On 21 November 1974, two bombs exploded in crowded pubs in central Birmingham, killing 21 people and sending the city and the country into shock. The bombings were attributed to the Provisional IRA, and a year later six Irish men were sentenced to terms of life imprisonment for their roles in planting and detonating the devices.
The “Birmingham Six”, as these men came to be known, steadfastly maintained their innocence, and a dedicated team of investigative journalists and lawyers slowly but surely convinced the British public that these men were telling the truth. In dramatic scenes outside the Old Bailey in London on 14 March 1991, Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker had their convictions for murder quashed by the Court of Appeal. They had each spent 16 years in prison for crimes that they had not committed, and their case is one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in British history.