Pod Insights British Scandal The Birmingham Six | Chris Mullin, the “Loony Leftie” Who Freed the Birmingham Six | 4 About this episode He's the journalist-turned-MP at the heart of the group's long fight for justice. Chris Mullin sits down with Alice Levine and Matt Forde to unpack his pursuit of the actual bombers, the press vitriol against him, and just what it took to expose Britain's biggest miscarriage of justice. Plus, he shares his perspective on today's most controversial criminal conviction: that of Lucy Letby.
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Transcript 8,110 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Alice Levine? Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of British Scandal ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.
0:14 Matt Forde? From Wondery, I'm Matt Ford.
0:16 Alice Levine? And I'm Alice Levine.
0:18 Matt Forde? And this is British Scandal.
0:32 Matt Forde? Alice, it's our first ever miscarriage of justice. Has this been scandalous enough for you?
0:37 Alice Levine? It's been horrendous, is what it's been, hasn't it? We've had abuse in custody, spurious evidence of a forensic kind, if you can even call it that when you get down to it, forced confessions, which were then doctored, and not even doctored subtly, just the arrogance of it, cover-up after cover-up, and it's just been shocking every single episode. And then six men got locked up for 16 years.
1:02 Matt Forde? Yes, it felt like the 70s and 80s were the Wild West when it came to policing, because the police felt they were untouchable, and they were, because they enjoyed so much public confidence. And of course, the public want to believe that the riot men have been caught because of the horrific magnitude of the crime. But there was one man who was willing to question the evidence and effectively police the police. He led a lengthy campaign that upended the forensics. He exposed police corruption and brutality. He found the real bombers and even had one of them confess on camera. And his campaign ultimately led to the release and exoneration of the Birmingham Six. And Alice, we have got him here today.
1:39 Alice Levine? Don't tease me. If it's Chris Mullin, I am going to freak out.
1:44 Matt Forde? Well, you're going to freak out because we have got Chris Mullin. In between solving miscarriages of justice, he's written four novels and six non-fiction books, including Error of Judgment: The Truth About the Birmingham Bombings, which was republished last year with new details. And he also spent 23 years as a Labour MP for Sunderland South. We cannot wait to speak to the man himself. Chris Mullin joins us next.
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3:18 Matt Forde? Chris, welcome to British Scandals. A treat to have you on. Why did you take on the case of the Birmingham Six? And why couldn't you let it go?
3:26 Speaker 04 Well, as far as letting go, it's never let me go. Even now, 50 years since the event. The ripples still spread outwards. Only a couple of years ago, the West Midlands Police tried to take me to court under the Terrorism Act to force me to disclose sources. I've been a freelance journalist on and off for many years. And I have a natural curiosity, which doesn't infect all journalists, but it does affect me. And I can't really walk past a high wall without wanting to see what lies on the other side. A friend of mine at the time, this is 1975 or '76, called Peter Chippendale, who was a journalist for The Guardian.
4:11 Speaker 04 Had attended the trial of the Birmingham Six and the appeal of the Guildford Four. And he remarked to me at the time that he thought they got the wrong people in both cases. And he also said to me that it's going to be very difficult to crack because you'd have to find the actual perpetrators. So that thought stuck with me too. So I took an interest from that moment onwards. I wasn't in a position to do very much about it, since I was quite impoverished at the time. But I did keep an eye on the case as it wound its way through the appeal court. And eventually I got a commission to write a book on the case. But even so, I didn't have the resources to do a proper investigation.
4:55 Speaker 04 And it wasn't until I persuaded my friend Ray Fitzwalter, who was the editor of World in Action, which was in those days was the premier documentary series on British TV, to take me on temporarily to see if we could come up with new evidence that I had the resources to do a proper investigation.
5:18 Alice Levine? I'm wondering what informed your approach and your outlook as a journalist. You'd reported from Vietnam on the war there. How did those early experiences shape your understanding of the world and political systems?
5:32 Speaker 04 Well, back in the 1960s, at my Catholic boarding school in Ipswich, I started to take an interest in the war in Vietnam. And I realised, even though I had only the Times and the Daily Telegraph to rely on for information, I realised that the official version of events was quite false. And so I suppose that was my political awakening. I've always fancied myself as an inquiring journalist, not just a rewriter of handouts. It's getting the powers that be to own up, that's the great struggle.
6:11 Matt Forde? Just thinking back to the climate at the time, there weren't many people willing to speak out, seemingly in defence of the IRA, or people perceived to be IRA. Were you worried about being hated, or even worse, being attacked?
