pub bombings, he had been with Conlon in the hostel and that Conlon had been drunk and had tried, unsuccessfully, to borrow a pound from him. It subsequently emerged that Crown Counsel had written to the Guildford Four defence counsel on 13 August 1975, and had given them a list of witnesses who had been interviewed by police but whom the Crown would not call on at the trial. Unsurprisingly, Charlie Burke’s name was not on the list. Neither was that of Sister Michael Power, a nun who worked in the hostel and who had made a statement to police confirming that her records showed that Burke had been in the hostel on the day of the Guildford pub bombings (this strengthened Burke’s alibi statement). It was not until 1989 that Conlon’s then solicitor, Gareth Peirce, uncovered Burke’s and Power’s statements. Peirce and fellow Guildford Four solicitor, Michael Fisher, berated Sir Norman’s department, accusing the DPP of a cover-up. Fisher said: ‘Paul Hill’s case has always been under considerable pressure. He invented and elaborated upon a cock-and-bull story knowing that it couldn’t be corroborated, that he and the others named had alibis, and, therefore, believing that it wouldn’t stand up in court. What then happened was that steps were taken to ensure that his cock-and-bull story did stand up in court.’7
Sarah Conlon, as ever, was worried for her big son. At his own expense, he was organising a lobbying campaign on behalf of the Birmingham Six, and he was preparing to go alone, if necessary, to the United States on 5 November. Sarah prevailed upon Gerry’s cousin Martin Loughran to accompany him on the trip, saying that he would have been out of prison a mere seventeen days by the time he set forth for the US and he needed someone to guide him. Martin, who was six years older than Gerry, was working on building sites in London and his initial reaction was to refuse the request: ‘I told my Aunt Sarah that I couldn’t leave my work. But she pleaded with me. She said, “He really, really needs somebody – family.” And I only went because his mother, as I say, had asked me. I did it for my aunt Sarah and my mother.’
While in Washington, Conlon and Loughran stayed with Kerry Bowen of the human rights organisation, American Protestants for Truth about Ireland. ‘Just down from Kerry’s apartment in Connecticut Avenue there was a bar called Murphy’s, and the barman was called Paddy Joe Walsh,’ Martin Loughran recalls, ‘and he was a scream, a real ducker-and-diver. Paddy Joe was from the Falls area. He and Gerry got on like a house on fire, and he showed us around Washington.’ After the sightseeing, Conlon was out of the traps, meeting with important US politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties, including Congressmen Brian Donnelly, Ted and Joe Kennedy, and the Speaker of the House, Tom Foley. Martin Loughran has a vivid memory of Conlon’s meeting with Joe Kennedy:
We met Joe Kennedy in his office. He was a nice fella and was, by a long shot, the most interested politician we met. He asked questions and he listened intently. You could tell he was genuine. Anyway, after Gerry had said his piece and answered all Joe’s questions, Joe sat back, put his hands behind his head and his feet up on his desk, and remarked that he was going to Ireland soon to do a bit of fishing. I have to give it to Gerry. He saw an opportunity and pounced on it. Gerry said to him, ‘Why don’t you go to England and visit the Birmingham Six when you’re over? Visit Paddy Hill; he’d appreciate seeing you.’ And Joe kinda looked away as if, you know, tossing it over in his head, and then he looked back and said, ‘That’s not a bad idea. Yeah, I’d like that.’8
On 20 November 1989, it was reported in The Irish News that, ‘Two of America’s most influential politicians are to visit the Birmingham Six after meeting Gerard Conlon of the Guildford Four.’9
The congressman was as good as his word. In 1990, Joe Kennedy went up the Falls Road in Belfast, and while there, dropped into the Conlon home in Albert Street. He later went to England to visit the Birmingham Six. ‘They wouldn’t let him in to visit Paddy Hill at that time, although he eventually did get in to see Paddy around July 1990, I think,’ Martin Loughran said. ‘But it was all about the publicity and all that came about with Gerry asking Joe to visit the Birmingham Six.’
