Catalogue Number
NMLH.2022.233
Object Name
T-Shirt
Title
Free the Birmingham Six - t-shirt
Place
Birmingham
People
Birmigham Six
Date
1975
Description
This is a large white t-shirt, with red text and an image in the middle. This reads "INOCCENT Richard Mcllkenny, William Power, Patrick Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Gerry Hunter, John Walker." Underneath this there is a large circle with text inside saying "free the Birmingham Six" with two hands round two prison bars.
The Birmingham Six were six Irish people who were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convnictions for the1974 Birmingham pub bombings. The Birmingham pub bombings were carried out on 21 November 1974, when bombs exploded in two public houses in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people injuring 182 others. The IRA never admitted responsibility for the pub bombings, although a former senioir officer of the organisation confessed to their involvement in 2014. Six Irishmen were arrested within hours of the blasts, and in 1975 sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombings. The menâwho became known as the Birmingham Sixâmaintained their innocence and insisted police had coerced them into signing false confessions through severe physical and psychological abuse. After 16 years in prison, and a lengthy campaign, their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory, and quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1991. The case is seen as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
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