RELATIVES of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombings renewed their call for justice yesterday as they gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of the atrocities.

Twenty-one people were killed and 182 injured when the twin blasts tore through two city centre pubs on the evening of November 21 1974.

The initial explosion ripped through the Mulberry Bush at the foot of the city centre Rotunda near what is now the Bullring shopping centre, killing 10 people.

A second device detonated in The Tavern in the Town in nearby New Street, claiming 11 lives.

A year later, in what has come to be regarded as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history, Paddy Joe Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Richard McIlkenny, Gerry Hunter, Billy Power and Johnny Walker were convicted of carrying out the bombings.

In 1991, after a 16-year campaign, the Birmingham Six as they became known had their sentences quashed on appeal at the Old Bailey.

The Court of Appeal found that the men’s original statements had been altered and forensic evidence supposedly linking two of them to the explosives was unsafe.

The IRA is widely believed to have carried out the attacks although the true culprits have never been brought to justice.

Julie Hambleton, whose sister Maxine was killed in the bombings, said it was of utmost importance the victims were “never forgotten.”

She also used the occasion to call for support for their campaign.

Ms Hambleton said: “Innocent people were slain for no reason and no-one is looking for the murderers.

“We need the country to get behind us.

“None of us want to be on the news, talking about this, when we should be allowed to grieve, but we get no help from the government.

“It is a means to an end, to put pressure on the Establishment.”

She vowed that the families would continue their struggle for justice.

“We miss Maxine and want to remember her and the other 20,” she said.

“If she was here, and it had been one of us, she would be screaming from the rooftops — that’s what she was like. So, we will fight to our dying breath.”

paddym@peoples-press.com