RedHanded - Episode 224 - The Guildford Four & The Maguire Seven

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

On the 5th of October 1974, the Provisional Irish Republican Army blew up a military pub in Guildford, killing four soldiers, one civilian and injuring sixty-five others. The responsibility for the heinous act of terror was quickly thrown at three young Irish men and a seventeen-year-old English girl. On top of this, accusations of running a  "bomb factory" was soon being shouldered by a middle-aged Irish woman who'd lived in England for twenty years. The British justice system had no evidence to prove the Guildford Four or Maguire Seven were connected to any bombings, but a large helping of police brutality and a bit of systemic corruption would soon sort that out. Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact Sources: Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA by Richard English Making Sense of the Troubles: A history of conflict in Northern Ireland by David McKittrick and David McVea In The Name of the Son: The Gerald Conlan Story by Ricard O’Rawe https://www.irishpost.com/life-style/infamous-no-irish-no-blacks-no-dogs-signs-may-never-have-existed-148416 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/28/no-reason-to-doubt-no-irish-no-blacks-signs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlmgQDluhk4 https://www.thejournal.ie/paddy-armstrong-documentary-1792119-Nov2014/ https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/nov/25/british-injustice-maguire-story-review-family https://www.thejusticegap.com/guildford-four-how-the-innocent-were-framed-and-the-truth-buried https://magill.ie/archive/guildford-four-and-one-law-irish https://everything.explained.today/Gerry_Conlon/ https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2019/03/23/special-branch-knew-who-the-real-birmingham-bombers-were-from-1975/ https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/12/opinion/l-sins-of-the-guildford-four-prosecution-447099.html https://innocenceproject.org/how-the-uk-police-interview-suspects/ https://education.niassembly.gov.uk/post_16/snapshots_of_devolution/gfa https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/gerry-conlon-hadnt-an-ounce-of-republicanism-in-him-says-biographer-and-boyhood-pal-36201704.html https://www.irishtimes.com/news/blair-apology-to-guilford-four-and-maguire-six-1.1174017 https://group.irishecho.com/2011/02/a-view-north-of-bin-lids-and-head-bangers-in-northern-ireland/ https://stairnaheireann.net/2020/10/19/otd-in-1989-after-serving-15-years-in-prison-the-guildford-four-are-released-in-what-is-considered-to-be-one-of-the-biggest-ever-miscarriages-of-justice-in-britain-3/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Sruti. And welcome to the third to last Red Handed of 2021. We made it. There were some really hairy moments this year where we didn't know if we would, but here we are. Oh, God. At the end of the year. Christmas is in three weeks, right? What?

How? Stress. Who? Okay, I've decided for Christmas I want an Udi. Okay. We're not sponsored by them. No. Or some sort of off-brand version of Udi.

I will deliver. It's fucking freezing everywhere. I'm so cold. Thank you to the lovely lady whose name I've forgotten. Kathy's Crafts, Vintage Crafts. Thank you for sending us. She's got an Etsy. Go and look her up.

Yes. I'll leave a link to her Etsy in the episode description because she sent us some lovely blankets. And they are helping. But they are quite, mine does drown me. It's quite heavy. So I might buy a nudie just or some other competitor to just be warm because I'm fucking cold. Yeah, it's cold. It's getting progressively colder.

I've had to start wearing gloves on my cycle to work, which is just not a good look. And gloves make my hands feel weird. But I have no choice. Maybe you need gloves made out of little silk labels. Maybe that's exactly what I need. Excellent. Let's crack on. Let's crack on.

If you've ever wondered what the IRA is really about, why Ireland split in two in the first place, or why there is a long history of animosity between the Irish and the English, then this is the episode you've been waiting for. I have wondered all of those things for many a year. I am so scared to do this episode. Oh, good. I've been thinking about doing something along these lines for a long time.

For the longest time, I wanted to do a limited series about the Guilford Four, the Birmingham Six and the Maguire Seven and call it Four, Six, Seven, which I thought was ingenious, but I never got around to it. So I think it's just such an important case. And for reasons that will become clear, a lot of people, I would actually say most people, especially people our age have never heard of it oh my god like honestly i didn't know about any of these cases i didn't really even understand what the troubles were about apart from the fact that i knew it was like something to do with england and catholics and protestants that would be my limit i mean not far off but not in depth. No, no. Not particularly nuanced. Not particularly nuanced or particularly valuable in terms of a piece of knowledge to hold, as far as my understanding was.

So it was a great, great big gap in my understanding. But that gap is completely constructed by the British education system. Oh, fully. And also, I think, you know, I don't know how different it is for other people, maybe, because if your parents, like, grew up particularly in the south of England during the 70s then maybe you know their memory would still be strong of some of these things happening and maybe they would have talked to you about it so you would have some idea I didn't come to this country till 1995 I've had both narratives always obviously having Irish family growing up Catholic being surrounded by Catholics and Irish people, but then also living my entire life in England. So I always remember being very surprised when I met English

people who had a completely different story than the one that I had been telling or had been told or the one I had in my head. Saying I feel conflicted about it would be a lie. I have always felt confused by English people not understanding it. But it's because of the lack of information. Yeah, I would say it's an absolute lack of information. And even when, because we've talked about wanting to cover a case that would allow us to look at the troubles, specifically as a period of time as a series of events that occurred. And I remember when we first talked about that, I went away and just tried to find some documentaries that I could watch to understand I was more confused yep I feel like there is a real lack of clear information so I'm looking forward to this one good so we're going to give you a world

famous podcast world famous red-handed rundown of the troubles in Northern Ireland, and also, of course, the story of the Guildford Fall. If you are English, or Irish, or maybe both, you will probably already have heard of the Guildford Fall. They were three Irish blokes and one Englishwoman, well, girl, really, who were accused of blowing up the coach and horses and the Seven Stars pub in Guildford on the 5th of October 1974. For those of you not from England, Guildford is like in the south of England,

like south of London. An hour south of London on the train, yeah. So the names of these four were Carol Richardson, Paddy Armstrong, Paul Hill and Gerald Conlon. The four were imprisoned, lied to by police, physically and psychologically tortured, and eventually they confessed to the bombings. These confessions even implicated Gerry Conlon's 40-year-old aunt, Anne Maguire,

of running a bomb factory out of her home in Kilburn, which is in North West London. But if you know anything about this case, you will know that the Guildford Four were innocent. And so was Annie McGuire. This is one of the most famous cases of false confessions in history. But before we get to that bit, it is red-handed rundown time. And this time, chronologically speaking, this is the rundown that has covered the most decades, centuries even. So let's get to the start of the english fucking with the irish to get to the beginning of that we have to go all the way back to 1169 before the english were even

called the english we're literally in the norman times my friends and that's the first time in the way that we currently understand the history of ireland that the english died fucking shit up and after that followed centuries of England claiming lordship over Ireland but actually only controlling relatively small areas of land, while the rest of Ireland was controlled by ancient clans, the Maguires being one of those clans. The Maguires were kings of Fermanagh for a while, which is one of the six counties of what is currently Northern Ireland. So blue-blooded over here. Despite the clan kings holding their own, the English continued to fuck about in Ireland for centuries, gaining and losing territory over the years.

Can we cover all of it? Of course not. That's not why you're here. So we're going to skip forward to 1536, when Henry VIII decided he wanted to properly conquer Ireland for good. And because of Henry's tiny falling out with the Pope, that meant Protestantism. And if you want, um... I was going to say, if you want a deep dive, no.

If you'd like a skim across the surface. Yes. If you would like to hear us talking about Henry VIII and about Guy Fawkes slash Guido Fawkes and about the gunpowder plot, and of course, Henry VIII's very notorious split from the Catholic Church in what we like to call the olden times, religio Brexit, then you can head on over to become a patron of Red Handed. And if you're a $10 or not patron, that was a November episode. So check it out.

