Conlon says Blair’s apology ‘exceeded expectations’

British Prime Minister Tony Blair last week personally apologized for the “ordeal and injustice” suffered by the two families, who were wrongly jailed in 1974.
Five people were killed and 54 injured on Oct. 5, 1974 in Guildford, Surrey, when no-warning bombs exploded at two pubs known to be popular with army personnel. Several members of the two families were arrested and ultimately convicted in charges related to the bombings.
Two of the victims of the miscarriage of justice, Paddy Maguire and Giuseppe Conlon, have died since their convictions. Maguire at least lived to see his conviction overturned; Conlon did not. He died in jail, brought on at least in part by medical neglect. His experiences and those of his son Gerry were turned into the award-winning 1993 movie “In the Name of the Father.”
In the 1980s, the validity of the convictions was increasingly questioned. Press stories and television documentaries focused on tainted evidence and allegations of mistreatment of suspects.
The only evidence against Annie Maguire, for instance, was a tiny trace of nitro-glycerine found on the fingertip of a plastic glove by an inexperienced forensic lab assistant.
On Oct. 19, 1989, the Guildford Four, the last of the those imprisoned after the bombings, were released by the Court of Appeal, after the Director of Public Prosecutions had announced that it would be wrong for the Crown to “seek to sustain” the convictions.
Blair said the families “deserve to be completely and publicly exonerated” leading Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four, to say the apology exceeded his expectations.
Emerging from a meeting with Blair at the House of Commons in London, Conlon and the other family members held aloft written copies of Blair’s apology.
There had been a last-minute hitch in arrangements after plans to make the apology on the floor of the House of Commons, in reply to a question from the SDLP MP for South Down, Eddie McGrady, went awry when he was not called by the speaker.
Amid considerable media interest, Conlon said: “He [Blair] apologized profusely and he was physically taken aback by the suffering that we have all suffered.
“Tony Blair met us privately, he spoke to every one of us, he took time, he listened to us, he exceeded our expectations in apologizing, he said it was long overdue,” he added.