FAMILIES of the victims killed in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings have finally been granted legal aid just days before an inquest proceedings into the suspected IRA terror attacks is due to start.

The bombings, which killed 21 people and injured 182 others, and the subsequent “investigation” became one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in British legal history after six wholly innocent Irishmen — the Birmingham Six as they became known: Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Joseph Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker —spent 16 years in prison before their sentences were finally quashed in 1991.

No-one has ever been convicted of the atrocities and the families of those killed have still not received justice.