We had a great time and we learned a lot about Protestants and Catholics and something you should know. And if you don't know, you should be ashamed. Ireland, generally predominantly Catholic. So the invasion of the Protestants didn't go down particularly well with the Catholic citizens of Ireland. There were several rebellions and a nine-year war and from 1603 the English ruled over Ireland from Dublin properly for the first time and Protestants became the ruling class. Then more and more Protestants poured in from Scotland and England and they were given Catholic land

And these pieces of land were called plantations There was a briefly successful rebellion in 1641 And the Catholics regained control for a little bit Until Christmas councillor Oliver Cromwell turned up and decided it was his turn So he was the guy who was like, we shouldn't have a king, we shouldn't have a king And then he was like, oh okay, I'll be king yes got it precisely i see i see so yeah that's why when everyone was like boris johnson the first man to cancel christmas since oliver cromwell yes exactly and it's still i think it's sinn fein that refused to negotiate in rooms where there are portraits

of oliver cromwell like it's a real thing like my nanny used to tell me she'd send me to Cromwell if I was naughty. Yeah and considering the piece of information you're about to tell everybody I understand why you would feel that way. Yes and that piece of information is that 600,000 Irish people died during Cromwell's conquest and subsequent reign over Ireland which when you consider the population of Ireland at that time was about two million is nothing short of a genocide. Cromwell also rounded up Catholics and sent them to the Caribbean as indentured servants whenever he felt like it. Which is really interesting. There's a long history of Irish indentured servants in the Caribbean.

Then there was another uprising from the Catholics, which again didn't go so well. And in 1801, Ireland became a part of the Union of Great Britain. A bad time to be a Catholic. Catholics were having a bad time in England and in Ireland at this particular juncture. Nowhere to escape. No, it wasn't great unless you moved to Spain. And then, of course, there was the potato famine that kicked off in 1846.

During this time, the population of Ireland dropped from over 8 million people to just 4.4. And the English did jack fucking shit about it. Just to clarify for the ignorant out there, of which I was definitely one, the potato famine was because the only thing to eat was potatoes or because there were no potatoes? There was a blight on the crop. So you do hear people say that. Oh, because I thought it was oh people have misunderstood the potato famine actually meant it because that's all they had and they all

died it was a like a parasite on the crop so you could try and grow potatoes and then they would just sort of like disintegrate i also got told a story when i was young i don't know how true this is that the english would send the ir Irish to plant potatoes in the sea and then everyone drowned I don't know if that's true but it's a story I was told as a Irish Catholic child so it's a generational trauma I would argue I mean yeah if the population halves I'd say that's pretty significant yes it's me the fact check fairy the reason that Irish Catholics were so dependent on the potatoes was because the English took literally everything else for themselves. So there was a blight on crops all

over Europe, but the Irish suffered the most because they had no resources to fall back on because the English took them all. So Ireland never really recovered its population. And today there are just about 4.9 million people in Ireland. I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life.

I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone.

Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom.

But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Interestingly, a lot more Irish people or people who claim to be of Irish heritage in America, because apparently it's sat right now at about 31.5 million. And I was once watching,

I think it was like Dragon's Den, and there was this woman on there who was like selling jewelry. It was meant to be like like you'd buy it as like to become an heirloom in your family and it would have like a hallmark on it and it would have like a crest or an irish i was gonna say logo like a suit of arms yeah something something like that and she was just like well you know there's only they were like there's only so many people you can sell that to an island what you need to do is get it to america because that's where you're gonna sell it oh yeah yeah oh for sure every clan obviously has a crest ours is a man on a horse very inoffensive my friend i'm not gonna say her name because she'll fucking kill me her family crest is a black man chain to a tree fucking hell there's actually two irish clans that have a black man chain to a tree one of them has

a horizontal chain and one of them has a vertical chain which is how you tell them apart so yeah my one's fine hers is not yeah i would say a man on a horse very fine yeah i mean mcguire means like son of the dark one so oh what does that mean either dark hair dark skin oh there's a lot of heat around oh i see i thought it was like some sort of weird turn for the devil i was like why would you want that uh no i don't know who knows not me so out of the ashes of the famine rose two rival factions, the Protestant Order of Orange and the Catholic Ancient Order of Iberians. In 1914, Ireland was awarded governance by the English, an Irish island for Irish people.

But before you get too excited, a little old thing called World War I kicked off at exactly the same time. And the whole Home Governance Act was put on ice. 1916 to 1921 were years filled with political strife, civil unrest and violence from the English oppressors, the loyalists and the dissenting Republicans. And this is when the Irish Republican Army, that you probably know as the IRA, started in earnest with cries of up the Republic. And in Irish, chukki illa, which means our day will come. The Easter Rising of 1916 is the most famous of these violent incidents. And after the Easter Rising in 1918, the Republican Party Sinn Féin won three quarters of the seats in Irish Parliament

and declared governance over the whole of Ireland, which the English were not too thrilled about. But the Irish weren't exactly ecstatic about being conscripted to fight in the trenches for what was widely considered to be an Englishman's war. And then in 1921, Ireland was partitioned into Northern and Southern Ireland, and a truce was signed. The truce meant that there were now 26 counties in the Irish Free State, which was named Ireland in 1937, and they were independent from English rule. And then there were six remaining counties making up Northern Ireland that were and still are a part of the United Kingdom.

So in case it's not obvious, the Republic of Ireland was and still is predominantly Catholic, while Northern Ireland was and still is predominantly Protestant. Even though, this is a little plot twist moment for everybody, abortion is legal in the Republic, so the Catholic part, and not in the North. Hashtag the North is next. It's an utter disgrace. It is a disgrace. So anybody who maybe doesn't know exactly what happened there, in 2018, the Republic of Ireland had a referendum and the people of the Republic of Ireland voted to decriminalise abortion. Excellent news. Well done, everybody who voted for that. At the same time, over here in England, we had Prime Minister Theresa May.

She had just formed a rather uneasy coalition with the help of the DUP. Head of the DUP, Arlene Foster, so we're talking now about Northern Ireland, told Theresa May in no uncertain terms when the people of Northern Ireland were like, hey, we'd like to have a referendum too about decriminalising abortion here. Arlene Foster just gave Theresa May a look and waggled her finger in a no. No, no, no, Theresa. Don't even think about it. And then Theresa May, presumably wearing her infamous

This Is What A Feminist Looks Like t-shirt, told the people of Northern Ireland, Hey, ladies, if you do get pregnant and want an abortion, you can come to England. How bloody nice of you, Theresa. I think there's probably many charities in Liverpool specifically that cater to women coming over from Northern Ireland. Like having an abortion is fucking traumatic enough. Like you

don't need to like have a boat journey on top of it. Absolutely. And also just in case it's not clear, basically what Theresa May was saying is I won't go against or stand up to the DUP and demand that Northern Ireland have a ref or help support the people of Northern Ireland to find a way to have a referendum to decriminalise abortion like the Republic of Ireland has done. I'm going to shut my mouth because I need Arlene Foster to support me and I'm going to subject, therefore, all of the women of Northern Ireland

to not having any sort of choice over their bodies. Basically, when she was like, you can come over here, she's saying, oh, I don't really want to interfere, but you can come here. And the boat journey's dramatic. It's also expensive. Oh, yeah, was like, you can come over here, she's saying, oh, I don't really want to interfere, but you can come here. And the boat journey is traumatic. It's also expensive. Oh, yeah, for sure. So who are the women who are going to be able to come to England, Wales or Scotland if they need an abortion and they're in Northern Ireland?

It's not going to be the women it's going to disproportionately affect, which will be the poorest women there. So the whole thing is fucking diabolical. Do you know who the poorest women are in Northern Ireland? The Catholics. So, yeah, all round bad news bears. But let's get back to our timeline. So ERA, which is the Republic of Ireland, left the British Commonwealth. And this was followed by severe economic problems throughout the 60s and 70s.

