THE UNLUCKIEST OF SIX UNLUCKY MEN
Born into a poverty-stricken Catholic family in Belfast, Hugh’s parents were Rose and Patrick. He was one of nine children, although two of his siblings died in infancy.
The family lived in the Ardoyne area of the city; a Catholic enclave surrounded by the Loyalist community. The family were well known for entertaining the local community with their voices. They were known as the ‘Singing Callaghans’.
His father was a sergeant in the British Army, who regularly beat his wife and children. Hugh remembered him as an, “overbearing brute and bully.”
Patrick was dismissed from the army in 1941 and promptly deserted his family.
Aged 17, Hugh came to England to look for work. Up to this point, he had never travelled further than Dublin. He chose to live in Birmingham as there was a large Irish Catholic community there.
He remembered lots of anti-Irish prejudice and was forced to live in some appalling digs.
Hugh got various jobs as a labourer and worked in several Birmingham factories over the next 25 years.
In Birmingham, he met and married Eileen, who came from County Mayo. His family were so poor that they could not afford to come to the wedding.
Initially, Hugh and Eileen lived in a one room flat in Aston, but when baby Geraldine was born, they were given a two-bedroom council house in Erdington.
Hugh was a mild-mannered, somewhat nervous man. He loved music and had a beautiful singing voice. Eileen and Hugh loved Irish dancing and the music that was played in the pubs in the city.
In 1972, Hugh went back to Belfast to visit his sister. By then, ‘The Troubles’ had been underway for three years. He couldn’t believe the bomb damage he saw – and couldn’t get over the fact there were police cars and armed British soldiers everywhere.
Hugh didn’t appreciate the danger. He went out for a pint with an old friend, walking straight through a Loyalist area. When he told his friend the route he had taken to get to the pub, he was told he was lucky to be still alive. Nevertheless, Hugh walked the same route home, again without incident.
However, his sister’s house was fire-bombed that very night. The siblings spent the night under the kitchen table drinking whiskey.
Hugh was glad to get back to Birmingham.
The 21st November 1974, was Eileen’s birthday. She went off to work in a local school.
Hugh was temporarily out of work. On the afternoon of that day, he went round to his friend Richard McIlkenny’s house. Hugh owed him £1 (“Enough for six pints of Guinness”).
There, he found Richard packing a bag. He was going to Belfast for the weekend, with four friends. They were going to the funeral of James McDade.
McDade was well-known in the Birmingham area, as a pub singer and entertainer. Unbeknown to most people, he was also a member of the Provisional IRA.
A week earlier, McDade had been killed, when a bomb he was planting in a Coventry telephone exchange had exploded prematurely.
McIlkenny made it clear to Hugh that they were attending the funeral as friends, not for any political reasons.
After playing with McIlkenny’s children for an hour, Hugh accompanied Richard to New Street railway station.
There, McIlkenny met his friends in the station bar. They were Paddy Hill, Gerry Hunter, Billy Power and Johnny Walker. Hugh had never met any of them before. They had a couple of drinks before they caught their train. Hugh waved them off.
On the way home, he stopped at another pub for a couple more drinks. He remembered all the lights going out at one point.
When he got home in the evening, Eileen was furious with him – not just because he had missed her birthday, but because she had heard the news.
Two pubs had been bombed in Birmingham city centre. They were the Mulberry Tree and the Tavern in The Town. 21 people had been killed and 182 people injured. The Provisional IRA had claimed responsibility.
Eileen had been terrified that Hugh had been in one of those pubs. He was consigned to sleeping on the couch that night. Hugh remembered thinking, “Who the hell would do such an evil thing?”
The following day, on the news it was announced five men had been arrested, and the police were searching for one other man.
Little did Hugh know, the five arrested were McIlkenny and his friends, captured as they got off the train to board a ferry to Ireland.
When Hugh got home from searching for work that day, he reached for his key to let himself into the house. Before he could do so, the door burst open and he was dragged inside by his lapels, pinned against a wall and a gun held to his temple. It was the Special Branch.
His wife and daughter tried to reach him but they were held back. Hugh was dragged off to Aston police station.
He remembered policemen celebrating as he was forced into a cell, chanting “We’ve got Callaghan.”
Hugh was stripped naked and left without food or water. Then the beatings started. He was deprived of sleep and two police Alsatians were left in his cell. The other five men were receiving similar treatment in other cells, one being subject to a mock execution.
Eventually, worn down by torture, Hugh signed a confession (as did the other men).
At their trial, all of them, now known as ‘The Birmingham Six’, were found guilty and each man was sentenced to 21 concurrent life sentences.
They were taken to Winson Green prison, where the guards continued to treat them badly. One family member, visiting her father, said he had been beaten so badly that she didn’t recognize him.
Hugh felt his time inside, toughened him up. “I tried very hard in prison not to become bitter…Bitterness eats the heart and soul…However, I do feel sadness at the futility of it all.”