6:25 Speaker 04 I wasn't defending the IRA. These people were not members of the IRA. That was fairly easy to establish, actually. I did get a certain amount of abuse, especially after the television programmes were made, from people who accepted the official version of events. I suspect some of them were ex-police men and their relatives. And, of course, Birmingham as a whole was in denial when I first came on the scene. They really didn't want to know.
6:57 Alice Levine? I'd like to take you back to a pivotal moment in this case, and in your involvement in this case. What happened when you first met Paddy Hill? And did he strike you immediately as an innocent man? Did you have doubts? And how important are those instincts as a journalist?
7:13 Speaker 04 Well, Paddy was the most voluble of the six when it came to protesting their innocence. And he carried on bombarding anybody who might be expected to listen with letters. I, at that time, worked for a small, left-wing publication called Tribune. And he sent me a long letter outlining his version of events. This was probably 1978. I wasn't, at that time, in a position to have an opinion about whether or not they'd been involved. But I did think their version of events ought to get some publicity. So I turned the letter into an article by Paddy Hill. And we ran it in Tribune, but nobody really noticed.
7:55 Matt Forde? There were three parts to your investigation: analysing the forensics, unpicking the police evidence, and then finding the real perpetrators. What made you suspect that the forensic evidence might have been flawed? And why was it so important to look at that?
8:08 Speaker 04 Well, there were people saying that, including one or two forensic scientists. Almost from the outset, they didn't get much of a hearing. And it had always been alleged by Dr Hugh Black, the former Chief Inspector of Explosives at the Home Office, that there were innocent substances, a range of innocent substances. Anything containing nitrocellulose, which is a constituent of polishes and varnishes and all sorts of household sprays, could produce a positive grease test. But nobody had ever done the tests. When World in Action took me on in the mid 1980s, one of the things we did was get two reputable forensic scientists, unknown to each other,
8:51 Speaker 04 to carry out Dr. Skuse's tests all over again. It was something called the grease test and it involved getting a chemical reaction from swabbing the hands of the defendants. And both immediately demonstrated that anything with nitric cellulose will give you a positive grease test. Well, of course, with that, the forensic evidence collapsed and that was the cause of the first reference back to the Court of Appeal.
9:18 Matt Forde? There have also been subsequent cases where even the use of expert witnesses has been called into question, but why did the defence not want to do those tests?
9:27 Speaker 04 What I heard happened was that Dr. Black, the former Chief Inspector of Explosives, offered to do the tests and the defence barristers said to him, "You don't need to do that, you are so distinguished that the court will take you seriously anyway." Well, the court didn't, of course. So I've no idea if that's actually what happened, but I think it might have been.
9:47 Alice Levine? You mentioned, Chris, of course, the World in Action programme. When that went out, what was the reaction like? Did you have high hopes that it would lead to immediate action?
9:57 Speaker 04 Well, we had collapsed the forensic evidence, or so we thought. And it did give a great boost to the campaign that had been in a modest way underway for some years, but this gave it a real kick. What you had to do still was undermine the confessions. Well, it wasn't difficult to see, even on a casual reading of the confessions, that there was something seriously wrong with them. They contradicted each other in almost every significant respect. And although the judge and jury pronounced themselves satisfied with the confessions, because of course, at the original trial, a long list of policemen went into the witness
10:42 Speaker 04 box and swore that everything had been carried out properly and that the confessions were genuine. And so you were basically being asked whether to believe all these policemen who ranged in rank from detective constable to chief superintendent.
11:00 Speaker 04 Or whether you believe these six unfortunate Irishmen. And the jury found that they believed the police. In those days, I think people found it harder to believe that fraud and perjury could occur on this scale. And the judge, in his judgment, poured scorn on the suggestion. He said, "The scale of the conspiracy that would be required if the police were not telling the truth was so large as to be incredible." And he spelled it out over three pages. And actually, what he was spelling out, we can now see with hindsight, was exactly what had happened. They must have got together in a lecture theatre or somewhere to coordinate their evidence, because it was totally fraudulent.
11:42 Matt Forde? That's such a big part of this, because you did so well at exposing the flaws in the police evidence and showed clear corruption. So do you think the police initially knew that they'd got the wrong men?
11:53 Speaker 04 No. No, I think they believed they got the right people because of Dr. Skew's tests. Dr. Skew's, the forensic scientist, has quite a lot. He was a Home Office forensic scientist. He has quite a lot of responsibility for this. You see, the five men who were on the train, the sixth one was arrested in Birmingham the following day, were taken to Morecambe Police Station. And Dr. Skew's was called out to test their hands. Perfectly reasonable procedure. And so he came and did that. But what he was supposed to do, if he got a positive grease test, as he said he did in a couple of cases, was to take it back and feed it through a spectrometer, a hundred times more sensitive. And he did eventually do that.
