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A resolution proposed by US President-elect Joe Biden in March 1990 on the Birmingham Six, as a US senator increased pressure on the British government to re-examine the group’s conviction for the biggest IRA bomb attack in Britain.
State documents released under the 30-year rule by the National Archives show a memo from the Department of Foreign Affairs that lists Biden’s intervention as an example of growing international action seeking a new investigation into the case.
Biden, who had unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination to contest the 1988 U.S. presidential election two years earlier, was the second-ranked Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time.
The resolution proposed by Biden on March 9, 1990, which secured 13 co-sponsors, including other prominent Irish-American politicians, Senators Edward Kennedy and Patrick Moynihan, called for a reopening of the case and for US President George Bush to bring it up. to the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
It was similar to a motion that had been tabled by US Congressman and Friends of Ireland President Brian Donnelly two months earlier, also calling for the convictions to be vacated.
The Department of Foreign Relations said it understood that the British embassy in Washington had actively lobbied against the motion.
The Birmingham Six – Hugh Callaghan, Gerard Hunter, Paddy Hill, John Walker, Richard McIlkenny and William Power – were sentenced to life in prison in 1975 for two IRA bomb attacks on pubs in Birmingham on November 21, 1974 that killed 21 people.
Their convictions were based on forensic evidence and confessions that were contested from the start of the case.
A bulletin published by Birmingham Committee Six in April 1990 noted that Donnelly’s motion was “more radical” than Biden’s.
However, Paddy McIlkenny, Richard’s brother, who had campaigned for the group’s release, said that the support of leading American politicians in the early 1990s had given his campaign a major boost and said that the two Biden resolutions and Donnelly would generate more publicity when debated in the US Congress and Senate.
“That will be very embarrassing for the British government,” McIlkenny said.
Shortly thereafter, the British Home Office ordered a new police investigation into the case following the presentation of new evidence by the men’s lawyer, Gareth Peirce, which subsequently led to it being referred to the Court of Appeal for a second full hearing. .
McIlkenny admitted to being skeptical about the outcome of the police review, believing his announcement was timed to defuse mounting pressure from the United States.
The sentences of the Birmingham Six were finally declared unsafe and overturned by the Court of Appeal in March 1991.
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