Six, who had carried out the bombings.
If knots were tightening in Conlon’s stomach as he waited to address the congressmen, he did not show it. Neither did he show any concern about the fact that he had no prepared notes to refresh his memory – his memory did not need refreshing. Sandy Boyer recalled: ‘Gerry was the star. In his testimony he said, “I know what happened to the Birmingham Six because the same thing happened to me. I was held for six days in four police stations without food or sleep. I was beaten, humiliated, degraded and stripped naked. At the end of six days I signed a confession. I was never allowed to see a solicitor.”’4
As it turned out, many praised Conlon’s presentation. Congressman Joe Kennedy said: ‘It’s one thing to hear all the very sound legal arguments put forward by Tony Gifford, but nothing compares to hearing Gerry Conlon. It certainly left an indelible imprint on my mind.’5 Colman McCarthy, a member of the Washington Post Writers Pool, later wrote: ‘Gerry Conlon, with unclipped coal-black hair, dark mournful eyes, and a wrinkled suit, had the look of a villager in one of Ireland’s wild moors. He might well have been in one today – farming, raising a family – had the British government not imprisoned him for 15 years as one of the Guildford Four.’6
In his concluding remarks to the caucus, Congressman Chairman Tom Lantos said: ‘It is clear in this instance that British justice has failed, and we will pursue this matter to its end.’ Thanks to Gerry Conlon, Sandy Boyer, and others – Amnesty International in particular – the long shadow of American political influence once again engulfed 10 Downing Street, and it could not be ignored.
For Gerry Conlon it was time to take off that wrinkled suit and hit the bright lights of the Big Apple, where he stayed with friends in the Floral Park neighbourhood of Queens. At the Limelight nightclub in downtown New York, a young Irish girl called Ann McPhee introduced herself to Conlon and said that she was nanny to the Irish actor Gabriel Byrne’s children. She told him that Gabriel was handing out Gerry’s book to everyone who visited him, encouraging them to read it. It was through Shane Doyle, Gerry’s friend and owner of Sin-é Café in Saint Mark’s Place, that a meeting was arranged with Gabriel Byrne.
Gerry found Gabriel impressive: ‘Gabriel Byrne called. He said he’d read the book and loved it and thought it had the potential to make a great film.’7 After their discussion, Gerry decided that Gabriel was the man who could get his film produced. However, with no screenplay, no definitive outline, no money, and nothing more than a wildcat idea, the two men shook hands and concluded a gentleman’s agreement for a nominal figure of one dollar, which gave Byrne the option to develop a film based on Conlon’s life.
On 26 March 1990, RTÉ, the Irish broadcasting company, screened Dear Sarah, a £1 million television drama based on letters written by Giuseppe Conlon to his wife Sarah while he was in prison. The drama, written by Irish journalist Tom McGurk, told the story of how Sarah had visited Giuseppe for the first time, and of how they had to sit at opposite ends of a glass screen, unable to even touch hands. It also showed Sarah Conlon’s immense courage and fortitude, as she fought, almost alone, to clear her husband’s and son’s names, and of how she coped with the strain of travelling between Belfast and Britain to visit her dying husband.
Giving a background analysis to Irish News reporter Pete Silverton, McGurk said: ‘Sarah had an invalid husband and a son she spoiled stupid, and one day a steamroller hit her.’ Silverton pointed an accusing finger at Gerry Conlon for the trouble that had befallen the Conlon and Maguire families:
The steamroller made two passes over Sarah, of course. First her son was arrested – drinker, druggie, gambler, layabout, petty criminal. Like the rest of the Guildford Four, you couldn’t have relied on him to burgle the local chippie, let alone organise a pub bombing. Then his ‘confession’ – naming the Maguires – led directly to his own father’s arrest. Would it be any wonder if the Maguire family refused even to speak to Gerry again? Of all his relatives, they must have thought, why did he pick on us? What did we ever do to him?8
Had Conlon been in an uncharitable mood, he might well have returned the question to Silverton: ‘What did I ever do to you?’
Speaking of Dear Sarah, Ann McKernan said: ‘There were dramatic moments in the film … my father being trailed up the stairs in the prison when he wasn’t able to walk, my mother’s letters being taken from him. These things they did to my father because they couldn’t beat him as he was a sick man.’
Commenting on the drama, RTÉ executive producer Joe Mulholland said, ‘It is a haunting and disturbing true story of a bewildered and ailing man caught up in an implacable system. But it is, moreover, a love story of two people whose faith in each other never wavered.’9
Proved Innocent was launched in Buswells Hotel in Dublin on 11 June 1990, and later that night in the Palace of Westminster. The book is an earthy story of the author’s upbringing in a strictly Catholic home in Belfast’s Lower Falls, where the rosary was recited every night and all family members had to attend. Conlon relates how he looked on this period of his life as a happy and carefree time, even though money and luxuries were scarce. He goes on to narrate how, after leaving school, he pursued a career as a petty criminal and shoplifter, and of how he got the boat to England to escape the violent conflict that was engulfing Northern Ireland. Fast-moving, sometimes hilarious, always fascinating, Conlon was like a gondolier on Venice’s Grand Canal, as he navigated his readers through the crowded, choppy waters of his life. The book became an instant bestseller. When asked what he hoped to achieve by publishing Proved Innocent, Conlon said: ‘There is no one person whom I would like to single out for retribution. That and revenge is something that I do not want. All I am hoping to achieve with my book is to point out that sometimes the British justice system does fail. The British don’t have sole copyright on injustice.’10
At the Dublin book launch, Conlon called on the IRA to call off its armed campaign in order to get all the Irish prisoners in English prisons released. In Belfast, on 13 June, hundreds of people formed queues in the street outside Waterstones bookshop and a mighty cheer went up when Conlon appeared. Inside, he signed book after book, inscribing each with a personal message. In a newspaper interview, given on the same day, he once again committed himself to campaigning for the Birmingham Six, saying: ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I walked away. I would do anything or go anywhere to help them.’11 He also revealed that he was ‘living out of a suitcase; my time is not my own. I don’t see enough of my family.’12
On his return to London, Conlon had barely time to unpack his bags before he was getting on another plane, this time to Copenhagen, with other Birmingham Six campaigners, to lobby representatives at a conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Twenty-three out of twenty-eight European and North American countries had sent delegations to the Danish capital. While Conlon could not, and did not, claim credit for convincing the delegates to pass a vote calling on the British government to re-examine the convictions of the Birmingham Six, his participation was nevertheless telling: ‘Gerry’s contribution was crucial,’ wrote Paul May, who chaired the London-based campaign to free the Birmingham Six. ‘Gerry described powerfully how it felt to be brutalised and imprisoned as an innocent man.’13
In between campaigning for the Birmingham Six at home and abroad, Conlon was contractually bound to promote his book in different cities around the United Kingdom and Ireland, while also trying to get a film of his book produced. At the same time, he was struggling to rebuild relationships with his family. The sad reality was that the Conlon family, particularly Gerry, had had to insulate themselves from the world in order to survive their ordeal: they had all been prisoners and each of them was deeply affected by the traumatic events that had been visited upon them. If that was not enough, Gerry had to somehow find a way to temper the guilt that haunted him over the death of his father in prison. Siobhan MacGowan, the sister of The Pogues vocalist Shane MacGowan, met Conlon soon after his release and became a close friend and confidante for the rest of his life. She shared her experience:
