Hugh Callaghan, who has died aged 93, was the unluckiest of the six unlucky men wrongly convicted of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. He was not even on the fateful trip to Belfast on the night of the bombings that resulted in the arrest of the other five. Indeed, he was barely acquainted with several of them, until they met in prison. He merely went to New Street station in Birmingham to see them off.
He came to be at New Street only because he owed Richard McIlkenny a pound (worth in those days the equivalent of six pints of Guinness), and had called round to his house to repay it. There, he found McIlkenny packing for a weekend visit to Belfast. Hugh spent the rest of the afternoon playing with McIlkenny’s children and then accompanied him to New Street, where they met up with Paddy Hill, Gerry Hunter, Billy Power and Johnny Walker.
He had a drink with them in the station bar and waved them off. Shortly afterwards, bombs exploded in two pubs in Birmingham city centre, killing 21 people and injuring more than 200 others. The five men were arrested at Heysham in Lancashire when they got off the train, which had left Birmingham shortly before the bombs exploded, and connected with the ferry to Belfast. They were on the way to the funeral of James McDade, a known IRA man.
Hugh was arrested the following day. After two days in police custody, during the course of which he was subject to threats and intimidation and deprived of sleep, he was persuaded to sign a confession admitting to taking part in the pub bombings. Along with the others, he spent 16 years in prison before the convictions were quashed in March 1991.
Hugh was born to an impoverished family in the Belfast district of Ardoyne, a Catholic enclave surrounded by loyalist strongholds. He was one of nine children, two of whom died in infancy, of Rose and Patrick Callaghan. His father, a sergeant in the British army who brutally mistreated his wife and children, was discharged in 1941.
At the age of 17, Hugh moved to Birmingham in search of work. In 1956, he married Eileen, who came from County Mayo. They lodged first in a single room in Aston, where their daughter, Geraldine, was born, before eventually being allocated a two-bedroom council house in Erdington. For more than 25 years Hugh worked as a labourer at factories in and around Birmingham.
The Birmingham Six, as Hugh and his fellow accused became known, were released on 14 March 1991, into the glare of worldwide publicity, their convictions quashed after the confessions signed by four of the six were found to have been fabricated and the forensic evidence to be unreliable. By the time of their release, after a long campaign to prove their innocence, the case had become a cause celebre. It resulted in the setting up of a royal commission, and in due course to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, with powers to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice.
A mild-mannered, nervous man who was in his 40s at the time of his arrest, Hugh was one of the most unlikely “IRA bombers” ever to fall into police hands. He emerged from prison a much stronger character than when he went in, and later published an autobiography, Cruel Fate (1994), in which he described with simplicity and dignity his extraordinary ordeal and that of his family. “I tried very hard in prison not to become bitter ... bitterness eats the heart and soul,” he said. “However, I do feel great sadness at the futility of it all.”
After his release, Hugh visited Birmingham, but he could never bring himself to live there again. Eileen stayed in Birmingham while Hugh settled in London, although they remained married. She predeceased him. He is survived by his partner, Adeline Masterson, his daughter and two grandchildren.
I last saw Hugh in September 2022. He had a fine singing voice and was a member of a local Irish pensioners’ choir for which he had recorded two songs for an album, Songs of Love and Emigration, due to be released this summer. We chatted for an hour and when I left he saw me off with a fine rendition of Danny Boy.
Hugh Callaghan, labourer, born 24 March 1930; died 27 May 2023
