them. and... and you think that that promise... well, wait a minute. ..made as a journalist... yes, i do. ..trumps justice? yes, i do. and you as a professional journalist should understand this, though i quite understand why the relatives don't understand it, though even to the relatives, i would say this — look, you do know the names of three of the four people who did it, and you wouldn't know any

of them if it wasn't for the investigation i had undertaken. these six guys would probably still be injail, and some of the reforms to the justice system that occurred subsequently would never have occurred. as you've indicated, you've actually come into contact and had confrontations with some family members in the recent past, as efforts have been made to get you to divulge the name. i know one very active campaigner on behalf of the victims, julie hambleton, who lost her sister, maxine, called you "scum" to your face. that's just abuse. and over the years, i've had a lot of abuse in one cause or another, and i can live with that. actually... it doesn't penetrate your soul? abuse doesn't. no? no. no, i can only respond to rational argument, i'm afraid. do you think, as you look at your role in this case, there's anything you might have done differently? yes. i might not have gone to look, track down the individuals concerned, and then we'd be in the position where the forensic evidence had been destroyed, the confession evidence had been undermined, but thejudicial...

those who guard the judicial system and the relatives would probably still be going around, saying, "oh, the six men inside really did it," "we know they did it," because that went on for years afterwards. that went on for years afterwards. i lost count of the number of people who said to me, "i had dinner with lord justice so—and—so last night "and you should hear what he's saying "about the birmingham six." really? this case that you're so intimately involved with, the birmingham six case, is one of many miscarriages of justice that happened in the 19705. but, frankly, there have been others happening... what you've got to understand here, and in this case, we were up against some of the mightiest vested interests in the country. the people in charge of ourjudicial system believed that they presided over a near—perfect system, and they were not willing to concede that it could make mistakes... and that is why i quoted at length lord denning... and they went around for years afterwards... absolutely. and that is why those words from lord denning seem so important.

but let us consider what has happened since. for a start, just in the case of birmingham and the west midlands police, no police, senior orjunior, were ever held criminally responsible for their mishandling of evidence, for their lies, for their cover—up and deception, were they? well, that's another feature of all these cases. i mean, it was very clear in the final appeal, which led to the convictions being quashed in march 1991... ..thata number of policemen had lied. it was demonstrated openly in court. the judges acknowledged this. and there was an attempt to prosecute three of them, i think, in the birmingham case... yeah, which... which the judge chucked out, basically. yeah. and then let's consider institutions, because, ultimately, as i said at the very beginning, this is about trust and whether the citizen can trust the institutions of the police, the courts, thejudges. afterwards — after all of this and some of the fallout — in the late 1990s, they set up

a criminal cases review commission to try and ensure that this kind of miscarriage ofjustice could never happen again, an independent review system... as a result of this case, actually. yeah. do you think it works? it's certainly led to the quashing of a very large number of convictions, great and small, about 500 so far. it's beginning to be starved of resources because i don't really think the present government's heart is in it. but, yes, it has done quite a lot of good. it's rightly criticised now for being too timid because the court of appeal is beginning to reassert — which consisted in the past, i can't say now, of some very closed minds — is beginning to reassert its control over the process. people in this country, in the uk, are very mindful of continued miscarriages ofjustice. the highest—profile one of late has been a huge collective failure to ensure justice for sub—postmasters. they run small post offices all over the country. it seems that for 15 years,

they were being accused — and some of them convicted — of corruption, of stealing from the post office, when the problem wasn't their dishonesty, it was a complete failure of the computer systems put in place by the post office, which the post office then refused to acknowledge. even though they knew... even though they knew that the computer was at fault. so my question, then, is whether, actually, the british public, just taking this particular democracy, can have a fundamental trust in their systems of law and justice? the post office case contained some new ingredients and one or two of the old ones. one of the old ingredients was the habit of losing evidence inconvenient to the prosecution case — failure to disclose, in other words. and that seems to have happened in this case, too, as it did in all of the big alleged miscarriages ofjustice of recent years.

