Any evidence the West Midlands police holds about advance warnings of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, IRA informants or delays in evacuating the bars must be made public, the city’s senior coroner has ordered.

In a detailed series of demands to the force, Louise Hunt has called for access to more information about the atrocity – in which 21 people were killed – to help her decide whether or not to formally resume the inquest into their deaths.

The list of required documents, statements and supporting evidence was read out at the end of a hearing in Solihull on an application by relatives of the victims who want the inquest, formally adjourned in 1975, to be resumed.

Giving the West Midlands police until 4 March to respond, Hunt asked for information about any informant in the IRA unit, advance warning of the bombs, any delays in evacuating the bars, whether “reasonable steps” were taken on the night, whether records had been falsified and for a fill list of evidence that has disappeared. She also asked the force to make a public statement about what it discovers.



Among the contested events in the 1974 bombing is the emergency services’ response time, which the coroner was told may have been wrongly recorded, hiding the possibility that insufficient warning was given to evacuate the pubs before the devices exploded.

Former IRA officials have already admitted there were delays in sending the warnings because local telephone boxes had been vandalised.

Twenty-one people were killed and as many as 180 injured by bombs planted in the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs in Birmingham city centre on the evening of 21 November 1974.



The first coroner’s hearing was adjourned six days after the bombings. It closed, without reporting, the following summer after six men were convicted of carrying out the atrocity. In 1991, however, the Birmingham Six – Paddy Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power, John Walker and Hugh Callaghan – had their convictions quashed.

Ashley Underwood QC, for the victims’ relatives, told the court: “These tragic deaths were as a result of the worst mass murder in living memory in England. They were followed by what was the most serious miscarriage of justice in living memory. That miscarriage led to no investigation being carried out into the deaths.

“There’s a regrettable suspicion that police officers involved in convicting the Birmingham Six lied in order to get those convictions. That raises questions about why they lied to get innocent people convicted. One possibility is that they lied to cover up the real guilty parties.”

Underwood said there was “reason to believe that murderous [IRA] gang may have had an informant in their midst and [the police] may have known in advance about the bombs”. It was also possible that the police lied “to convict someone they believed was guilty”.

Timings given for responses by the emergency services that night may also have been misrecorded, he said. “Evidence suggests that even if the police did not know [in advance], they failed to evacuate the scene once they had received the telephone warning,” he added. “It looks like the time at which the ambulance service got there and began treating people was subsequently falsified.

“Was there sufficient time between the police learning about impending explosions [and the bombs going off] to have evacuated the pubs? There’s reason to believe the police might have had time from the first warning to evacuate.”

West Midlands police did carry out inquiries into the bombings between 2012 and 2014 and consulted Dutch forensic experts, Underwood revealed. Details of those examinations have not previously been disclosed.

Underwood said a man alleged to have been a police special branch officer was said to have been at the scene and allegedly told a witness: “Sorry about tonight. It’s just gone wrong, really wrong.” Was that a reference that intelligence should have been acted upon, Underwood asked.

Paddy Hill (among others), one of the Birmingham Six, describes his experience of wrongful conviction Guardian

The same figure was said to have spoken to emergency services staff in the following days warning them not to talk, under threat of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, about the night’s events, he added. The Birmingham pub bombings, Underwood said, were “crying out for a proper, fearless investigation”.

Jeremy Johnson QC, representing West Midlands police, told the hearing: “The investigation is not closed. There’s a complete willingness and desire to pursue any lines which might lead to the identification, prosecution and conviction of those responsible.

“That said, there’s not an open, live, full-scale criminal investigation now in the sense that most people would normally understand it. Rather as and when any matters are reported to the police, they are investigated with a view as to whether there should be a full-scale criminal investigation.”

Johnson confirmed that three new sources of information are being examined. The first is a memoir published by a former director of intelligence for the IRA, Kieran Conway, entitled Southside Provisional, which gives his account of receiving a debriefing after the Birmingham bombings.

An account by a former West Midlands fireman, Adam Hill, who was at the scene shortly after the explosions, was given to police last summer. It provides details about what happened in the immediate aftermath of the blasts.

Fresh forensic evidence is also about to be examined. The police force is seeking support from army forensic specialists to investigate material. Some of that material, it is understood, has been lodged in buildings adjoining the two pubs since 1974.

“So it is not yet a full investigation,” Johnson added, “but I hope it might lead down that road.”

Hunt, who is presiding over the application to resume the hearing, questioned whether some of the original evidence gathered by police had now been lost. “I have seen reference to a third bomb being lost,” she told the hearing in Solihull’s civic chamber. As many as 35 of the 168 exhibits used as evidence at the Lancaster crown court trial in 1975 are thought to have disappeared.

The names of the deceased were read out at the start of proceedings. About a dozen relatives were in court. One, Paul Rowlands, now aged 52, lost his father, John, in the bombings.

Paul Rowlands, son of Birmingham pub bombings victim John Rowlands, arrives for the inquest review. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Before the hearing, he said: “My father was an electrician working at the Rover company. He was 46. He used to go into the city centre to meet a group of friends at the Mulberry Bush.

“My elder brother, Stephen, was serving with the RAF in Northern Ireland at the time. He never believed something like this could happen in Birmingham. I was in bed that night and was woken by a policeman and policewoman.

“When I went into the living room my mother was crying her eyes out. She was swaying backwards and forwards, saying: ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it.’ I didn’t understand at first because she couldn’t talk.

“In the morning I remember my father’s dinner was still warm and uneaten in the oven. His death sent my mother into depression and she had mental health problems for years after. There was never any support mechanism for the victims.

“People ask me why we want to reopen this now. I just think why has it taken us more than 40 years to do this? In my mind it’s like yesterday. The families want to ask questions about what actually happened.”

Kevin Winters of KRW Law, which is acting on a pro-bono basis for Rowlands and other relatives of the victims, said: “The Birmingham Six case had a retraumatising effect on relatives of the victims because the litigation process was drawn out across so many years. There was a gradual realisation that the West Midlands police hadn’t got the right people. There still hasn’t been a transparent investigative process which the families are entitled to have.”

Clair Dobbin, counsel for the police federation, said the coroner should consider whether the delay would make it difficult to decide what occurred more than 40 years ago. The hearing was adjourned until 23 March.