12:37 Speaker 04 And I think he got negative results on the two positive grease tests that he'd found. But what he did do, which he should never have done, was inform the West Midlands police officers, who'd raced up the motorway from Birmingham and were pacing up and down, upstairs, waiting to interview the defendants. He informed them that at least two of them had been in touch with nitroglycerine. That was on the first morning. And so they then persuaded four of the six to confess. And it was but a programme of violence that lasted.
13:14 Speaker 04 Two or three days and nights, mock executions, shotguns in the police cells, dogs in the police cells, it was very severe threats. The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, which is what many of them belonged to, had to be wound up after all this was over, and another sixty convictions were quashed. In a couple of cases, they'd been holding plastic bags over people's heads. Well, you didn't have very long to make up your mind if you had a plastic bag over your head. But I realised from the outset that it wasn't enough to simply discredit the confessions or indeed the forensic evidence. That didn't stop people saying, "Oh, well, they must have done it."
13:57 Speaker 04 So I realised that, as Peter Jipendale told me right at the beginning, to prove they didn't do it, you had to find the actual perpetrators and persuade them to own up in sufficient detail that nobody could deny that they had been responsible. And so that's what I set out to do. It can't have been easy tracking them down. How did you manage it? A process of detective work of the sort that I would have commended to the West Midlands Police had they been interested. There'd been bombings, all of them targeted against commercial property, bombs going off all over the West Midlands, about fifty incidents in the preceding year or two, and
14:41 Speaker 04 about half of those responsible had been arrested in August 1974, i.e. four months before the pub bombings, and were by this time in custody and had been convicted. And so my first port of call was to go and visit them. Because I reasoned that although none of them could have had anything to do with the pub bombings, they did know which of their colleagues was still left outside. So that's what I did. I worked my way around the prisons, interviewing them, plus... It had always been rumored from the outset that Michael Murray, this man who was a crane driver at the same place that two of the Birmingham Six worked, was an IRA man.
15:20 Speaker 04 So I had to find him first of all, and that took quite a long time, and I had to go through intermediaries. And eventually he agreed to talk to me. The arrangement was, I said to him, "Please don't mislead me. If I ask a question you don't want to answer, just say so." But he gave me quite a detailed account of what had happened. He said that four people had been responsible for the bombings, two had made the bombs, and two had planted both bombs in both pubs. He said he was one of two people who made the bombs, and he was also responsible for the warning phone call that went wrong. It was botched, which is why so many people died.
16:02 Speaker 04 And he did actually let slip the name of one of the other, a man called James Francis Gavin, who, I tracked him down quite easily because he was serving life imprisonment in an Irish prison, but he would not admit that he'd been one of the bombers, even though it was quite clear to me by this time the bombs had actually been collected from his house. Again, if you wanted to demonstrate the innocence of these six men, you had to track down the planters, the two men who put both bombs in both pubs, and persuade them to own up in such detail as it wasn't possible to pretend that the real culprits were inside. So that's what I set out to do, and that was a trickier operation.
16:45 Speaker 04 I worked my way round all those members of the IRA in the West Midlands who had been at liberty on the night of November the 21st, 1974, which is when the bombs exploded. And they were quite difficult to track down, many of them lying very low, and not all of them cooperated, until I eventually came to one of the two bombers, and I confronted him.
17:13 Matt Forde? So tell us about your meeting with the planter. How did you feel when you met him?
17:18 Speaker 04 Well, I didn't move in on him until I had his name from three separate sources, none of whom had met for many years and couldn't therefore have colluded to mislead me. One of them also gave me his address. So I went back to my contacts in the IRA and I said, this is the man I want to speak to. And he said to me, well, we weren't going to tell you, but you found out for yourself. We can't force him to talk to you, but we will tell him we've no objection to you talking to him. And so that's what happened. I turned up on this man's doorstep. You see, this was a very big secret indeed. His wife didn't know. He'd never seen the other bombers again since that night. He'd led a totally different life now. He had children.
18:02 Speaker 04 We sat in one of the children's bedrooms on the floor. And he gave me an accurate account of his life and times in the IRA before the night of the big bombing. He'd been involved in a number of other incidents in which no one had been killed or injured. But when it came to the night in question, I noticed as the narrative got nearer to the date November 21st, that his voice wavered and started fading. And then when we got past, he then said, well, he'd been told something big was coming off that night and decided to stay at home and keep his head down.
