Former Labour MP names two of the four men he believes were behind 1974 IRA attacks

The former Labour MP and justice campaigner Chris Mullin has named two of the four men he believes were responsible for the 1974 IRA Birmingham pub bombings.

Mullin, a journalist and author, identifies two of the alleged bombers and pointed to evidence against a third man in an article for the London Review of Books published on Wednesday.

The article comes less than a fortnight before the start of a fresh inquest by the Birmingham coroner that will investigate the atrocity but will not name any suspects, a decision which has angered survivors and relatives of the dead.

Mullin says James Francis Gavin, an IRA member convicted for other crimes, was one of two men who planted bombs in the Tavern in the Town and the Mulberry Bush. Gavin died in 2002. An ITV documentary last year named Gavin as a Birmingham bomber.

Mullin also names Michael Murray, who died in 1999, as one of the two bomb-makers.

“I no longer have any compunction about identifying two of the men involved, who are now dead … but the man described in my book as the ‘young planter’ is still alive, and I will not name him,” Mullin writes, referring to his 1986 book Error of Judgment, about the bungled police investigation that led to the conviction of innocent men known as the Birmingham Six.

In the article Mullin also identifies a fourth man, an IRA member who has accepted “collective responsibility” for the bombings but denies direct involvement. Mullin says the man, who is living in Ireland, was “active that night” but stops short of directly accusing him of being the other bomb-maker.

The bombs killed 21 people and wounded 220. The inquest due to begin on 25 February will shine a fresh but limited light on the attack.

Families won a high court decision last year to compel the coroner, Sir Peter Thornton, to name suspects. The court of appeal overturned that ruling, allowing the coroner to go ahead without doing so.

Mullin was a leading campaigner who helped to exonerate the Birmingham Six, who were convicted of the bombings in 1975. The convictions, one of the British legal system’s gravest miscarriages of justice, were quashed in 1991.

His research in the 1980s led to interviews with two of the four bombers who detailed their actions that night, he says in the article. He identified at least one, possibly both, of the other perpetrators, but neither man admitted involvement.

“My purpose at the time was to help free the six innocent men who had been convicted of the bombing. I was never under the illusion that I could bring the perpetrators to justice.”

With the exception of Gavin and Murray, who are dead, journalistic ethics precluded Mullin from naming names, he writes.

“I interviewed many of those who were active in the IRA’s West Midlands campaign. To gain their cooperation I gave repeated assurances, not only to the guilty but to innocent intermediaries, that I would not disclose their identities. I cannot go back on that now just because it would be convenient.”