the new ingredient, i suppose, is that the post office... ..could conduct its own prosecutions. it isn't the director of public prosecutions, it was the post office. it is striking the degree to which so many miscarriages ofjustice over so many years have actually been exposed by investigative journalists rather than people working for the state. do you think the state ofjournalism as it is today is capable of continuing to, if you like, play that watchdog role that really works? yes. yes, i think it has an important role to play in a democracy. and i think the post office case is actually a good example of it. there was a very persistent individualjournalist — there were others, too — who took up this case and worked at it for years with the results we now see. what i think we fail to get into our heads is that we do not have a perfectjustice system in this country. there is a school of thought

here that thinks we've got the bestjudges. they used to say it out loud. they don't say it quite so loudly now. "we've got the bestjudges, "the best police force in the world" — it's all nonsense. we're not the worst by any stretch of the imagination, but they make mistakes and sometimes they're vulnerable to corruption. in thejudges�* case, i wouldn't say corruption, i'd say gullibility... but when you walk out of this studio door, you go back onto the streets of london, do you fundamentally have a confidence thatjustice will be done independently, fairly and accountably? yes, on the whole, but it's not always the case. i mean, if they came after you and me for one reason or another, we'd have well—connected people to speak up for us. but it's the vulnerable, it's the usual suspects. "could it happen again?", i think, is your question. and...one can just about see a case, probably involving islamist terrorists where a bomb goes off and a number of usual suspects are rounded up and they don't quite speak the language very fluently and they've not got good alibi witnesses and all the rest.

one can see how... and the police would be under tremendous pressure to get results quickly. one can see how all that could happen again. there are some things that couldn't happen again. the fact is that since the police and criminal evidence act of 1984, interviews with suspects are now recorded. it's incredible it took us till 1984 to get around to doing that, but that makes it much more difficult — not completely impossible, much more difficult — to fabricate confessions. that's. .. that's quite a big step forward. it's quite a simple one, but it's quite a big step forward. chris mullin, i thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you.

hello. we are marking the spring equinox, and for some parts of the uk, wednesday will bring some spring warmth, just as tuesday did in parts of lincolnshire. 17 degrees, with some hazy sunshine in some relatively mild air. now, as we head through the next few days, we are going to start to see a change. the wind direction will change. we will get into north or northwesterly winds, and that will bring a much colderfeel, in time for the weekend, but not just yet. a mild start to wednesday, with extensive cloud cover, some mist and murk and some hill fog, and some outbreaks of rain. now, in many locations, the rain will turn increasingly light and patchy through the day, and for some, it will brighten up. in fact, if we see some hazy sunshine in the south—east of england, temperatures could climb to 18 degrees,

but parts of south—west england, wales, the midlands, eastern england, are likely to stay grey, with some bits and pieces of rain. it may brighten up a little bit across northern england, and for northern ireland and for scotland, actually, the afternoon should bring a decent amount of sunshine, feeling quite pleasant in light winds, 11 or 12 degrees. just a small chance of a shower in the north—east of scotland, and then, through wednesday night, while this window of clear skies move southwards and eastwards, that will be replaced by the end of the night across northern ireland and the western side of scotland by more cloud, more outbreaks of rain. this is our next frontal system. the winds will be strengthening, as well. it is going to be a windy day, particularly in the north—west of scotland on thursday, with outbreaks of rain pushing south—eastwards. that rain particularly heavy and persistent over high ground in the west of scotland. further south and east, quite a lot of cloud, but where we see some sunny spells, again, it may feel warm — 17 degrees likely in the london area. but through thursday night and into friday, this cold front slips southwards and eastwards, and that will bring a change to colder conditions.

a deep low, passing to the north of scotland, that will bring some really strong winds, gales likely in the far north. for the northern half of the uk, there will be showers, some heavy, some thundery and some wintry up over high ground, and for some places, temperatures will actually be dropping as the day wears on. the afternoon, for example, in glasgow, around eight celsius. we stay in that cold air for the weekend. there will be showers, some of which will be wintry over high ground, and when we factor in the strength of the winds, it will feel decidedly chilly.

live from london. this is bbc news. millions of people at risk of dying from diseases and starvation in sudan after 11 months of civil war. we'll have a special report. an investigation reportedly begins at the clinic in london which treated the princess of wales over claims staff tried to access her private medical records. and the us supreme court allows texas to enforce one of the toughest immigration laws in the country.

the biden administration says the law will damage american border security. hello, i'm mark lobel. we begin in sudan, with a conflict described as the war the world forgot. sudan, a predominantly muslim country, is situated in northeast africa. it is one of the continent's largest nations, but also one of the poorest with 46 million people living on an average annual income of $750. the fighting erupted in the capital, khartoum in mid—april last year — after two men, who once took control of the country in a power sharing agreement, fell out. general abdel—fattah al—burhan, the commander of the sudanese armed forces, is at odds with the head of the powerful paramilitary group rsf, general mohammed hamdan dagalo. within sudan, also lies another

humanitarian crisis. in the western region of darfur, where black african