18:43 Speaker 04 And so I let him carry on and his voice got stronger again as we discussed what happened afterwards. And then I just said to him very quietly, I think you were in the pubs.
18:57 Speaker 04 And then it all came tumbling out. He explained, he'd been very young. He was very much the junior partner.
19:06 Speaker 04 He, as I say, participated in many other bombings, always targeted against property, and he assumed, when he got the call, that this one would be no different. So he turned up at this house in Bordsley Green, which I believe was James Francis Gavin's house, and the bombs were in a small case behind the sofa, he said, and a duffel bag. They set off walking into town. He didn't know what the targets were at that stage. Only when they were getting near the town centre did this other guy tell him what the targets were. And he said a row broke out between them, because the targets weren't the pubs, incidentally. The targets were the New Street Tax Office, which was above the tavern in the town, and
19:49 Speaker 04 the Mulby Bush, which was in the base of the Rotunda, a large local landmark in the centre of Birmingham, which the IRA had been trying to put out of business for some time. And so he said a row broke out between them, with him saying there'll be lots of people in there, because the idea was to plant the bombs in the pubs, give plenty of warning, and then the pubs will be clear. But of course, the warning came too late, and the pubs were both crowded. And, well, we know what happened. The bombs went off. He said that after planting the bombs, he just walked home, kept his head down, and he turned on the television and he saw what had happened. And he never told anybody.
20:33 Speaker 04 I don't think he'd ever told anybody since then.
20:36 Matt Forde? It's obviously immensely frustrating that the police didn't do this sort of work and that it was left to a journalist. Maybe the police wouldn't have got the same answers out of these people. Do you get the sense that when people are carrying a secret like this, actually it's a relief for them to tell somebody?
20:53 Speaker 04 Well, I expect it was in his case, though he might now regret it. I'm sure he's had a lot of hassle since. The identity now of the people responsible is now, in three cases of those directly involved, well-known, and in his case, he's the only one whose identity is not disclosed. Because that was the deal I did in order to get access to him. And it's quite common in investigative journalism to protect one's sources.
21:26 Matt Forde? And did you struggle with that ethically? Obviously, getting innocent people released from prison is the upside, but on the downside, you know who really did it, and they've evaded justice.
21:38 Speaker 04 Well, I didn't struggle with it ethically, because from the outset, my purpose was to rescue the innocent. I was never under the illusion that I could lead to the arrest of the guilty. I don't have any difficulty justifying it, because if I hadn't done that, those people might still be inside today, fifty years later. So I didn't see what a choice there was. I published the book in 1986, which gave an account of all these interviews. But of course, my evidence, such as it was, my interview with the actual planter, was regarded as hearsay. So although when the case was referred back to the Court of Appeal, everyone in the court was well aware that there was someone in court who was claiming
22:23 Speaker 04 to have identified all four of the actual bombers. But that was regarded as hearsay by the law, and nobody ever mentioned it. You could sometimes see the book sitting on the desks of the barristers concerned, but nobody ever mentioned it. And the judges just sat there, stony-faced, and said, "We've heard nothing new, take them away." And that was the end of that. So it wasn't until another four years, and a considerable campaign by this time was building up, oh, and the release of the Guildford Four, because it was discovered in their case that the confessions were complete forgery. And in that case, there was no other evidence, there was no forensic evidence or anything. When Gerry
23:04 Speaker 04 Condon, the first of the Guildford Four, came out, his first words outside the Old Bailey, and there were crowds gathered by this time, unto the world's press, was, "What about the Birmingham Six?" So all that made a difference. And eventually, the Home Secretary instituted yet another inquiry, this one by the Devon and Cornwall Police, led by their chief constable, Mr. John Evans. And they did something that nobody had ever done. They went back to the original police notebooks. They discovered something remarkable, which has never had the attention it deserved. In the old days, before tape recorders, to show that your notes were contemporaneous, police officers were supposed to date stamp each page. And so...
23:49 Speaker 04 If you were rewriting your notebook months later, up to the door of the court, in fact, the following year, you had to wind back the date stamp, obviously. So they had wound back the date stamp, back to November the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, the right dates, but several of them had forgotten to wind back the year. So these notes were stamped 1975, and of course, there is no innocent explanation for that, except the obvious one, which is, as I say, they had been rewriting their notes up to the door of the court. So with that, the confessions collapsed.
24:24 Alice Levine? Is that arrogance, Chris? Because that feels so amateur. Is that just a sense that they could get away with anything and they had got away with terrible behaviour previously? And so there was a kind of slapdash attitude to covering this up?
