Patrick Joseph Hill– 20 December 1944-23 December 2024
On 14 March 1991, Paddy Hill and the other members of the Birmingham 6 were released by the Court of Appeal after 16 years’ wrongful imprisonment. Hill told the crowd of supporters assembled outside the Old Bailey ‘I don’t think the people in there have got the intelligence to spell the word justice, never mind dispense it. They’re rotten!’[i]
Like the Guildford 4, Maguire family and Judith Ward, the Birmingham 6 were framed by the British state and made culpable for armed actions carried out by the Irish Republican Army in which they had played no part. Six working class Irishmen living in Birmingham, they were arrested en route to a Republican funeral in the north of Ireland, tortured by West Midlands Police and charged with the murder of 21 people in a pub bombing on 21 November 1974. While the innocence of the six was clear to many from the outset, the police, judiciary and political establishment conspired to keep them behind bars for 16 years, sending a deliberate political message to members of the Irish community that if they were to show any support at all for the liberation war in Ireland, they too could meet such a fate.
Designated High Risk Category A prisoners, the Birmingham 6 were consigned to the most secure and oppressive parts of the prison system. Long-term prisoners who served time with Paddy Hill there, remember him fondly and with great admiration.
Former life sentence prisoner John Bowden writes about meeting Paddy in Gartree prison in 1984:
‘I was overwhelmed by his strength of character and fighting spirit. He described to me the torture he’d endured at the hands of West Midlands Serious Crime Squad when arrested for the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974 and how he’d defied their cruel attempts to force him to confess to something he was completely innocent of. His strength of spirit shone through as he described his traumatic treatment at their hands. Paddy possessed an unbreakable spirit, evidenced by his unyielding defiance during his long unlawful imprisonment and readiness to always fight back and never surrender to despair and hopelessness. He also possessed an amazing sense of humour and even in the darkest prison places his smile and propensity for humour and laughter characterised him completely. Paddy was a beacon of light and strength to all who knew him in prison, including me, and his departure from life saddens me deeply but always the spirit he possessed continues to inspire me and re-enforces my unbreakable belief in the struggle for true justice and freedom. Paddy was a legend.’
Mo Riaz, who is also serving a life sentence[ii] has similar recollections:
I had just received a life sentence when I went to HMP Gartree and met Paddy Joe Hill in 1985. He had served about 11 years at the time and it soon became apparent that his claims of innocence were the real thing.
We stayed on the same wing for five years, changing cells with each other as High Risk Category A prisoners every six weeks.
I was struck by his calm manner in the face of such an egregious act of violence and injustice by the state on his person and the people who were framed by the state in this case.
His determination to prove his innocence never intruded in his day-to-day life in prison and I noticed that he had fostered relations with the prison officers who were beginning to believe he was the real deal and didn’t treat him with the casual indifference ranging to sadistic pleasure in our incarceration.
His struggle to overturn the conviction is well documented but for me the real lessons were from his manner and attitude. A man serving 21 life sentences would be crushed by the enormity of the accusations and punishments but Paddy took it in his stride. He was well liked and admired by staff and prisoners alike.
His determination to prove his innocence struck a death blow to the much vaunted ideal of “British Justice” that was heard around the world, and that very determination and his voice will be sorely missed in debates and questions pertaining to the criminal justice system in Britain.’
Following the release of the Birmingham 6 in 1991, the injustice of the system continued to burn Paddy deeply, and he spent the rest of his life fighting against state frame-ups and police brutality, setting up the Scotland-based Miscarriages of Justice Organisation (MOJO) in 2001 to further this work.
We send our condolences to Paddy’s wife Tara, to those who continue his work at MOJO and to his many friends.
[i] ‘Birmingham Six – Free! At last!’ Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! no. 100 – April/May 1991 https://revolutionarycommunist.org/britain/police-prisons/bs-180316/
[ii] ‘Review: Fighting for freedom’ https://revolutionarycommunist.org/britain/police-prisons/review-fighting-for-freedom/