ERA is such an interesting, because you don't hear it anymore. But in the 90s, like I used to have, have you know we need to record VHS off the TV my favorite thing when I was a kid was to go back and re-watch the adverts of like the olden times and it would always be like we don't deliver to era or like if you're in era like it's this number like it was much more prevalent back then yeah I don't hear it anymore yeah I feel like I've only ever seen it written down so in in 1974, Northern Ireland was placed under direct rule of the British government, which basically meant that they had a Secretary of State in Parliament, so the Secretary of State of Northern Ireland, but not much else. By the 70s, we are slap bang in the middle of what is now referred to as the Troubles,

which essentially was the period between 1969 and 2003, during which time there were over 36,900 shooting incidents and over 16,200 bombings or attempted bombings in ERA, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain. So there you go, that's the history of Ireland, red-handed style. If we have got anything wrong, I'm sure the fact-check fairy is just waiting in the wings. I think that is just remarkable. I think if we even just like let that sink in over the course of like just over 30 years, almost 37 shooting incidents, that is over 10,000 shooting incidents every single year that was happening. And 16,200 bombings or attempted bombings. I just think like, again, if you don't understand the, or don't know,

and I would put myself in that category, exactly what we mean by the troubles. Yeah, it's bad. Oh, it's real bad. Real, real bad. And again, something I've been on both sides of my entire life. Let's start in earnest our story for today. We're going to start in 1974, when Catholic Belfast native Gerald Gerry Conlon hopped on a boat to London in search of a better life over the Irish Sea at the tender age of 20. His aunt Annie Maguire lived in Kilburn, which is a north-western neighbourhood of London, absolutely brimming with Irish people, Cricklewood, Frinchley, Wilsdon, all the same. So he wouldn't be totally alone in London, and Jerry, a petty thief, a bit of a scoundrel even, was never one to shy away from a bit of adventure anyway. This was actually the second time he'd made his way to London. He had been essentially sent away by his parents, a ship painter called Giuseppe and a

hospital cleaner called Sarah. And they'd sent him away after Jerry was briefly enrolled in the Irish Republican Army. It's Giuseppe. Where's that name come from? So I haven't been able to corroborate it. But the story is that, so Jerry Collins' grandma, Giuseppe's mum, when Giuseppe was born, there was an ice cream shop called Giuseppe's and his mum just liked the name again I don't know if that's 100% true but that's the story and he was always like it fucking ruined my life I mean it's a tough one it's a toughie especially in Belfast yeah because like if this is in the he's already a catholic give him a break yeah if this is in the 70s then let's say even if Giuseppe was like 20 years old,

we're talking like in the 30s, he would have been just like this little Catholic kid called Giuseppe in Ireland. Yeah, not great. That's tough. But Gerry's IRA days were very short-lived. He got kicked out for being a thief. That's because the IRA were not interested in dishonest and unreliable people, which Conlon, like most 20-year- olds, certainly was. But he doesn't last. Still, his parents were worried that he would

either find his way back to the IRA or keep stealing and end up in trouble with the British army. So he's really painted himself into a corner. But the first time around, Jerry didn't last long in London. He missed Belfast, so he returned home. But he only managed a few months before deciding he needed to escape the violence and headed back over to England. And when we say violence, what we really mean is war zone. I'm talking like tanks down the streets, daily shootings, bombings, the IRA running through people's houses. People used to bang dustbin lids on the ground to like signal which houses were safe. Like it's war zone is like quite literally the only way to describe it if you are having trouble picturing that just look it up there's hours and hours of footage of

what it was like in belfast in the 70s yeah again i just completely naive and ignorant to a lot of this i did watch last year maybe it was earlier this year, who the fuck knows, a BBC miniseries called Bloodlands or Bloodlands, I don't really know. It's like one word. With that guy James Nesbitt. Oh yeah, I like him. Yeah, and it's meant to be like in modern day Ireland. But it's meant to be about the troubles and like a historical case and I don't know. It started off really well.

The ending was absolutely atrocious. Oh no. People lost, it wasn't just my opinion people lost their minds people on twitter were like i just wasted five hours of my life watching this series because that ending was so terrible but in that they do dig into bits of this is obviously very like stylized for a tv show but yeah it's like when they're doing the flashbacks to show what it was like it's hard to believe because so much of this has just been like sanitized, scrubbed away. We don't talk about it.

We don't know about it. And it's so not that long ago. I would make several recommendations. There is a podcast called The Troubles Podcast, which is an indie podcast, which is much more serialized than this. And like, it's very cleanly done. So take yourself through that. When it comes to Northern Ireland, my advice would be to stay away from the BBC. But, you know whatever

having said that they did make a good documentary about the home babies but that's the Republic so it's a bit different also just watch Derry Girls like there's a bit in Derry Girls where there's like an unexploded bomb and they all have to get off the bus to school because the British soldiers literally have to move the bomb out of the way of their school bus. And the joke of the episode is how annoyed their parents are that they're not at school because it's so normal. Like then that's genuinely what it was like. So Gerry Conlon started his second stint in England in Southampton where he met up with his old football mate, Paul Hill.

Together they worked on varying construction sites. But after a while, they'd had enough of the scene in Southampton. So they decided to varying construction sites but after a while they'd had enough of the scene in Southampton so they decided to go back up to London together to see what the crack was in the big city. Once they got up to London they went to Kilburn. Yeah makes sense. Exactly and they stayed in a single men's hostel run by Catholics for Catholics. Essentially it was a bed set. So yeah, like, I guess like a hostel, but you live there for a long time. And also like very normal because they're migrant laborers.

Essentially, that's what they are. Except they're British citizens. So it was here that they worked on construction sites. And being Irish in England was not easy at this time in history. And getting work was much harder. So when we say that they were doing construction work, what we actually mean is that they were waiting outside of a cafe early in the morning for building crews to show up and decide who got to work that day. Have you seen like the, like in films they use it a lot like during the depression in America where people are waiting at the gates

that the doctor get picked, like that. Okay, okay. Now you might have also heard of the infamous no Irish, no blacks, no dogs tagline. And you've probably also seen the famous photo of this sign being placed in a B&B window in London. The background of that photo

is mixed. So there are people who say that it's not real, that it never really existed. Basically these people will say that it's not real, that it never really existed. Basically, these people will say that it was just part of an exhibit of an exhibition that was talking about what it was like for Irish people in London at that time. But places like the Guardian also say, yes, it was part of an exhibit. Because it was real. Because it was part of an exhibit, but it was part of the exhibit because it was real and it did happen. We can't confirm either way. I would probably say that it probably was real. And even if it was real and it did happen. We can't confirm either way.

I would probably say that it probably was real. And even if it wasn't, it certainly reflected the mood at the time. And there's always been an affinity in England, especially in London, between the Black Caribbean community and the Irish for this exact reason. This xenophobic sentiment was echoed across the pond in the United States as well, with many job advertisements being printed in newspapers with the acronym NINA, which meant no Irish need apply. But Jerry and his mate Paul Hill didn't let it get them down. Living in a hostile London was still better than living in a war-torn Belfast. So they went about their business, working, drinking, taking drugs and

generally having the crack. Jerry still stole things. On one occasion, he stole 750 quid from a sex worker's apartment, which is over 7,000 pounds in today's money. During their drinking sessions, Jerry Conlon and Paul Hill ran into their old mate from home, Paddy Armstrong. They came across him in the Memphis Bell, which is a pub in Cricklewood. And according to Paddy Armstrong, he and Jerry got on well, but he didn't have much time for Paul Hill.

Paddy Armstrong lived a much more transient existence with his English girlfriend, Carol Richardson. He lived in a couple of squats, he stole more than he worked, and he took more drugs than should be humanly possible. But let's leave Paddy, Jerry, Paul and Carol in London for just a moment and take ourselves off to Guildford in Surrey, like we said, about an hour south of London. Where on the 5th of October 1974, 250 people were enjoying a quiet drink in the British military pub, The Horse and Groom.