24:43 Speaker 04 Yes, I think there must have been a degree of arrogance. As I say, they were experienced witnesses, they were very good at lying, and they'd been faced many times before with the allegation that they had beaten confessions out of suspects. They must have been very confident. They were called the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad. They were the Sweeney before the Sweeney existed on television. And they would bash down doors and shout, "It's the Serious." They called themselves the Serious. And they had a big track record of getting confessions out of people, and everybody kind of went along with it. Also, I came to realise during the course of my investigation that the establishment in Birmingham was really very close-knit. I'll give you an example.
25:28 Speaker 04 The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad held an annual dinner, and if you look down the guest list, you could see it included lawyers, defence lawyers, prosecution lawyers, it included magistrates, perhaps, I don't know, a judge or two perhaps. And this dinner, the last of these dinners, was due to be held at the Albany Hotel, which was a big hotel in Birmingham, a few days after the convictions were eventually quashed and had to be called off at the last moment. I regard that as the most satisfactory moment.
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27:00 Matt Forde? You came into Parliament in 1987, right in the middle of all this. Did your experience with the Birmingham Six steer your decision to go into Parliament at all?
27:09 Speaker 04 Not in any way, no. It was an ambition I'd always had. I was a candidate in the 1970 general election, when I was very young, too young, and again in the 1974 general election. So, no, the Birmingham Six, although it got me a lot of publicity, was in no way helpful to securing a nomination in a safe Labour seat, where there was virtually no Irish community and where many of the constituents relied on the Sun newspaper for information about the world.
27:43 Matt Forde? So, when you hear that the Birmingham Six have had their convictions overturned, what was the first thing you did?
27:52 Speaker 04 Well, we had a party that evening in the grounds of the Catholic Chaplaincy in Hampstead. There were helicopters circling over, journalists' helicopters circling overhead. We were besieged by journalists. There were crowds outside the Old Bailey. It was a very big moment. The first thing I did, after the convictions had been quashed, was to go outside and wait with the lawyers and the crowd outside and the journalists outside. And then when they came out, I went and stood with them in front of the world's television cameras, and even my wife's relatives in Vietnam saw it. I was a politician by profession, and I came in for a great deal of flak from newspapers like The Sun. After the appeal
28:37 Speaker 04 was first rejected in 1988, there was a whole front page of The Sun, I see it now because it's framed on my wall, it's headed "Looney MP backs bomb gang". Now, one can laugh about it now, but if The Sun is going through the door every day of your core voters, it does give you certain problems. So I did come in for quite a lot of flak, much of it stirred up by The Sun. How do I know? Because many of the abusive letters I received actually sent cuttings from The Sun. I'll read you some of my favourite quotes. You'll see readily
29:18 Speaker 04 the damage it could do if you were dependent on votes for a living. "Mr Mullins is paid to represent the voters of Sunderland South. Instead, he acts as a mouthpiece for IRA sympathisers. Mr Mullins is either a liar or a hypocrite", that's a Sunday Express. "Oh, how about this", some Ray Mills of the Daily Star. "Anglo-Irish relations are at a new low. The IRA have scored a major propaganda triumph as the Birmingham Six enter Irish mythology. Much of this is Mr Mullins doing, and I believe he has done it as the unwitting dupe of the IRA, a simple stooge for the dark and sinister forces who seek to impose anarchy on Ireland."
30:02 Alice Levine? I know you said, Chris, that you were obviously concerned about constituents reading all of these comments. Was there any personal sense of fear or upset that your reputation was being rubbish?
30:15 Speaker 04 Well, no, my reputation actually went up, rather. In the circles I move in, being insulted by the Sun is a sign that you've arrived. Somebody's noticed. The worst thing that can happen is to be ignored, which often happens with good causes that I take up. This one was a Sun editorial headed, Mr. Odious. Is there a more odious MP in the Commons than Chris Mullin? There's a little known fact that I briefly replaced Ken Livingstone as the most odious man in Britain.
30:45 Alice Levine? Is it an annual award?
30:47 Speaker 04 I don't know. I never got an award for it.
30:52 Matt Forde? Just thinking about the impact of prison on the Birmingham Six. How had it affected them personally and emotionally? And are you still in touch with any of them?
31:02 Speaker 04 Well, three of them are dead. And I have, over the years, been in touch with most of them at one time or another. The last one I spoke to was Johnny Walker, who now lives in Ireland. When I first met John Walker in prison, I would have thought he was the most fragile of the six and the most likely to go to pieces once he was released. But on the contrary, he's remarried, he's now in his 90s, and he's in very good shape. He hasn't spent the last several decades going round being one of the Birmingham Six. He's just gone back to as normal a life as he could have, and he struck me as remarkably balanced.
