WHEN Hugh Callaghan walked up to the front door of his Birmingham home one night in November 1974, he had no idea that what he called his “quiet, ordinary” life was about to be destroyed.    

Before Hugh could turn his key, the door flew open, pushed from the inside. He was dragged in by his lapels and thrown up against the wall by a man he’d never seen before, who pressed a gun to his temple. 

Callaghan was being arrested by Special Branch; a long, Kafkaesque nightmare was just beginning.   

As the men who had taken over his home dragged him outside, his wife Eileen tried to reach him but was held back; daughter Geraldine fought to briefly grab his hand before he was taken away. 

It would be 16 years before he would return home.

Hugh and five men he knew socially, but not particularly well, stood accused of being the IRA men who’d bombed two Birmingham pubs the day before. They would become known as the Birmingham Six.

Their story should still shock us today, and not just because of the extreme police misconduct and brutality that led to the men being beaten into signing confession they did not write. 

Even more monstrous was the willingness of the Establishment and judiciary to keep men locked up long after the conviction was proven unsafe, rather than risk exposure of their own failings and corruption. Who can doubt that it could happen again today, as our rights under law are enthusiastically stripped away by the Tories?  

Hugh Callaghan was originally from Belfast, but had lived in Birmingham for 27 years by 1974. He was married to Eileen, and they had one daughter, Geraldine. Hugh described himself as being a shy and slightly nervous person in those days — the result, perhaps, of a tough childhood with a violent and unpredictable father. 

When I got to know him, it was 1993, and he had moved to London: he would never be able to bring himself to live in Birmingham again after what happened, even though his wife remained there and they stayed together. He was still mild-mannered, but also warm and friendly — surprisingly so, given what he’d been through.

Hugh had grown up in poverty as one of seven surviving children of Rose and Patrick Callaghan in Ardoyne, a working-class, mainly Catholic district in Belfast, surrounded by loyalist strongholds.

When he left home at 17 and set out for England, he’d never been further from home than trips to Dublin to watch football. Birmingham took a lot of adjustment: the sheer size of the city was intimidating at first. 

Nor was life significantly easier than back home: the Birmingham Irish community mostly had to live in grim “digs,” with exploitative landlords; some wouldn’t even rent to them, and “No Irish need apply” signs weren’t uncommon. Work in factories was poorly paid  and tediously repetitive. 

But Hugh settled in, and began to enjoy the social life of the city. He was often to be found at local “hops,” which he appreciated not just for the music — he was always a great music lover, with an excellent singing voice himself — but, he said, the added bonus of an opportunity to meet women. 

He and Eileen moved into one room after they married: all they could afford, but Eileen somehow managed to make it homely and comfortable. 
A sociable couple, they both enjoyed nights out with friends; Hugh liked a flutter on the dogs, too.  

Visits back home to Ireland, and vice versa, were infrequent, because of the expense — Hugh’s family hadn’t been able to afford to attend his wedding. So he was shocked, when returning to Belfast in 1972, to see for the first time the reality of the Troubles. 

Once there, he’d decided to pay a spontaneous visit to a friend on the Falls Road, despite being warned against it. On the way, he had to run the gamut of loyalist gangs, keen to attack any passing Catholic. 

His friend, who hadn’t known Hugh was coming, was amazed he’d made it in one piece and shocked he’d taken the risk, telling him he’d better get back home before it got late. 

But Hugh wasn’t going to be cowed, and persuaded his friend to go for a drink. As they sat in the pub, the sky outside was intermittently lit by the blue flashes of petrol bombs being hurled into the Falls by loyalists. 

When Hugh finally made it back home to his sister’s house, having again dodged loyalist gangs on the home journey, Patsy was frantic: “Where the hell have ye been? The Specials are everywhere; we’re surrounded!” 

The hated B Specials (the quasi-military Ulster Special Constables) were patrolling all night, shouting threats and abuse at Catholics in their homes. 

Two petrol bombs were lobbed through Patsy’s window, the family scrambling to put them out. Hugh recalled: “We didn’t sleep a wink. We got out the whiskey bottle, and sat out the night, too scared to move. [My family] were, in a way, used to this atmosphere, but I found it shocking and terrifying”

Back in England, Hugh’s anxiety about his Belfast family’s safety led to a duodenal ulcer. After taking sick leave, he was laid off.  

