The Home Secretary has met families of the Birmingham pub bombings victims after the Government was urged to explain why it wants to “close the book” on the case.
Ministers had been slammed as “shameful” for not meeting the bereaved earlier – but Priti Patel spoke to them on a visit to West Midlands Combined Authority offices in the city yesterday.
Julie Hambleton’s sister Maxine was 18 when she was one of 21 people killed in the blasts on November 21, 1974.
Julia had previously accused ministers of lacking “the courage to face families” to discuss Government plans to end prosecutions for violence linked to the Troubles.
But after the meeting she said she believed the families were “closer than we ever have been” to a public inquiry.
She added: “While she [Patel] made no commitment to give us what we want – a public inquiry – she made the promise that her legal team will converse with ours to put forward the process for them to discuss the way forward.
“We can only but hope that will take place sooner rather than later.
“We’ve had to wait nearly 47 years to get this far and she said that she acts with integrity. Well, we will keep her to that word. Without a public inquiry, we cannot achieve justice.”
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis set out plans this month to introduce legislation to create a statute of limitations which would end all prosecutions for atrocities up to April 1998 and would apply to military veterans as well as former paramilitaries.
The proposals, which the Prime Minister said would allow Northern Ireland to “draw a line under the Troubles”, would also end all legacy inquests and civil actions related to the conflict.
Julie said: “As far as the amnesty proposal is concerned, you cannot put ‘reconciliation’ and ‘peace’ in the same sentence as ‘amnesty’ and ‘truth’ and ‘justice’. They just don’t go together. No one in their right mind would consider allowing mass murderers to walk free.”
Mr Lewis acknowledged earlier this month that “the end of prosecutions will be difficult for some to accept, and this is not a position that we take lightly”.
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But he added that it is “the best way to help Northern Ireland move along the road to reconciliation”.
A flawed investigation by West Midlands Police into the blast, that also left 220 injured, led to the wrongful convictions of the Birmingham Six.
In 2019, an inquest found a botched IRA warning was responsible for the victims’ unlawful killings.
But some described the coronial process as “unsatisfactory” for not prompting criminal charges.
