Miscarriages of justice

Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Carl Bridgewater and Judith Ward cases

Before entering parliament, Chris Mullin was a campaigning journalist and he has a long record of support for civil liberties. He was one of the first to campaign on behalf of the Birmingham Six, who were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 for the Birmingham pub bombings. The convictions of Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker were overturned by the Court of Appeal in 1991 after a long fight for justice. In December 1984 Chris Mullin was commissioned by Chatto and Windus to write a book on the Birmingham pub bombings. He also persuaded the Editor of World in Action to commission him to research a series of programmes exploring the possibility that the six men convicted of the bombings were innocent. 

In 1987 he was elected as MP for Sunderland South. He has since been a minister in three government departments and chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee.In Parliament he continued to campaign for the release of the Birmingham Six and other victims of miscarriage of justice, including the Guildford Four and the related case of Annie Maguire and her family; Judith Ward, convicted of the M62 coach bombing; and the four men convicted of murdering the newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater. 

Chris Mullin’s papers focus mainly on the Birmingham Six case and include correspondence, statements, interviews, reports, transcripts of the trial of the Birmingham Six and of their appeal, subject files, campaign material, articles, press cuttings and videos of television coverage of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four cases. [U DMU]