The other prisoners treated them badly too. Hugh was the first to settle. His voice found such favour with the inmates that they quickly left him alone. He claimed he was singing his worries away. “There was nothing to sing about in prison, but I couldn’t help it.”
Hugh joined the prison choir, and once sang his favourite song, ‘Danny Boy’, so beautifully that the prison governor burst into tears.
In 1975, 14 prison officers were charged with assault on the Birmingham Six, but the judge dismissed the case immediately.
Lord Denning, the Chief Justice, said that he thought hanging should be bought back for the Birmingham Six, and The Sun led a ‘String ‘Em Up’ campaign.
In 1977, the men brought a civil claim against the West Midlands Police, but another judge dismissed it.
However, there was growing unrest about the case. Solicitor Gareth Peirce started a campaign, claiming they had been wrongly arrested. He was joined by writer Sally Mulready, Father Dennis Faul and Sister Sarah Clarke.
The campaign picked up momentum when it was joined by Labour MP Chris Mullin.
Mullin wrote a book about the case, entitled ‘Error of Judgement: The Truth About the Birmingham Pub Bombings’.
This was followed by Mullin working with Granada TV on a World in Action documentary, which was broadcast in 1985. The programme said that four of the confessions had been fabricated (and the other two forced under duress), and that the forensic evidence was extremely dubious.
The government immediately sacked their Chief Forensic Scientist, Dr Frank Skuse, for ‘incompetence’. He had presented the evidence in the original trial.
This led to a public outcry about the case and questions being asked about the convictions. A Royal Commission examined the case, which in turn led to a Criminal Cases Review Commission, who deemed the convictions unreliable.
Hugh and his fellow prisoners were not released. Instead, they were offered parole. He instantly rejected this offer. “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 shipped out the back door.”
Interviewed in 1990 by a journalist, Hugh said, “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.”
He ruefully reflected, “I wasn’t even political – I mostly read the Racing Post.”
On March 14th 1991, the Birmingham Six were finally released and their convictions quashed. They were greeted by massive crowds and banks of journalists and photographers. Then, their families rushed towards them. Hugh remembered that as his sweetest moment.
All six men had served 16 years – for murders they didn’t commit.
In a subsequent interview, Chris Mullin said, because of his gentle nature, Hugh was the least likely IRA bomber he had ever met. He also termed Hugh as, “The Unluckiest of Six Unlucky Men.”
The policeman in charge of the original investigation, Detective Sergeant George Reade, refused to accept their innocence. “They were as guilty as hell”, he said in a newspaper interview.
It took another ten years before the men were paid any compensation.
Hugh immediately went back to Birmingham, but he found it too traumatic to stay there. He moved to London. Eileen, and their daughter Geraldine, stayed in Birmingham. Nevertheless, Hugh and Eileen remained married.
When he arrived in London, Hugh was invited to a training session at Wembley for the Republic of Ireland football team. Manager Jack Charlton greeted him warmly and said, “You’ve had a rough time.”
Hugh responded, “It’s all over now.” He was delighted to get to meet his hero, the footballer Paul McGrath.
In 1994, Hugh wrote his autobiography with the aid of Sally Mulready. It was entitled ‘Cruel Fate’. The Mulready family became very close friends with Hugh.
He had a lifelong fear of Alsatian/German Shepherd dogs.
Eileen died in 2014, and soon afterwards, Hugh met a new partner, Adeline Masterson. They set up home in Hackney in East London. A friend said of the couple, “She really loved him, and he really loved her. You could really see the affection between them.”
Hugh threw himself into community projects in Hackney. He loved tea dances and went to Mass every Sunday evening.
He kept singing. He was a member of the Irish Pensioners Choir. In 2021, they were invited to sing at the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Trafalgar Square, London.
The traffic was so bad that the choir received a police escort. Hugh ruefully commented about the police outriders, “I would be a lot less relaxed if that happened years ago.”
In 2022, the choir recorded two songs for an album entitled ‘Songs of Love and Emigration’. Hugh sang the lead vocals on ‘Danny Boy’.
Hugh then started having chest pains and was taken to hospital. There, on the wards, he kept singing to the nurses and it was there that he died.
The album was released two weeks after his death, so he never got to hear the finished version.
Hugh was the second of the Birmingham Six to die. Richard McIlkenny passed away in 2006.
Upon Hugh’s death, his family said, “We know the last years of his life were full of love, singing, dancing and Irish music. We will continue to try and live the values of forgiveness and gentle optimism that Hugh taught us.”
He sang at his own funeral (a recording of course).
The Mulready family said, “He was a man with an astonishing strength of character. Despite the profound injustice he endured, he was not bitter or angry, but joyful and always ready to sing.”
They added, “Hugh’s passing feels like the end of an era. We loved and admired him very much and all of us are proud that he was part of our lives.”
Molly Mulready (daughter of Sally), said, “He managed not to dwell on the past, but it was so horrific that he was never completely free of it.”
RIP – Released Irish Prisoner