31:44 Speaker 04 The one who went to pieces was the one, I thought, would be the most robust, and who indeed was the most robust when they were in prison. That was Paddy Hill, who was psychologically very badly damaged.
31:56 Alice Levine? Hearing you speak now, I'm wondering if there was ever a moment during the investigation when you considered giving up?
32:04 Speaker 04 No, because I always thought we would win in the end. And at each stage, we made sufficient progress to make it worthwhile carrying on. So, no, I never really did think of giving up. I got a lot of abuse. And I did read in the Daily Mail that there'd been a death threat or something. But I can't remember ever receiving a death threat. I wasn't really concerned about that. But I did get shouted at a bit, as you might expect, by people, by and large, who knew nothing about the case, of course.
32:38 Alice Levine? Do you think that you don't remember that, Chris? Because you're largely unflappable.
32:43 Speaker 04 No, I'm extremely flappable.
32:45 Alice Levine? I'm not hearing that.
32:47 Speaker 04 On trivial matters, but on the big ones, no.
32:50 Alice Levine? I think it's incredible to say, I don't remember a death threat.
32:54 Speaker 04 Well, I don't. If I did, I'm sure it would have struck me at the time. I did have a box in the office which we put abuse. I used to read it out at public meetings. It always raised a laugh.
33:06 Alice Levine? What reforms were made to the justice system after the convictions were overturned? And do you feel as though they go far enough?
33:13 Speaker 04 Well, there was a royal commission set up that night, the night they were released, to study the criminal justice system. And it did come up with some reforms. They set up the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which, although it's much criticised, and I think has been run down in recent years, has led to the quashing of at least 500 convictions since then. That's the first thing that's changed. There've been some changes to the rules over disclosure as well. That's the one area where I think there's still progress to be made. That is the habit of prosecution authorities, of losing evidence inconvenient to their case.
33:56 Speaker 04 So if, for example, in the Birmingham case, there had been any witnesses who said they were in the bar at New Street Station when these six guys were drinking there and they'd seen them and they were there all evening, and I think there probably were people who said that, but no statements to that effect have ever surfaced. And that's a bit puzzling, because if you were in the bar that night, the night of the explosions, you'd remember that for the rest of your life. And the police must surely have interviewed everybody who was in the bar.
34:29 Matt Forde? And do you think, I mean, just thinking of the stuff that was on the news at the time, I remember this as a young boy, there was the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Bridgewater Four, which I know is a different type of case, but it felt like miscarriage of justice being overturned was quite a big deal for a while. Was justice less sound then? Do you think we have a fairer justice system now?
34:50 Speaker 04 I do, for several reasons. One is that one has to pinch oneself to recall that before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act was passed in 1984, convictions could be obtained on the basis of confessions extracted after prolonged periods in police custody, repudiated as soon as the suspects were out of police custody, and you could send people away for life on that basis. In the 50s, we hanged people on that basis. So the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which lays down strict rules about how suspects
35:32 Speaker 04 are to be treated, and confessions are now recorded rather than noted down by police officers, did make a huge difference. There've been other changes too. I think the quality of forensic science has improved, and DNA testing, I think, has made a difference. So there's been scientific advances too. And I also think that the Court of Criminal Appeal, which used to consist of some of the most closed minds in the land, got a bit of a wake-up call from the scandals of the late eighties and early nineties. And the kind of people being appointed to
36:14 Speaker 04 it, while still a small elite, tend to come from wider backgrounds. There's women on the Court of Appeal now, for goodness sake. I think we've got a woman Lord Chief Justice at the moment, unheard of in those days.
36:27 Matt Forde? Obviously investigative journalism plays a huge role in holding the justice system accountable, but given the changes that have happened in journalism as an industry in recent years, do you think we're doing enough of it today?
36:40 Speaker 04 I'm sure there isn't enough of it, but I do think that inquiring journalism is alive and well. The big current one, of course, is the post office, where all these postmasters were convicted falsely of defording the post office and their lives were ruined. Now, the overturning of that really owes itself to one or two very persistent journalists, and I take my hat off to them. And it's interesting, the really interesting case for the future, which we're going to hear a lot more, in my view, is that of Lucy Letby, the nurse convicted of murdering seven babies on what everybody admits is only circumstantial evidence. I
37:23 Speaker 04 have no first-hand experience of it, but even on a casual reading, I don't know enough to say that she's innocent, but I do know enough to know that it's not proved beyond reasonable doubt. And there've been a couple of very good documentaries on television on Channel Four and, I think, on the BBC about that case. I think it's going to take an awful lot to unravel, because you're taking on two of the mightiest vested interests in the land, the legal profession and the medical profession, and they will not own up lightly to mistakes.
