A botched IRA warning call led to the deaths of 21 people unlawfully killed in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, an inquest jury at the city’s civil court has found.
Two massive detonations caused what one witness described as “pure carnage”, ripping apart the packed Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs on the night of November 21st, killing 21 and injuring 220 more.
The 11-member panel unanimously concluded an inadequate warning call by the Provisional IRA, which carried out the attacks, cost the stretched police vital minutes.
The six female and five male jurors also determined the victims were unlawfully killed.
They also found there was “not sufficient evidence” of any failings, errors or omissions by West Midlands Police’s response to the bomb warning call, or in regards to two alleged tip-offs to the force, giving advanced warning of the blasts.
The families of those killed have called on the police to “redouble” efforts to bring those responsible to justice.
Giving conclusions, the jury found a coded telephone warning by the IRA to the Birmingham Post and Mail at 8.11pm was wholly inadequate.
The call, made to newspaper telephonist Ian Cropper, gave the bomb locations as the famous Rotunda building and the nearby Tax Office in New Street, making no mention of pubs.
Police first on the scene searched the Rotunda office block, wrongly believing one of the bombs was inside. In evidence, it emerged frontline officers had no standardised training or procedures when dealing with bomb warnings.
One detective told the inquest that bomb threats were dealt with “lightheartedly”.
Jurors heard officers responding to the bomb calls were not told by police control that the warning had contained a recognised IRA code word, used previously in a successful bomb attack on the Rotunda complex.
Birmingham had also been “denuded” of police that night, after officers were pulled away to bolster security for IRA bomber James McDade’s funeral procession in Coventry.
One of the first on the scene, retired PC Derek Bradbury, said “we were told it was the Rotunda”, and he and colleagues’ first thought had been to clear the office block.
There was no evacuation of the Mulberry Bush pub, located around the side of the Rotunda’s base, where eight people died.
Nor was there any attempt to clear the surrounding area, or cordon off the street.
Best friends Neil “Tommy” Marsh ( 16) and Paul Davies (17) two of the youngest victims that night, were right outside the Mulberry Bush when the bomb went off, while a double-decker bus full of passengers was peppered with shrapnel .
PC Bradbury said a perimeter would have been “a brilliant idea” if you had the numbers, but there were “not enough” officers sent to the scene to do it.
Ex-sergeant William Pederson, who was in the Rotunda, said had he known it was a coded warning, “the advice would be to evacuate” rather than search.
Retired detective constable John Plimmer, in his evidence, also said bomb warnings were “treated lightheartedly”, though he later said all threats were treated “seriously”.
The first bomb went off at the Mulberry Bush at 8.18pm, followed by the blast at the Tavern at 8.20pm. The warning call was passed from the force control room in the city to beat officers at some time around 8.14pm.
Six officers did get to the Rotunda before the bomb went off at the Mulberry Bush, but most went inside the office building to start the search.
Two officers were still running to get along New Street when the bomb at the Tavern in the Town exploded, killing 11 people.
But in any case, the Tax Office was located above the basement pub, and accessed by a different entrance.
The inquests threw up dramatic evidence when a former IRA member named four of the men he claimed were involved in the bombings as Seamus McLoughlin, Mick Murray, Michael Hayes and James Francis Gavin.
The man, identified in court only as “Witness O”, said he had been authorised to give those names by the current head of the IRA in Dublin.
McLoughlin, who was said to have planned the operation, died in 2014, and Gavin in 2002, while Hayes, who is alive, has previously said he took “collective responsibility” for the bombings.
Murray, who died in 1999, is said to have called in the botched warning, giving the code word “Double X”, but always maintained it had been “a proper warning”.
The then IRA head of intelligence in Ireland, Kieran Conway, in his evidence, also described the victims’ deaths as “accidental” and not “murders”, in an “IRA operation that went badly wrong”.
Former MP Chris Mullin, who helped free the Birmingham Six, was called a “disgrace” by Julie Hambleton, who lost her older sister in the bombings, when he refused to name any of the still-living bombers during his evidence.
He had to be escorted from the building by security staff and police.
Jurors ruled out that the police had any forewarning of the bombs, after hearing evidence of two alleged overheard conversations — one involving IRA prisoners, and another between Irish men in a Birmingham pub.
The panel also heard how key evidence is still missing, including a “pristine” pistol found under a nearby bench, or was never collected, such as CCTV in the Rotunda.
A third unexploded bomb, found a mile away by Barclay’s Bank in Hagley Road, was misplaced by police, while the force’s control room call tapes from the night were also overwritten.
The inquests came about after years of campaigning by relatives of the dead for a full account into what happened that night.
Six men, known as the Birmingham Six, were jailed in 1975 for the double bomb attacks, but their convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1991. Their case remains one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in English legal history.
Speaking outside the court Julie Hambleton, who lost her older sister in the bombing, called on the West Midlands police, the Garda and the PSNI to “prosecute and bring to justice those who remain living, through the court process and hopefully to bring them and charge them with what is now officially known for murder”.- PA