Everyone was kung fu fighting was playing on the jukebox as a £6 bomb that had been left under a table exploded without warning. Four soldiers were killed, as well as one civilian, and 60 people were injured. The explosion would mark a new phase of terror for the English, because the IRA had decided that one bomb in England was worth a hundred in Belfast. That same night, a second bomb detonated in another Guildford pub called the Seven Stars. This pub had been evacuated, so thankfully no one was killed. So the IRA argued that because they were military pubs, they weren't actually civilian targets.

But, obviously, they had like four categories of targets that had to be military, economic, cultural, or I can't remember what the other one was. But everything fits into those like categories. But what was different was that before they had been bombing barracks and now they were just doing like pubs where normal people were in there too. So it became clear to the Surrey police that these two bombings had been carried out by an active service unit, or ASU, of the Irish Republican Army, IRA. A month later, there was another explosion in another army pub in Woolwich, which is in South London. The attacks were almost identical, so they were attributed to the same ASU. And this time, two people were killed and 35 were injured. The people of England were scared.

Pubs were not the IRA standard attacks like Hannah said. They A, normally gave warning and usually they only attacked military places like barracks. The idea that any pub could now just explode at a moment's notice sent a chill of terror through the nation. And that chill of terror put quite a lot of pressure on the police to make progress very quickly. To that end, they meticulously interviewed every survivor of the horse and groom attack and figured out there were two people who they had pictures of. I don't know how they had pictures. They have a photograph of this couple, right? I don't know how because there's no cctv yeah there's also not like you know today you might be like oh there were people in there who were taking pictures on their phones of each other and there's all these people in the background that we can spot how on earth do

they have pictures i have absolutely no idea but they do apparently and these two people there are two people in the pub that can't be accounted for amongst the survivors or the dead and multiple survivors stated that there had been a couple in the pub, a man and a woman. They had a couple of drinks and they got off with each other and then they left. Nobody had seen this couple before, which in a military pub in Guildford in the 70s was pretty unusual. So the people in the pub were like, those people were definitely here. We'd never seen them before. So it's not just the police being like, we've got this picture of two people okay because i mean obviously five

people tragically died but there were a lot of survivors so they were able to piece together a pretty decent picture i see so it was decided that this couple must have been the ones to have set the bomb and then left the pub it It also helped that the people who had overheard the couple talking had heard that they were Irish. And if you thought being Irish in England before the 5th of October 1974 was hard, it was about to get a whole lot harder. In the next year, the IRA would conduct 40 attacks on the south of England in just one year. And there's a documentary about it on YouTube. It's not my favourite documentary in the world. It's called The Year London Blew Up. And this documentary claims that this campaign of guerrilla warfare bombings from the IRA, their plan was to make

life in London so unbearable that the government would have no choice but to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The Surrey police made 46 arrests in connection to the Guildford and Willich pub bombings. Amongst these 46 was Paul Hill. How he was clocked by authorities is a topic of some debate. Some sources will tell you that a British Army intelligence officer identified Paul Hill from a series of photographs from the night of the bombings. But others will tell you that the IRA dobbed him in themselves. Paul Hill is interesting. Paul Hill was wanted for the murder of an SAS British officer

so the British already knew who he was so make of that what you will. He was acquitted of it years later but he's in there crosshairs anyway for something entirely different. But either way, however Paul Hill fell into the hands of the Surrey police. On the 29th of November 1974, Paul Hill was arrested at his new address in Southampton. He had parted ways by this point with his old pal Gerry Conlon, and with London, because Gerry had

come back to Belfast, and his family. After his arrest, Paul Hill was interrogated, violently, and in the end he signed a statement in which he confessed to the Guildford and Woolwich bombings, and also named his friends, Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong and Carol Richardson, as his co-conspirators. He also stated that Gerry Conlon's aunt, Aunt Annie, the one who lived in Kilburn for more than 20 years, had been the one who had made and provided them with the bombs. Just one day after this confession had been signed, Gerry Conlon was arrested on the 30th of November at his family home in Belfast at half past five in the morning. He had heard that Paul Hill had been picked up, but at first he just laughed it off. Arrests and accusations of terrorism were hardly big news in Belfast. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich,

be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into

the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years.

I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favourite podcasts. But Jerry wasn't laughing at all when the British flew him to England to interrogate him about his connection to the Guildford and the Woolwich bombings, as listed by Paul Hill in his signed confession. Jerry was scared and confused. He didn't even know where Guildford was. He definitely wouldn't have had the bus money to get there. Jerry told British officers interrogating him again and again that on the night of the 5th

of October he had been taking acid with a homeless man at his hostel for Catholics, but try as he might, Jerry couldn't remember the man's name. Just two days before the arrest of Paul Hill, British Parliament, in light of the Guildford pub bombings, passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Under this act, police were allowed to hold those arrested on suspicion of terrorism, without charge, for eight days. Yeah, I mean that is a massive turning point because under normal law, the police were only allowed to hold suspects for 24 hours. After that time has passed, they have to charge you or they have to let you go.

So the significance of this act cannot be overstated. You're just completely at the mercy of the police. Yeah. And what it meant for Jerry Conlon was that the police had eight days to do whatever they wanted to him. And they did. According to Jerry, he was told, quote,

Conlon, they're going to put you in prison for so many years that the next time you see Belfast, they'll be doing day trips to the moon. Jerry Conlon was also marched along a gauntlet of police who spat on him, slapped him, called him a dirty, stinking paddy murderer, called his sisters and his mother's IRA whores and said that his dad was an IRA bastard. Jerry was stripped naked, police urinated in his food, he was battered and the Surrey police told him that they would kill his sisters unless he confessed. Later Jerry said, I wanted to please these bastards. I was in a terrible state of confusion and fear. So, Gerry Conlon, who's 20 years old, by the way, when this happens,

Gerry Conlon signed the confession that he was presented with. It agreed on all of the major points of Paul Hill's confession. Those were, yes, Gerry had bombed the pubs in Guildford. Yes, he had been sent by the Provisional IRA to England as a part of an active service unit, as had Paddy Armstrong, and yes, his Auntie Annie had made bombs, hidden them in her house and given them to the terrorist cell. He also confessed that he, Paul Hill and Paddy Armstrong had planned the attacks on Guildford in the Memphis Bell, the pub in Cricklewood, on two separate occasions. The British police went after Paddy Armstrong next. They caught up with him and his girlfriend Carol Richardson on the 3rd of

December. Carol and Paddy were arrested at their squat in London. They both had lice when they were arrested, which gives you a pretty decent idea of the kind of life they were living and how unsuited they would be to an active service unit where someone needs to be organized and awake and on the subject of awakeness paddy armstrong actually had been awake for three days when he was arrested and it wasn't because he had a guilty conscience it was because he had taken a shitload of drugs he'd taken speed and a barbiturate called tulanol which has actually now been decontinued so it's a sleeping pill that is too crazy. So pickled in uppers and downers, Armstrong was taken from London to Guildford, where he was submitted to the same abuse as Gerry Conlon. He was told that the police would cut off his arms

and legs so that he could be like those he had maimed in the bombings. Officers kept asking Paddy who Auntie Annie was over and over again. They also told him that Paul Hill and Jerry Conlon and even his girlfriend Carol Richardson had already named him, so he was just wasting his time saying he had nothing to do with it. Paddy Armstrong gave in after less than a day. Which, if you haven't slept for three days... Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're on the worst come down you've ever had.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I wouldn't have lasted five minutes. I know. And can I just clarify? There seem to be a lot of people thinking I took heroin. Because I was just about to say,

I can't even imagine being hung over and somebody asking me questions that are a bit too difficult, let alone having not slept for three days and being on a massive fucking barbiturate fueled comedown and speed just to clarify in the episode where we're talking about the thai case a couple of weeks ago and hannah makes a joke about me taking heroin a very good joke very good joke go back and listen to it and you'll understand what's actually happening in case you're one of the people who posted on social media oh my god i can't believe sruti took heroin i didn't fucking take heroin so she says heroin and andrew marl

that's how i start my weekends really everybody paddy armstrong unsurprisingly confesses pretty quickly but according to paddy the police had led him every step of the way, feeding him information that he just agreed to, giving them literally whatever they wanted. Like Gerry, and like most of us, I presume, if we were in this situation, he just wanted it to end. Paddy has a book in which he talks about how the police led him. And it is quite shocking. It's very like, so you went here and you did this, didn't you? And then you drove this car, didn't you? And then you parked it outside the Wimpy, didn't you? And it's just, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

He just gets to a point very quickly after not sleeping for three days where he's just like, literally whatever you want. I know when you're saying that I've got like this weird smile on my face and you're probably like, why is she smiling? The reason is I'm currently doing the research for next week's episode. It's a two-parter. I'm just going to tell you, we're doing a two-parter on Casey Anthony to wrap up the year. And the reason I'm smiling is because Casey Anthony is the opposite of literally every single one of these false confession cases we've ever done.