It wasn’t long after their meeting that Kennedy and Conlon met Congressman Tom Lantos. Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor on Capitol Hill, was a highly respected and compassionate Hungarian-American politician. He was also the co-chair of the influential Congressional Human Rights Caucus, a bipartisan group representing 200 members of Congress. The traditional focus of the caucus had always been human rights abuses in totalitarian countries such as the Soviet Union, South Africa, China and Cuba, but occasionally its attention was drawn to human rights violations in democratic countries. United States politicians had rarely taken more than a cursory look at British human rights abuses, but that was all to change irrevocably, and it was Gerry Conlon who would be the catalyst for that change.
During his meetings with Kennedy and Conlon, and after listening to the Irishman’s impassioned presentation, Lantos pledged that the case of the Birmingham Six would be the subject of the caucus’s first hearing in the new year. If Conlon thought this breakthrough was a cause for celebration, he did not show it. There was still work to be done.
After Conlon’s success in Washington, he and Loughran went to New York. The socialist human rights activist Sandy Boyer remembers getting a phone call in his Brooklyn apartment and a Belfast voice saying, ‘This is Gerry Conlon. I’m in New York for the Birmingham Six, and my lawyer, Gareth Peirce, told me to get in touch with you.’ Sandy later learned that this was high praise from Gerry. ‘If Gareth recommended somebody, Gerry was sure he or she could be trusted. He had complete faith in her.’10
Gerry, Martin and Gerry’s girlfriend, Diana St. James, met Sandy Boyer that afternoon in O’Reilly’s pub (then Joyce’s pub), at Sixth and 31st, and they discussed how to shape the Birmingham Six campaign in the United States. Forty-five-year-old Boyer was impressed with Conlon’s political nous: ‘We agreed immediately that it had to be as mainstream as possible, and that any connection with NORAID (the Republican Movement’s fund-raising organisation) or republicanism would be fatal. I then began to suggest people whom Gerry should meet.’
With fifteen years of high-octane energy in the tank and the passion of someone who not only knew his own worth, but who saw himself as being on a sacred mission, Conlon hurled himself into the task of obtaining the release of the Birmingham Six. Boyer recalls: ‘Gerry moved from one contact to the next and he quickly moved beyond the people I knew. He kept checking in with me, partly because he needed to talk to someone who knew the scene, and, maybe more, because he needed to talk to someone who had no agenda beyond the Birmingham Six.’
Conlon expressed his appreciation in a radio interview, hosted by Boyer, in 2013:
As you know, Sandy, you were one of the first people I met in America when I got out and you helped open doors – for Ed Koch (the former mayor of New York); you got me to Cardinal O’Connor, and your help was invaluable in securing the release of the Birmingham Six because you facilitated me and you pointed me in the right direction. And I remember when I took the delegation of Paul Dwyer, Brian Donnelly, Joe Kennedy and met Charlie Rangel and people like that. And we met Jack O’Dell from the Rainbow Coalition and of course Tom Lantos, a great congressman from California, who gave us a congressional hearing on human rights’ abuses on Irish people in British prisons.11
Conlon certainly had the Irish gift of the gab, but he baulked before the presence of Cardinal John O’Connor, a prelate who upheld the sanctity of life, whether that be in the womb or on death row. Boyer had arranged for Conlon to meet Cardinal O’Connor after Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. ‘By that time, Gerry was living on the edge of his nerves,’ Boyer says. ‘We were supposed to meet the cardinal at the left side of the altar after the Mass. When no one was there, Gerry turned and bolted out the door. In a few minutes someone found out that we were supposed to meet at the cardinal’s residence. I had to take off and try to catch up with Gerry. Fortunately I guessed right and he was going down Fifth Avenue. Gerry seemed to get a lot of comfort from talking to the cardinal. Afterwards he told me the cardinal asked if the people with him were friends and warned him against hangers-on.’