38:00 Speaker 04 So that's going to be very tricky.
38:03 Alice Levine? An essential part of investigative journalism is, of course, keeping your sources confidential and the material that they give you. A case was brought against you in 2022 to try and pressure you into revealing your sources. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
38:19 Speaker 04 Ah, yes. The Westminster Police, and of course it's a different generation of policemen now, finally got round to investigating the whodunit aspects of the case. They were very reluctant in the immediate aftermath of the release because you couldn't really go looking for the real culprits without facing up to the fact that the confessions were forgeries. And so eventually the Westminster Police, I think they had on a previous occasion in the 1990s consulted the Director of Public Prosecutions as to whether I could be prosecuted for not revealing the identity of the last bomber. And he'd said no.
39:01 Speaker 04 But in 2000, the Labour Government of the day passed the Terrorism Act, which lowered the bar at which one could be accused of collaborating with terrorists. They applied to the Old Bailey for an order forcing me to disclose my sources. I completely understand why ordinary citizens are not particularly sympathetic, but for journalists, this would be quite a serious issue. It would make investigative journalism very difficult because nobody would ever have talked to me, for example, or in other cases, if they thought that they were going to have their names plastered all over the place. So I had the backing of the National Union of Journalists and there came a day when
39:46 Speaker 04 I had to appear at the Old Bailey and the two sides, embarrassed of representing the police and one representing me, argued it out in front of a judge and mercifully the judge came down on my side. So that appears to be that.
40:02 Alice Levine? Because to be clear, Chris, you obviously offer your sources confidentiality forever. That's a lifelong promise.
40:11 Speaker 04 Yes, while they were alive, I think if I outlive the individual involved, I wouldn't hesitate to name him, as indeed I now talk openly about the others. But yes, since he's younger than me, the odds are that he'll outlive me, so there you are.
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41:35 Speaker 08 There are books that change how you see the world, and there are books that change how you see yourself. In a new podcast series, A Great Book with Barack Obama, President Obama sits down with a series of surprising and sharp guests to explore six books that have shaped his life and perspective on the world. From Song of Solomon and the Fire Next Time, to All the Pretty Horses and Gilead, the president is joined by guests like Tom Hanks and Ta-Nehisi Coates to reflect on how these timeless stories shaped his thinking on everything from fatherhood to leadership, and discover together what they tell us about the world we live in and the world we want to create.
42:18 Speaker 08 Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of A Great Book with Barack Obama ad-free right now, plus access each audiobook discussed in the series. Download the Audible app today.
42:40 Matt Forde? We've talked about the impact of the case on the justice system, on the media, on the men themselves. But what about you? How has it shaped your life?
42:47 Speaker 04 Well, when I was first elected to Parliament, I was on the left of the Labour Party, I still am on the left of the Labour Party, I think. But it was made very clear to me, because I had been involved with a number of serious arguments with the Labour establishment, that I could expect no preferment. So when, for example, I applied to go on the Home Affairs Select Committee, which, given my interest in these matters, you might think I was well qualified for, I was blocked on successive occasions. But when the convictions were quashed
43:24 Speaker 04 in 1991 amid great publicity and much weeping and wailing from the establishment, suddenly overnight I was respectable. Not only was I offered a place on the Home Affairs Select Committee, I eventually became chairman of it. And then after that I became a minister in various departments. So I suppose you could say that via what was regarded as a rather extreme cause at one time, it was actually the path to respectability.
44:00 Alice Levine? It's fair to say you've had a phenomenal career, Chris. Twenty-three years as an MP, as well as freeing the Birmingham Six. Achievements that most people could only dream of. Do you have a proudest moment?
44:13 Speaker 04 Well, I think the proudest moment in relation to that case certainly was standing outside the Old Bailey in front of the world's television cameras. Because as I say, I needed to be vindicated publicly. It was so damaging politically.
44:27 Matt Forde? Chris, the Birmingham Six is still Britain's biggest unsolved mass murder, despite four of the five bombers being named as Seamus McLaughlin, Michael Murray, James Francis, Gavin and Michael Hayes. Michael Hayes is still alive. Do you think he and the unnamed fifth bomber will ever be brought to justice?
44:43 Speaker 04 Yes, I did interview Michael Hayes, who was still an active member of the IRA when I interviewed him, and a great deal of cloak and dagger surrounded the interview. But he never admitted to me his role in the bombing, so I always felt free talk about him.
45:01 Speaker 04 I believe he was the other person who made the bombs. He has been talking to people who've knocked on his door in Dublin. And in one of those interviews, I think with a BBC, Northern Ireland BBC, he claimed to have been the person who defused the third bomb that night, which was in Hagley Road, in an office block in Hagley Road in Birmingham. Now, if that's true, that puts him in a very small club of people who were IRA men who were out and about that night.
45:34 Speaker 04 I no doubt the police have looked and prosecution authorities have looked at whether he could be extradited, but but obviously they don't think he can.
45:45 Alice Levine? And the obvious last question, Chris, is are you still a loony Leftie on a crusade and will you ever stop?
45:51 Speaker 04 I occasionally try to interest the outside world in my views on one thing or another. With less success than used to be the case. But yes, I still regard myself as a freelance journalist.
46:04 Alice Levine? Still odious?
46:06 Speaker 04 Well, that's for others to judge. I couldn't say.
46:10 Alice Levine? Well, I found this completely delightful, so I cannot concur with any of the Sun's claims.
46:16 Speaker 04 But you also think I'm unflappable.
46:18 Alice Levine? Yeah, I can't be trusted.
46:19 Speaker 04 You're wrong about that too.
46:21 Alice Levine? Terrible judgment.
46:22 Matt Forde? Chris, this has been great. Thank you so much for coming on.
46:24 Speaker 04 Thank you for having me.
46:31 Matt Forde? Chris Mullin, what a star.
46:33 Alice Levine? I have to ask you a question. Have you been living with Chris Mullin for a year in a kind of Daniel Day Lewis style? So that you can do a full method version of his voice because it is spot on and I never say that to you.
46:47 Matt Forde? You never say it to me, which is why it means so much after five or six years. So, thank you, Alice.
46:53 Alice Levine? You're welcome.
46:54 Matt Forde? So, what have you got for us next time?
46:56 Alice Levine? Okay, well, we are going from a miscarriage of justice to a scandal where the correct men were most definitely caught. A heist that, had it succeeded, would have become one of the biggest robberies in history.
47:08 Matt Forde? I love a good heist, so I'm trying to think what it would be because we've done Hatton Garden jewellery and we've done Brink's Mac Gold.
47:15 Alice Levine? Okay, well, this, as a clue, will complete the precious loot holy trinity. There's a song by Shirley Bassey called "Beeb of Forever".
47:25 Matt Forde? Diamonds!
47:26 Alice Levine? There we go, he always gets it eventually.
47:28 Matt Forde? Well, I love Shirley Bassey, I love James Bond movie theme tunes, so it is the perfect Venn diagram of my two passions.
47:35 Alice Levine? Well, it is actually funny that you mention James Bond because the details of this heist are up there with the most outrageous of Bond movies. It's got henchmen, it's got speedboats, one of the largest diamonds in the world, and it's all set in an iconic London landmark. Guy Ritchie could never. Join us next time for the Millennium Dome Heist.
47:55 Matt Forde? I cannot wait!
48:17 Matt Forde? From Wondery and Samistat Audio, this is the fourth and final episode in our series, The Birmingham Six. British Scandal is hosted by me, Matt Ford.
48:26 Alice Levine? And me, Alice Levine.
48:28 Matt Forde? For Samistat, our producer is Redsey Bernard. Our assistant producer is Louise Mason. Our senior producers are Joe Sykes and Dashar Lissidzina. Our engineer is Jai Williams. For Wondery, our senior producer is Theodora Leludis. Executive producers for Wondery are Estelle Doyle and Marshall Louie.
49:01 Speaker 08 There are books that change how you see the world, and there are books that change how you see yourself. In a new podcast series, A Great Book with Barack Obama, President Obama sits down with a series of surprising and sharp guests to explore six books that have shaped his life and perspective on the world. From Song of Solomon and The Fire Next Time, to All the Pretty Horses and Gilead, the president is joined by guests like Tom Hanks and Ta-Nehisi Coates to reflect on how these timeless stories shaped his thinking on everything from fatherhood to leadership, and discover together what they tell us about the world we live in and the world we want to create.
49:44 Speaker 08 Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of A Great Book with Barack Obama ad-free right now, plus access each audiobook discussed in the series. Download the Audible app today.
50:00 Speaker 09 I'm Gemma Whelan, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we tell the story of the original femme fatale, the spy who was Mata Hari. A famous dancer turned World War I secret agent, accused of seducing Allied officers to uncover their plans. But was she a temptress or a scapegoat for French failures? Follow The Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who Was Mata Hari early and ad-free on Audible.
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