The police are like, you did this, didn't you? This is what happened, isn't it? This is what you did. And she's like, no. No. Didn't do any of that. What? It goes on for fucking hours and she just

never breaks she's a anyway we'll get to that next week paddy confesses and like he said he said that he was obviously led by the police to do this and paddy armstrong's confession stated that he and 17 year old carol richardson his girlfriend were the couple in the horse and groom so the one that the police had the picture of the irish couple who'd been getting off with each other and he said that they had planted the bomb in a handbag under the table very hitchcock-esque and they had apparently set this bomb with a 40 minute timer and then they'd left leaving death and destruction in their wake the picture that the police had though of the couple they said were the ones who had done the bombing,

depicted a man in his 40s. Paddy Armstrong was in his early 20s. And the woman in this picture, I'm guessing wasn't a 17-year-old, and she also had an entirely different hairstyle to Carol. In fact, it mattered so little that after Paddy Armstrong signed the confession, one of the officers said to him, quote, we know you didn't do it, but we're going to do you anyway. We need bodies. Justice. Justice in Britain. Yes. So Paddy was then marched to a room that contained Paul Hill, who identified him as the correct man. And with that, these people would go down in history as the Guildford Four.

Paul Hill, Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong and Carol Richardson were sent to prison to await trial for the bombings of the two pubs in Guildford and Paul Hill and Paddy Armstrong were pegged for Woolwich as well. It's such an interesting thing, isn't it? Because we see this all the time. We've seen this many, many times before where the police are under pressure. They need to just get somebody and it's like, you'll do. Let's just get this done.

I'm not sympathizing with that mentality, obviously, but I can understand when it's like maybe a one-off high-profile killing. And they're like, let's just get this person. Let's put an end to it. In this case, it's going to carry on. And also, you've not caught the people that did the bombings. And it's also part of a group of other people who were also doing this. So you have to just put it down to they know it's not the right people, but it doesn't matter because it's just they don't want to be made to look stupid or like everything is out of their control.

It's that. And I think there's also an element of making an example. They're under pressure to be seen to be doing something. Yeah. And also it's a threat to national security. Everyone's scared. England has never been in a position like this since the Blitz. So everyone is terrified.

So they need to be. Seen to be. Ruling with an iron fist. And seem to be like able to catch these people. But what is so fucked? They're all British citizens. Carol's English. And like, when I was thinking about the British citizen thing, I'm like, do you them to be british or not which is it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but there is still

so much more to come giuseppe connell and jerry's dad had come to england too he was terrified for his son jerry had never been a perfect angel but giuseppe was sure that jerry just couldn't have killed five people in a terrorist attack. Giuseppe made his way to London to arrange a legal defence for his son. And where would you stay if you were Giuseppe Conlon? You would stay with your sister-in-law, Annie Maguire, who'd lived in Kilburn for 20 years, wouldn't you? This decision would cost Giuseppe Conlon his life. Because as we already know, Annie had been implicated in the series of confessions. Her house had been dubbed Auntie Annie's Bomb Factory, which of course the press absolutely loved. And on the 6th of December, the London Metropolitan Police raided Annie Maguire's home in Kilburn.

All of her children were there. Seven-year-old Anne Marie opened the door and the police stormed the house. Authorities arrested seven people in that house. Annie Maguire, her husband Patrick, Sean Smythe, who is Annie's brother, a family friend called Patrick O'Neill, Anne's 17-year-old son Vincent, and her 14-year-old son Patrick. And of course, they arrested Jerry's dad, Giuseppe Conlon. As Giuseppe was taken to his holding cell, he was told by an officer that his son Jerry was sure to get 30 years and that, quote, we'll see to it that you die in jail. This may have been meant as just a threat, but it turned out to be a prophecy.

In October 1975, the trial of the Guildford Four began. It was presided over by Justice John Francis Donaldson. Generally speaking, he was not a very popular man. Trade unionists had tried to impeach him for political bias, and Michael Foote, the contemporary leader of the Labour Party, had accused him of having a, quote, trigger-happy judicial finger. Which, let's face it, is exactly what the establishment needed

at a time when faith desperately needed to be restored in the public. And so, Patrick Armstrong, 25, Gerry Conlon, 21, and Carol Richardson, 17, all entered not guilty pleas. Paul Hill, at the age of just 21, told the court, quote, I refuse to take part in this. I refuse to defend myself. Your justice stinks. Which in the political climate at the time was the equivalent of pissing on the Queen's cornflakes as a copy of the Green Book fell out of your pocket. So this is another thing that people point to because the IRA is one of their rules that you don't plead.

So a lot of people point to this being like, Paul one of their rules that you don't plead. So a lot of people point to this being like, Paul Hill definitely was IRA because he didn't plead. Does that mean he did the bombings? Nope. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Hill's no-doubt exasperated barrister entered a not guilty plea on Paul Hill's behalf, and the trial got underway. The Crown presented the following case.

Paul Hill was the ringleader and had been directly involved with the Woolwich and Guildford attacks. Gerry Conlon had been his second-in-command, and Paddy and Carol, an Englishwoman swept away by the romantic notion of Irish liberation, had been the couple to plant the bomb in the horse and groom pub. So patronising. Oh, she was just swept away by the romantic image of, like, a free Ireland. I'm like, that's not a romantic image, it's justice. Like, I don't really understand why, like,

how ridiculous, like, she got so swept up in the idea of a free Ireland. Like, what the fuck? I know, but then I guess they needed some fucking nonsense way to explain why they've arrested a 17-year-old English girl and thrown her into this as well. Yes, very true.

In court, the police presented four signed statements confessing to all of these things and also to the involvement of annie mcguire the annie mcguire thing to a lot of people seems like an odd leap they're like why do you need auntie annie's bomb factory in the story but you actually need it to make sense because jerry and paul hill lived in a single man's hostels where the doors didn't lock and carol richardson and paddy armstrong lived in a squat where all sorts of people are coming and going neither of those places are safe havens for bombs you need to be able to hide them so that's where annie comes in i see so the police are arguing that annie mcguire who had lived in that house in kilburn for 20 years had just been a sleeper agent for 20 years and then when her nephew jerry comes over the water then she's activated and she starts the bomb factory the multiple discrepancies between the confessions

were conveniently skipped over carolyn paddy stated in court that they were at a concert in london on the night of the bombings Their attendance at that concert was actually corroborated by members of the band that they had gone to see, which is called Jack the Lad. But that didn't seem to make much of a difference either. On top of that, Carol had actually gone to a police station in the days after the bombings because she had been assaulted. Which is hardly the behaviour of an IRA active unit member. But again, didn't really count for much. I'm a person fighting the fight that I believe in against this establishment.

After a bombing that I've committed, I'm just going to go to the police about this other thing. Yeah. Makes sense. It's just ridiculous. Paddy Armstrong stated in court that he had only confessed because he was on drugs. And this statement was met with nothing but snarkzilla

from the judge who said, and this is a quote that he says to the jury, I would not have made a false confession, but Armstrong may be different from me. To which you have to ask, how would the judge know? How many times had that particular judge been on a three-day speed bender and then locked in a cell, shouted out and spit on? I'm none i mean the whole thing it's just again it's we see this time and time again this idea and this is incredibly irresponsible and incredibly leading of this judge to tell the jury or to tell the courtroom i wouldn't have made a false confession as if false confessions don't happen yeah as if false confessions don't happen and that they're you know are impossible that's kind of something that he makes it seem like

nobody has ever falsely confessed ever and it also then drives the entire and i know that's the aim of the justice system here but it drives the entire trial into a dead end because if you're telling the court that it can't have been a false confession because false confessions aren't real well then he's guilty because he's confessed it's's not the only problematic thing, but it's an incredibly massive problematic thing. The judge also told the jury it was their duty to find the Guildford four guilty. Their duty? Yep.

Their duty? He's like, as British citizens, it is your duty to find them guilty. That is outrageous. Yep. So it doesn't even matter what I was saying before about him, you know, driving this trial into a dead end by saying, well, if he's confessed, then that's enough. But that's why he was appointed for this trial, because they knew whoever you want to say the home office, the establishment, the government, parliament, whatever, whoever's pulling the strings's instructions to the jury are to find the defendant guilty, find all of the defendants guilty, because it is their duty. He rounded off by saying that

the reason he was telling them this was because they couldn't have produced such detailed confessions if they were not in fact guilty. The fact that the details of each confession were entirely different from the other didn't seem to matter much though. And the jury did their duty according to the judge and they did as they were told and they found every single one of the Guildford four guilty with Paul Hill and Paddy Armstrong being held responsible for the Woolwich bombing as well. Paul Hill was handed what was at the time the longest sentence ever given in an English court of law. He was given life with no chance of parole until great age or infirmity. It was the first time in modern English history where life actually meant life. You're not going to get taught that in school

though. No, no, no, no. Paddy Armstrong, Carol Richardson and Gerry Conlon were each sentenced to 30 years in prison. Carol Richardson is 17 years old. She's a minor. Yeah. At sentencing, the judge lamented that the four had not been charged with treason because if they had, they would have been handed the death sentence. He literally says it with such glee too. He's like, I wish I could have hanged you. Yeah. The following January, the same judge oversaw the trial of the Maguire 7. 40-year-old Annie Maguire was painted as a master bomb maker, when in reality, she couldn't see well enough to wire a plug, let alone handle ballistics.

This trial also presented the confessions of the Guildford Four in all of their contradictory glory, and a forensic test that showed that several members of the Guilford Four in all of their contradictory glory, and a forensic test that showed that several members of the Maguire Seven, including the children, had traces of nitroglycerine, which is a bomb-making material, on their hands, and that they had found it on Annie's washing-up gloves. Annie's washing-up gloves are like presented at court like, aha! Like, I bet you didn't think we'd find these. Like, it's ridiculous. So all of the seven of the Maguire seven were found guilty and were convicted in March. Annie

and her husband Patrick were sentenced to 14 years. Sean Smythe, Patrick O'Neill and Giuseppe Conlon were all sentenced to 12 years each. And perhaps most tragically of all, the children, Annie's children. Vincent Maguire, who was just 17, was given five years. And Patrick Maguire Jr., who you will remember is just 14 years old, was given a four-year jail sentence that he served in an adult prison. The trauma that you will sustain from going into an adult prison at 14 years old for a terrorism charge is a life sentence. Like, that is absolutely despicable.

Oh, I mean, I have no words. And just like that, all members of the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven were sent to prison to rot. Just two years later, in 1977, at another terrorism trial, IRA ASU operative Joe O'Connell caused quite the stir. In IRA fashion, he refused to plead, as did all of his other co-defendants, but Joe O'Connell took it one step further. He said that he would not enter a plea because, quote, the indictment does not include two charges concerning the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings. I took part in both, for which innocent people have been convicted. O'Connell

was a member of what's now called the Balcombe Street Gang, and they were an ASU arrested at the end of the Balcombe Street siege, which happened in December 1975. This cell of the provisional IRA took responsibility for 29 incidents of terror in England, including the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings. That's the thing. Even when the Guildford Four go to prison, they don't stop. Exactly. O'Connell's an interesting guy.

He asked his barrister not to defend his innocence, but he asked him to prove the innocence of the Guildford Four. A key witness at the Balcombe Street trial was forensic expert Douglas Higgs, who had prepared a statement for the Guildford Four trial, arguing that the Guildford and Woolwich attacks were so similar to three other bombings that took place between October 22nd and December 22nd, 1974, that they must have all been carried out by the same cell. And remember, all of the Guildford Four were in police custody by the 3rd of December that year. So they couldn't possibly have carried out the rest of the attacks.

This statement was never forwarded to the Guildford Four's defence teams. The police only sent them an amended statement that made no mention of Woolwich. Douglas Higgs said that he had been pressured by the Met to take any mention of Woolwich out of his statement. Which is, my friends, illegal. They can't do that. Fucking hell. Sir Conall and the other members of the Balcombe Street Gang gave detailed and corroborated statements of how they, and not the Guildford Four, had carried out the attacks.

This sounds like good news, right? It certainly did to Gerry Conlon, who got the news as he sat in his prison cell. To put this into context, Gerry Conlon has been in prison for two years when he gets this news, that Joe O'Connell has said, it was nothing to do with them, it was me.

It was me and it was this cell. We did all of them. And they have much stronger evidence. They all confess. They give statements that match completely. He's been in prison for two years. He rings his mum and he's like, it's going to be fine. But nothing happens. Nothing happens prison for two years. He rings his mum and he's like, it's going to be fine. But nothing happens.

Nothing happens for 13 more years. Gerry Conlon is in prison for 15 years. And over those 15 years, Gerry and the rest of the four tried time and time again to appeal, but nothing worked. Even though their legal teams presented 135 discrepancies between the Balcombe Street Gang's accounts of the bombings and the confessions that they had signed, it was just too embarrassing for the justice system, not to mention the police, that they had it wrong. And we are about to find out.

The police didn't just have it wrong, they knew they did, and they knowingly sent four totally innocent people to prison for life. Enter lawyer Gareth Pearce, who, surprisingly, is a woman. Yeah, I was surprised by that. Lots of unisex names out there that I can think of. Gareth wouldn't be one of them that would jump to mind. So she was born Jean Webb and then she changed her name name, I think when she was in her 20s, and nobody really knows why. She was just like, I'm Gareth now.

Why not? Maybe as a solicitor, you got shaken more seriously if you had a male name on your application. Possibly, possibly. Anyway, Gareth Pearce is a fucking G. There's a film that's based on, Jerry Conlon has a book called Proved Innocent,

and there's a film that is based upon that called In the Name of the Father, where Daniel Day- lewis does a questionable accent but it is a good film and daniel day lewis plays jerry conlan and in that film gareth pierce is a really central character and she's played by emma thompson a very young emma thompson and gareth pierce has actually said that she's never seen the film and she doesn't want to see it because she thinks her part has been overplayed she was like i was one of many many many lawyers and she's a solicitor she's not a barrister so she's not in court and in the film she's very much like in court so i like her though she's in her 80s now that's also so funny my old boss was called

gareth piss how funny i mean pierce was felt differently but yeah there you go gareth pierce gareth pierce and gareth pierce amongst is, you know, we need to make very clear, worked on the case tirelessly for free for years. And while she was working hard on the outside, on the inside, Giuseppe Conlon was fading away. He'd been living with TB for a number of years. And in January 1980, he died, age 56. He had served four years of his sentence.