The morning of  November 21 1974 began routinely enough for the Callaghans. It was Eileen’s birthday; she set off to her job at a local school, and daughter Geraldine also left for work. 

There was a lot of activity around the Irish pubs of Birmingham that day. The body of a young Belfast man, Jamesie McDade, who’d died planting an IRA bomb outside Coventry telephone exchange earlier that month, was being flown back to Ireland for the funeral. Eileen and Hugh knew McDade as an entertainer and singer in local pubs and clubs, but hadn’t known of his political involvement. 

Hugh ran into John Walker and Dick McIlkenny, two occasional drinking buddies. He owed Dick some money and popped round his house later to return it. 

John and Dick, along with friends Paddy Hill, Billy Power and Gerry Hunter, had decided to travel back for the wake: as Dick later said, “more … fulfilling the Irish tradition of paying respects than any political act.”

All six men ended up at the Mulberry Bush pub near Birmingham New Street station. Noticing a man watching them, Hugh recalled they joked about it: “‘It’s probably Special Branch!’ But nobody was serious, because what would they want from the likes of us?”

Paddy, Dick, John, Gerry and Billy left to catch their train. Hugh went for “one for the road” in a different pub, when suddenly the lights went out. 

It transpired that, within an hour of the friends leaving the Mulberry Bush, a bomb had exploded there, followed by another in the Tavern in the Town pub.

When he got home, Hugh was in the doghouse with Eileen, who’d been terrified he’d been hurt, and was now just plain annoyed at being worried uneccessarily. Hugh was consigned to the sofa, but the shock of just missing the explosions kept him awake anyway. 

The next day, he heard 21 young people had been killed and 100 injured, and wondered “who the hell would do such an evil thing?”

There were reports of demonstrations in Birmingham against the Irish community, and talk of repatriation: “People were saying this should be a hanging offence.”

It was announced that five men had been caught, and one more was being looked for; never did Hugh imagine that was him.  

During his arrest he was disoriented by confusion as well as fear: he couldn’t believe they could really mean him when cops at the station he was taken to began celebrating: “We’ve got Callaghan!”

As staunch advocate for the men, MP Chris Mullin, put it, this “unluckiest of six unlucky men,” who was only with the others by sheer chance, was just not IRA bomber-material. 

Hugh agreed: as he would later say to me, “I wasn’t even political — I mostly just read the Racing Post!”

He was being modest: he was an intelligent and astute man; but he was not an activist. 

During the long interrogation, Hugh was kept naked but for a blanket: “At some point, an officer grabbed me and pinned me against the wall. Strange animal-like noises emanated from him. His eyes were wild like a man about to kill — my head hit the wall and bounced back. I really believed he was going to kill me.”

As well as assaulting and threatening him and refusing to let him rest, police handlers let their dogs loose in his cell, only pulling them back when on the brink of attack. An armed officer also pointed his gun at him, clicking off the safety catch. 

At his lowest ebb, Hugh signed the pre-written “confession.” The mug shots of the six released at the time shows them all with facial bruises and injuries. 

And the violence didn’t end there: Hugh and the other men say they were severely assaulted again by warders at Winson Green prison; however, 14 prison officers were subsequently cleared.

How did he survive those long, wearying years? 

He recalled that music helped; he would sing to cheer himself up, and a warder suggested he join the choir. He began with renditions of Sweet Sixteen and White Christmas, which went down a storm: “All the inmates took to me after that.”

In June 1990, when the men were trying for a third time to get their convictions overturned, Hugh told a reporter more about how he had coped: “I’m not a bitter man and I try not to get depressed. You just have to snap out of it. We have a clear conscience. We haven’t hurt anybody. We haven’t planted any bombs. We are not members of the IRA. We do not lose any sleep.”

In 1974, few doubted the men were guilty, and their families and friends on the outside suffered for that. The change was slow, but inexorable. 

In 1980, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, threw out a civil action the men brought against West Midlands Police, describing the prospect of police perjury and violence being exposed as “such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’.”

If the six had been hanged, he later said, “We shouldn’t have all these campaigns to get them released.”

