in the house and smoke a bit of blow, and his head would’ve been buried in the paper, studying the form; he knew when a horse was right and when it wasn’t. And he’d never have stood all day in a bookies like a lot of gamblers. And another thing, people have said he was an alcoholic. He wasn’t. No way. Certainly not when I was with him.18
David Pallister also felt the rush of Conlon’s personality. A reporter with The Guardian since 1974, Pallister had extensively covered the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. He had also been in both Guildford and Birmingham on the day after the explosions had occurred and had reported on both sets of appeals. Moreover, he had written copiously about miscarriages of justice. With these qualifications, it is little wonder that Gareth Peirce judged him to be the writer best suited to bring to life the Gerry Conlon story in a book.
At the solicitor’s invitation, Pallister first met Gerry in Gareth’s home in early 1990, where they collectively discussed the mechanics of the journalist ghostwriting Gerry’s biography. The reporter liked Gerry: ‘He was good company and we got on well. He remarked approvingly of my gait, “Just like you’d see on the Falls Road.”’19
From the outset, it was agreed that in order to give Gerry and David the best possible chance to concentrate on the task in hand, they had to get away from the many distractions of London. David’s suggestion of two weeks in sunny Tunisia went down exceedingly well with Gerry, but tying down the bon vivant to a strict work regime would prove problematic: ‘Even though he was tremendously engaging, very articulate, thoughtful and funny at the same time, it was sometimes hard getting him to stick to the bigger picture we were after,’ Pallister said. ‘But after the damage of fifteen years in prison I was content to be indulgent about his indiscipline and self-indulgence. The poor guy had been through hell and he was understandably angry and bitter.’
Pallister’s idea of going to Tunisia in the first place had been to find anonymity because Gerry had already attained a considerable media profile. While the idea was sound, it was only as foolproof as Gerry wanted it to be – and playing the role of the perennial bore did not come naturally to him. He was Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four, after all, and where was the harm in telling his fellow tourists that he was the man who had ridden out of the Old Bailey on a chariot of righteous indignation?
Even though it was always going to be a difficult commission for Pallister, the two men did manage to get through a substantial amount of work as they sat on the balcony of the journalist’s room every morning with a tape recorder. And every evening Pallister sent the tape of that day’s work back to London to be transcribed. A significant portion of what had been recorded pertained to Gerry’s survival exploits while in prison. Pallister said: ‘He had some highly amusing and graphic tales, which he recounted with relish. He also had stories of financial scams. He smoked dope all day. He had brought it in, he explained, wrapped in film between his buttocks.’
When they got back to London, Pallister was confronted by Gareth Peirce, who had had access to the recordings made in Tunisia. She was less than enthusiastic. ‘Gareth was unhappy about the stories of his exploits,’ Pallister said. ‘She wanted something more about the grief and the pain and his relationship with his father. There was pressure from the knowledge that Ronan [Bennett] was doing Paul Hill’s book [Stolen Years: Before and After Guildford],’ Pallister said. ‘Before I could progress, I was summarily taken off the project and paid off. I had a final highly emotional meeting with Gerry in a café on Kentish Town Road, close to Gareth’s house, where he laid out his true feelings.’
Robin Blake, another journalist, finished the book with Gerry. Tellingly, Pallister was not invited to the launch of Conlon’s book, Proved Innocent, in the House of Commons on 11 June 1990. He professed that he was ‘not bitter about all of this … but I was annoyed that the book turned out to be so dishonest.’20 No amount of coaxing would persuade Pallister to elaborate on what exactly had driven him to question the book’s honesty, or to give an account of his final meeting with Gerry in Kentish Town. Perhaps he believed that some things were better left unsaid.
Leaving things unsaid was not the way of the next set of characters to enter Gerry Conlon’s convoluted life. For Joey Cashman and Shane MacGowan, of the Irish punk rock band The Pogues, Gerry’s devil-may-care attitude to life paralleled their own laissez-faire philosophy. For the more circumspect Hollywood superstar Johnny Depp, Gerry was the ‘friend’ with whom he got drunk and raked about, while the two men and the Conlon family toured Ireland.
The lad was on the rocky road to somewhere – he just didn’t know where.
Three
Gerry Conlon was astute enough to know that American political influence casts a long shadow and that sometimes that shadow engulfed 10 Downing Street. He also knew that, as a miscarriage of justice victim, he was in a unique position to exhort American politicians to persuade the British government that it was not in their vested interest to continue to deny justice to the Birmingham Six. So, in early March 1990, along with his trusted cousin Martin Loughran, Conlon returned to Washington to attend the Congressional Human Rights Caucus hearing on the Birmingham Six case, which Congressman Tom Lantos had promised he would convene during the Irishmen’s previous trip. The hearing was co-sponsored by Congressman Joe Kennedy of the Ad Hoc Congressional Committee on Irish Affairs.
There were high expectations of a successful outcome to the caucus hearing, not least because Conlon had a masterful grasp of his brief and had the ability to deliver a faultless presentation. More than any other facet, it was his personality that made him a reliable persuader: in temperament, he was a composite of nervous energy and cordiality; in conversation he had the gift of giving the speaker his undivided attention; in practice, he was blessed with a prodigious memory, which meant that he could remember dates, places and people’s names, even if he had not seen those people for a while, sometimes for years. This meant that if he had been introduced to a politician in the past, or his wife, or his kids, he remembered their names and details. This was impressive data storage, which did not go unnoticed by almost everyone with whom he came into contact.
Once again Conlon availed of Sandy Boyer’s services to help co-ordinate his activities. Even before Conlon had left for the United States, Boyer, an unsung hero of the Birmingham Six narrative, had been busy sorting out the Irishman’s agenda: ‘In the week or so before the hearing, I was speaking to Joe Kennedy’s staffer regularly. We were going over the schedule for the hearing and I was able to answer questions about the case.’1 The significance of Boyer’s contribution cannot be underestimated because, as a result of his discussions with Kennedy’s staffer, a briefing document for members of the caucus was produced, which said: ‘Their [the Birmingham Six] convictions were based upon signed confessions and forensic tests which indicated that the defendants may have been severely beaten at the time the confessions were obtained. Furthermore, the forensic tests were shown to be incomplete and unreliable.’2
Boyer had meticulously prepared the ground, and now it was time for the Guildford Four man to deliver. Boyer recalls:
Gerry and I met in Washington two days before the hearing. We went to talk to the Kennedy staff member who was organising the hearing. She wanted us to meet Joe Kennedy the next day and started to tell us that they had a new office. When, rather than her telling me where the new office was, I told her, Gerry gave me a big wink. The point isn’t that I had done anything especially brilliant, but that Gerry, without even thinking about it, was sending me a compliment, just between the two of us. Little things like that made it such a pleasure to work with him.3
Sandy Boyer recollects that when the caucus convened on 12 March 1990, Joe Kennedy’s staffer was buoyed up because there were more members of the US Congress in attendance than there were staffers. As well as Conlon, the caucus was addressed by Gareth Peirce; the Catholic Primate of All-Ireland, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich; human rights advocate and barrister Lord Tony Gifford QC and Seamus