The policeman's prophecy had come true. Jerry was allowed to visit his father on his deathbed, and Giuseppe's final words to his son were that he needed to clear both of their names. That's so sad. Isn't it just? Isn't it fucking just? And also, like, his poor mum. Yeah. Like, just losing her son and her husband. Mm-hmm. For poor mum. Yeah. Like just losing her son and her husband for fucking nothing.

Nine years later, Jerry and Gareth were about to do just that. And by just that, I mean clear Giuseppe and Jerry's names. They had an appeal scheduled for the 19th of October, 1989. Ten days before I was born. And Gareth and the rest of the legal team were so confident that they would be able to quash the convictions of the Guildford Four that they rang Gerry's mum and sisters and told them to fly to London for it. Television network ITN even charted a private plane for the Conlon women and they made their way to London. Gareth Pearce was right to be confident

because here's what she had. Paddy Armstrong's statement had been amended by officers after his interrogation, and things had quite literally just been crossed out. Yeah, things added after the fact, handwritten things, crossed out, literally square peg round hole. Excellent. And unbelievably, it was also unearthed by Jerry's legal team that the homeless man that Jerry claimed to have been doing acid with on the night of the pub bombings not only existed, but that the police even knew his name.

It was Charles Burke. The police had even interviewed Burke, and he had given Gerald Conlon a solid alibi. But the police just didn't bother forwarding this to the defense actually they hid it and this is unbelievable because they even put a note on it that said do not show to defense I mean what the fuck it's unbelievable but it's absolutely true like I completely understand why people think in the name of the father is like sensationalized. And it takes it as like a post-it note literally literally just being like do not show to defense on this massively incriminating piece of evidence that they had all

along that people actually believed that it wasn't real they believed it had been made up for the film because it looks so mad exactly and the film is not 100 true to form so for example in the film jerry and giuseppe conlon share a prison cell which obviously they didn't jerry conlon makes really good friends with johnson from peep show he's in there it's an entertaining film but you know there are some things in there that are you know they're devices for the plot right which is fine because it's a work of fiction based upon a true story but when it comes to this note a letter written to the new york times says that the note note on Gerry Conlon's files was absolutely not one of the things that was made up for the film. He wrote, quote,

Jim Sheridan and I did not invent the note and its suppression for the convenience of the film. Both are real and have been reported by many, including some of Britain's most respected television journalists, on the BBC Panorama programme. And for as much as we slag off the BBC, Panorama's Panorama. And it doesn't stop there. It was also revealed that the positive nitroglycerin tests that had put the Maguire 7 in prison, including 14-year-old Patrick, those tests had been conducted by an 18-year-old trainee and were fundamentally flawed.

What's worse is the Home Office knew all along. They just kept rejecting the new evidence without explanation. And so, on the 19th of October 1989, 15 years after his arrest, Gerald Conlon walked out of the front door of the Old Bailey, his fist raised triumphantly in the air, his two sisters clinging to his sides and he actually says they wanted him to go out the back because there were so many press and he says I've been in prison for 15 years for something I didn't do I'm going out the front door and the reason Jerry Conlon is the most famous of the Guildford four is there's a lot of reasons he's very charismatic for a startford Four is a lot of reasons. He's very charismatic for a start. He also did a lot of campaigning in his later years. But the main reason he is the most famous is because

of what he did next. So a little bit tricky to hear that with everything else going in the background. This is what Gerry Conlon says. I've been in prison for 15 years for something I didn't do. Something I didn't know anything about. I'm a totally innocent man. I watched my father die in a British prison for something he didn't do. He is innocent. The Maguires are innocent. Let's hope the Birmingham Six are next to be freed. It's quite something. He's very charismatic. He's very very driven and he also makes a mention of the birmingham six who i am completely aware are completely intertwined with the guilford four

politically speaking it's a very similar case we don't have time today to get into the birmingham six all you need to know is that it's a very similar situation and that jerry conlon was pretty good friends with one of the birmingham six they were in prison together in later interviews after this inspired speech, Gerry Conlon said that it wasn't him speaking outside the Old Bailey that day. It was his dad. The Maguires' convictions were overturned in 1991. They'd all said their sentences already though, so it didn't really matter. And they would not receive an apology until 2005. And it was from Tony Blair, so no thanks. But despite all of this this not everyone was happy about the convictions of the

four and the seven being overturned prominent judge and house of lords member lord denning decreed that british justice was in ruins he literally the argument he makes is if they were even ira adjacent they deserved life in prison i mean this is a man who was a member of the House of Lords, an entire institution that should be fucking burnt to the ground in this country. So shut the fuck up. Go and like, just be silent somewhere and be thankful for how much we allow you to get away with in the fucking House of Lords. If you don't know what I'm talking about, we don't have time to talk about it now.

Maybe I'll talk about it on Under the Duvet, but fuck the House of Lords. If you don't know what I'm talking about, we don't have time to talk about it now. Maybe I'll talk about it on Under the Duvet, but fuck the House of Lords. So many of you will be unsurprised to learn that not a single member of the British police were convicted of their crimes, because they were crimes, remember. This wasn't just accidents being made, they were covering up evidence that they had. They were investigated, and then they were all acquitted. All of the fraud, all of the squirrelling away of documents, all of the perjury was simply let go. But the wrongful convictions of the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven have left an indelible impact on British policing. In 1984, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act was passed as a direct result of the false confessions coerced out of the Guildford Four by physical and psychological abuse at the hands of police. Which is interesting because the Guildford Four don't get out of prison

for another five years so they're passing acts in parliament based on these confessions being coerced but they're not letting them out of prison. Yeah that's strange. So this act that was passed in 1984 stated that every police interview must be recorded and that all suspects had a right to legal representation without charge. It also means that to this day in the United Kingdom, police are not allowed to lie to suspects that they are interviewing, unlike in the United States, for example. In this country, police cannot tell you that someone has dogged you in. They cannot tell you that someone saw you there. They cannot show you a false photo line up, which in the United States, they can do all of those things.

Yeah. And I'm not saying, you know, the Yens justify the means or in any way that it was worth all these people dying or having suffered horrible things for many a year. But at least that change was put in place because what happened here is diabolical. Yeah and the government, Home Office specifically, are pretty cagey about some of the details related to this case. All of the freedom of information requests for documents related to the Guildford Four are refused based on one of the following reasons. The prevention or detection of crime, the apprehension or prosecution of the offenders, the administration of justice. If released, it would endanger safety of any individual or they relate to security matters. I actually did read that apparently the documents pertaining to the Guildford Four would

be freely available after January 2020. That was the agreement. And that's what people who send in those FOI requests, that's what they get sent back. I haven't seen anything. So it does feel a little bit like they are still hiding something. And it seems like they've just let it all fade away, which is much easier to do when nothing about any of this is taught in British schools. Kids today find it hard to believe that people were ever afraid of the Irish. Leave alone kids, I'm a 32 year old woman, I find it hard to believe. But they were and it really wasn't that long ago at all. To give you an idea of just how prevalent this case was, Jeremy Corbyn actually campaigned for the Guildford Fort and the Birmingham Six. He attended Paul Hill's wedding

to a Kennedy, no less. Paul Hill, he pulls it out the bag. He marries a Kennedy. It's mad. That is mad. But while all this was happening, and despite them having their convictions being overturned, the Sun reported IRA pig to wed.

Gorbachev even raised the campaign to free the Guildford Four in a private meeting with Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. But the lady was not amused. How fucking mental is that? Fucking Gorbachev is like, Maggie, maybe you should let them go. He's got communism to crumble. He's got a wall to tear down. He's got other things on his mind, but he wants to know about Gerry Conlon. I guess like, it probably was at the time like such an obvious stain on the english and i think you know if you're gonna run around and be like tear down this wall or do this or do this and like be dishing out moral whatever's got to clean up your home

our own home first right yeah yeah try not maggie this looks real bad yeah you've got innocent people in prison and you know it yeah and you're passing things in parliament because of their false confessions but they're still in there surely even you maggie must understand that this is not how it should work this is the thing isn't it this is the problem these are all the contradictions they're like yeah that was bad let's try not do that again let's change the laws let's not be retrospective let's just keep moving forward the media was so consumed by this and also so consumed by the sort of threat of Irish people that the Pogues of Fairytale in New York fame, which we will no doubt be hearing every day for the rest of the year.