However, in 1985, a World in Action documentary convincingly set out the serious flaws in the case; days later the Home Office retired its forensic scientist Frank Skuse, whose evidence had helped convict the men, on grounds of “limited effectiveness.”

At a 1987 appeal, witnesses gave evidence of police malpractice, but this didn’t satisfy presiding Chief Justice Lord Lane, who confirmed the original verdict. The Sun newspaper gloated: “We would have been tempted to string ’em up years ago.”

But by 1990, the collapse of the Guildford Four's convictions, and disbanding of the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad for corruption and evidence fabrication, raised doubts that couldn’t be ignored. 

In his interview that year, Callaghan responded to rumours the six might be offered parole, saying he would refuse it: “We are innocent. I want to see my family. I want to see the countryside. I love the nice things in life. But we will not be quietly slipped out of the back door.”

At the final hearing, the prosecutor struggled desperately to save face for the crown and British justice. Even the judge condemned this as an obvious damage limitation exercise.

Then, finally, they were free. In March 1991, the men walked out of the Old Bailey, with their tireless advocate Chris Mullin MP. 

Hugh remembered he couldn’t stop thanking and applauding the people waiting for them behind the barriers. Crowds grabbed and hugged them, euphoric. 

Then, finally, the men’s families ran towards them — a moment Hugh said he would never forget

It took him a long time to adjust to liberty. Sitting reflecting in the hotel, he started when a BBC film crew member came up behind him: “I thought you were a screw!’”

He could hardly digest decent food after prison stodge; and, as much as he’d always loved a drink, struggled to get through his first pint in 16 years. 

When I knew Hugh, Billy Power and Paddy Hill in London, they were still processing what they’d been through: but Paddy was the only one I ever saw express completely justified anger. 

Hugh and Billy never did, at least that I saw, although they did talk about their experiences. All three just wanted to enjoy their families and their lives, and were always up for a drink and the craic.

Inevitably, some of the trauma remained. One day as we walked along Upper Street in Islington, Hugh suddenly crossed over the road as a couple walking a large Alsatian dog came into view on our side. 

He told me that he’d always been a little nervous around dogs, but this had worsened dramatically after that first tortuous interrogation in 1974. 

Unbelievably, there were still some who tried to argue for their guilt. After a 1993 criminal case against three of the police who investigated the men was suddenly dropped because adverse publicity supposedly made a fair hearing impossible, the most senior, Detective Superintendent George Reade, told the Telegraph and the Sun newspapers that “in our eyes their guilt is beyond doubt.”

The papers had to print apologies — the Sun chose to run theirs on page three, below the topless model.

The men were widely supported by ordinary people, though: they would be stopped in the street by people moved by their ordeal. 

In 1993, I was proud to attend the launch of Hugh’s book, Cruel Fate, in the House of Commons. 

After his release, Hugh visited Birmingham again, but couldn’t face living back there. He and Eileen remained married, but while she stayed in Birmingham, Hugh moved to London. 

There he retained his wariness about the police: he joined the Irish Pensioners Choir, and at a St Patrick’s Day event in Trafalgar Square, found himself flanked by officers, and felt the old unease: “They can be so nice and pally but they can turn so quickly.”

As Hugh put it in Cruel Fate: “We were six innocent people who … spent 16 years behind bars for a crime we didn’t commit. Our homes were destroyed, our families left in disarray. Our children’s futures were shattered, because the mighty and powerful could not bring themselves to admit they were wrong. Justice was sacrificed to protect reputations. Our lives will never know normality again.”

His overriding feeling was the pointlessness: “I do feel great sadness at the futility of it all.”

No-one involved in this scandalous miscarriage of justice has paid any real penalty, or shown remorse. As the 1994 protest song about the case, Forensic Evidence by Belfast band Stiff Little fingers, has it: “I wonder how you sleep/ But if you do, I hope you dream.”   

Hugh Callaghan is survived by his partner, Adeline Masterson, his daughter Geraldine, and two grandchildren. His wife Eileen predeceased him.

Historian and activist Louise Raw organises the annual Matchwomen’s Festival in Bow, east London, this year featuring Jeremy Corbyn and wife Laura Alvarez. It takes place on Saturday July 15, tickets available at bit.ly/Matchfest23.