Page 257 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

In 1988, their case was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Home Secretary,
Douglas Hurd. After a six week hearing, the longest criminal appeal hearing on
record, the convictions were upheld by the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, to be
safe and satisfactory.

Prior to a third appeal being made in 1991, a number of fresh claims were made by
the six convicted men, including a possibility that the traces of nitro glycerine being
found on the men’s hands, could have come from the cellophane packaging of a
packet of cigarettes, found in their possession at the time of their initial arrests.

Enquiries were made by police at the Wills factory in Bristol, as to the authenticity of
the claim, but was proven forensically by the same manufacturers of the cigarettes,
that there was no such possibility.

A second claim was then made suggesting the paintwork on the train the men
travelled in from Birmingham to Heysham, on 21 November 1974, contained a
substance that could have corrupted the forensic samples taken, to falsely show
traces of nitro-glycerine on their hands.

I was tasked with that particular inquiry and met up with British Rail scientists at their
laboratory in Crewe. I discovered that indeed, British railway carriages did contain a
substance in the red paint used to cover the outside of the carriages, which could
have created the same result as that of nitro-glycerine. However, that particular
paint was discarded some years prior to 1974, to be replaced by another brand of
paint that didn’t contain the same substance.

Further checks on the carriages that were actually pulled by the Birmingham to
Heysham train on that fateful night, confirmed they had actually been painted with
the same, more recent paint, which didn’t contain the toxics alleged in the men’s
claim. Again, I make this point, not to prove or disprove the allegations made by the
Birmingham six, only to record the facts of what objective enquiries were made on
their behalf and the conclusions.

However, a second full appeal was allowed in 1991, following the disbandment of
the Serious Crime Squad in 1989, amidst allegations of interfering with evidential
documents, fabrication and suppression of evidence by members of the same
squad, relevant to other cases.
During that second appeal, the lawyers for the Birmingham Six, challenged once
again the credibility of their clients written confessions, which were not resisted by
the Crown. Hence, Lord Justices Lloyd, Mustill and Farquharson, ruled in the Court of
Appeal that the convictions were unsafe and wrong.

The six men were finally released and awarded compensation for having been
wrongfully convicted, back in 1975. As a result of that final decision of the Court of
Appeal, the case of the Birmingham Six has gone down in history as being the
gravest miscarriage of justice ever placed on record.
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Were they guilty of those dreadful crimes for which they were charged?”

According to the Court of Appeal, no.