Oh no, no, no. Help me. The Pogues, contrary to popular belief, do have at least one other song, which is called Street of Sorrow, which is about the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. And that song was actually banned in the united kingdom using the same legislation that stopped the broadcast of interviews with members of shin fein it is mental and i think like that's the point we're trying to make is like how prevalent this was everyone was talking about it everyone was scared and it has had a lasting impact on irish people who are irish people full stop and on Irish people specifically who live in England

or even people who've had Irish names. I was saying to Sru last night in the pub, I have never, obviously, I hope never to do a job interview ever again, but I have never had an interview once in my adult life where a comment wasn't made something to the effect of, well, with a name like Maguire. And obviously you can't challenge

that in a job interview. But I always wanted to say like, what do you mean by that? Are you insinuating that because of my name and therefore my clear Irish heritage that I am a terrorist? Is that what you're saying? Why else would you say it with a name like Maguire? What does that mean? I have no clue. But obviously Maguire was a very hot IRA name when all of this was going on. But it was just this blanket statement of tarring every single Irish person with the same brush, even the Northern Irish people who are fucking British citizens. Whatever happened to all of them, the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven, after serving 15 years in prison or less, dependent on what their sentence was, for crimes they didn't commit.

Most of the convicted dropped out of the public eye. Some wrote books, some didn't, but Gerry Conlon remained the most visible. Life after life is difficult. Gerry was given £546,000 in reparations, which he compared to being given a bottle of whiskey and a revolver. Here's your money, now go and kill yourself. In the years after he walked out of the front doors of the Old Bailey a free man, he took drugs to cope and tried over and over again to get sober.

Gambling had a grip over him too. When he did get clean, he was plagued by a litany of suicidal ideations. He did eventually conquer his addiction though, but it was a long road and it came with a great cost. He did eventually conquer his addiction though, but it was a long road and it came with a great cost. He went home after his release, but he left Belfast quickly after he realised that he was a target for literally everyone. And he moved back to London. And he actually moved in with Gareth Pearce for a while and her husband in Kentish Town.

And then Jeremy Corbyn, and just in case international listeners don't know who Jeremy Corbyn is, he used to be the leader of the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn got Gerry a council flat on Holloway Road, which is in North London. And then Gerry went on to buy his own two-bed flat in Tufnell Park. Gerry campaigned for the wrongfully convicted

for the rest of his life. Randomly. He was also really good friends with Johnny Depp for a bit. They even went on holiday together. Yeah, Johnny Depp writes four words for books on Gerry Conlon. Why not? They met each other in a talent agency in LA, apparently.

Ah, interesting. Gerry Conlon then died in his native Belfast on the 21st of June, 2013, after a long struggle with lung cancer. So with Gerry gone, and a half-hearted apology from Tony Blair hanging in the air like the fetid sock that it is, where are we now? Well, Northern Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom,

and the Protestants and the Catholics of Belfast are still predominantly separated by structures that the British have had the absolute audacity to call peace walls or peace lines. There has been a steady decline in violence since the turn of the millennium in the wake of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, when a new devolved government of Northern Ireland was agreed. And in this devolved government, the unionists and the nationalists would share power. Famously, the DUP, Democratic Unionist

Party, who we were talking about earlier, now the most powerful political party in Northern Ireland, walked out of these negotiations when Sinn Féin walked in. So is it perfect? No. But I think it's reasonably safe to say that Northern Ireland is a new cross-community administration and heralded in a new age of cooperation between the two factions. British soldiers no longer patrol the streets of Belfast in tanks and an uneasy peace continues. But it really wasn't very long ago at all. No. Gerry was only in his 50s when he died and it was 2013. Yeah.

He went to prison at 20 years old. Fucking hell. I know, obviously, we were looking at the schedule and it just so happens that St. Patrick's Day is my case and I'm like, I don't know if I can do another one. It's just so awful. And it's made worse by the fact that nobody knows. Nobody knows and it happened 30 years ago in this country, in this worse by the fact that nobody knows. Nobody knows.

And it happened 30 years ago in this country, in this city, actually. And nobody knows. So there you go. Hopefully you know now. Yes. You've just listened to an hour and a bit of us talking about it. And if you want to listen to us talk about something else, you can take yourself over to Spotify, where we do a Spotify exclusive show called Sinister Societies, where we talk about all sorts of cults. We were talking about Heaven heaven's gate heaven's gate is one we recorded recently and

we're having such a great time on the show and it's really good fun so make sure you hop on over to spotify you can't get it anywhere else yeah we did heaven's gate we've done bohemian grove and we've done nexium all very recently go check that out if you want to hear us talk about other things then come hang out with us if you're a $5 and up patron immediately after this over on, well not over on Patreon because the website's

kind of gashed but you can listen to it on your podcast player of choice as long as it's compatible with Patreon. And if you're a $10 and up patron you can watch

Under the Duvet as a video. What am I going to talk about this week? I don't know. I have got a date with an Irishman. Oh.

Next Wednesday. Well you can drop all your knowledge bombs. There you go. I would suggest a date with an Irishman. Oh. Next Wednesday. Well, you can drop all your knowledge bombs. There you go. I would suggest not leading with the troubles. And he's like, I just moved here from Ireland. Which part of Ireland? Cork.

Oh, that's where I'm from. Yes. Where I saw the town. Oh no, I saw the university or whatever he'd put. And then I was like, I don't know. So I just like Googled it to see. And it was like down in the southern parts. So yeah yeah that's the kind of shit we talk about there we also listen to your guys's like empty-handed stories where you're asking us for advice and then dish some of that

out too we also talk about I don't know other things like me not taking heroin and Andrew Marr so come listen to that yeah like I said also November's monthly bonus episode that we give to all $10 and up patrons was on the Gunpowder Plot. It was a really, really fun episode. So check that out. This month, we've got like some sort of Christmas themed one. Oh, the Sodder Children. We're doing the Sodder Children.

So this month's full length bonus episode that all $10 and up patrons get is on the Sodder Children. So check that out too. We're also doing a Patreon Christmas party, a red-handed Patreon Christmas party. So if you are a patron or like to become a patron, then head on over, become a member, and then on the 15th of December, we're going to have a party. With all that, let's do some thank you, shall we? So, kicking off, Betsy Plascencia, Amy Jo Jackson, Kelly Gibson, Jonathan Herron, Caitlin Peters, Perry Dorn, Kirsten Dobson, Kat Mant, Emma Louise, Nell, Chloe, Amber Butterworth, Kate Croxton, Audra Parita, Jenny McFarland, Lindsay Stevens, Jade Tosney, Megan Hopkins,

Barbara Scappelli, Linda Riddler, Natalie Reed, Lauren McGowan, Linda McWaters, Lauren Pearson, Bobby Burrell, Jamie Hill, Alexandra Howard, Heather Whitworth, Layla Stevenson, Sade Cole, Natalie Webster, Maddie Jones, Bridget Estrada, Ellie Neeson, Yomi Fox, Brendan, Leah Church, Debbie Neo, Charlotte, Chrissy Dixon, Amanda Montino de Miranda, hello, Lauren Grace, Katie O'Meara, Flocko Rock, Andrea B, Nicole Wiki, Helen Jackson, Kiki, Sam Roberts, Thank you ever so much for listening. Carl Anderson Nat PD Holly Goldberg Sanam Cassandra Farr and Kat Pullman thank you ever so much for listening we love you go and learn some things

change some lives maybe even change the world but right now I have to go because I'm going to piss myself goodbye bye Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America.

But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher

Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.