Fifteenth lesson: The guildford four

[admin]

The Guildford Four
Printer friendly copy

The Guildford Four were a group of people (Paul Hill, Gerry Conlon, Patrick 'Paddy' Armstrong and Carole Richardson), who were wrongly convicted in the United Kingdom in October 1975 for the IRA's Guildford pub bombing and were jailed for over 15 years.

A device at the Horse and Groom pub in Guildford killed five people, four soldiers and a civilian, and left more than 100 injured. Paul Hill and Paddy Armstrong were also jailed for the Woolwich bombing in which two people died. In 1990 their case was overturned based on evidence that the police had lied in order to convict them.

On February 9, 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made an apology to the families of the eleven people jailed for the bombings in Guildford and Woolwich, and their relatives who were still alive, by saying: 'I am very sorry that they were subject to such an ordeal and injustice they deserve to be completely and publicly exonerated.' No one was convicted or punished in the case of the wrongful imprisonment. Three UK police officers were charged, but they were each found innocent.

Paul Michael Hill was born and raised in Belfast to an unhappily married mixed-religion couple. There was never any evidence that he or any of The Four had been involved with the IRA. Patrick Armstrong and Carole Richardson, an English woman, lived in a squat, and were involved with drugs and petty crime.

At their trial, the Guildford Four claimed they had been tortured by police until they had agreed to sign a false confession. The police had lied, and the conclusion was if they had lied about this, the entire evidence was misleading, and the Four were released in 1989, after having their convictions quashed.

Paul Hill had also been convicted of the murder of a British soldier, Brian Shaw, having 'confessed' to the crime while in the custody of Surrey Police. He was released on bail, pending his appeal against this conviction. In 1994, the Court of Appeal in Belfast quashed Hill's conviction for Brian Shaw's murder.

Gerry Conlon's autobiography Proved Innocent was adapted into the Oscar-award nominated 1993 film In the Name of the Father. He is reported to have settled with the government for a final payment of compensation in the region of £400,000 to £500,000.

Paul Hill married Mary Courtney Kennedy, daughter of the late United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and they had a daughter, Saoirse Roisín Kennedy. The couple are now legally separated.