Paddy Hill
10 July 1998
Former MP apologises
to the Birmingham Six
A former Conservative MP apologised to the Birmingham Six at the High Court in London yesterday after claiming in an interview that they were guilty, even though they had been cleared by the Court of Appeal. David Evans, who lost his Welwyn Hatfield seat at the last election, also paid an undisclosed "appropriate" sum to the six to settle a libel action over statements he made to pupils at Stanborough School, Welwyn, Hertfordshire, last year.
The six served 16 years in jail after being wrongfully convicted in 1975 of the murder of 21 people who died after bombs exploded in pubs in Birmingham. The appeal court quashed their convictions in 1991. Benedict Birnberg, a solicitor representing the six, told Mr Justice Popplewell that, during an interview at the school, Mr Evans "expressed the view that the plaintiffs were guilty of the Birmingham pub bombings". During the interview, he said, Mr Evans added: "You think the Birmingham Six hadn't killed hundreds before they caught them?"
Mr Birnberg told the judge: "Despite the quashing of their convictions by the Court of Appeal seven years ago, the plaintiffs are concerned that some people have refused to recognise the truth of that simple fact." He said Mr Evans "unreservedly retracts the allegations he made and wishes to state that he accepts as proper the verdict of the Court of Appeal quashing the plaintiffs' convictions for the Birmingham murders. The defendant has undertaken to the court that he will not repeat the allegations complained of nor make any similar allegations concerning the plaintiffs."
He added that Mr Evans, "accepting that the allegations he made were both grave and unfounded, has paid to the plaintiffs an appropriate sum by way of damages."
Clive Ince, representing Mr Evans, told the judge: "Mr Evans genuinely regrets the remarks he made about the plaintiffs and is happy to take this opportunity to retract them. He fully accepts the verdict of the Court of Appeal quashing the plaintiffs' convictions, and through me, apologises to the plaintiffs for what he said. "He regrets that his off-the-cuff remarks, spoken in the course of an interview with two school pupils and their teacher, were given national publicity, but nonetheless the defendant accepts that he should not have questioned the plaintiffs' innocence."