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Patrick Maguire |
A reminder of the ‘demonised Irish’
Patrick Maguire’s book is an important account of when the English judiciary used fear of the IRA as an excuse to tolerate injustice, writes Christopher Price
MY FATHER’S WATCH.
By Patrick Maguire. Harper Perennial.
THIS book captures, better than any of the histories of the period, what it was like to be young, Irish and demonised in London in the last three decades of the 20th century.
Patrick Maguire was 14 when he and his family were arrested, convicted of manufacturing bombs for the IRA and sent to jail on the basis of (almost certainly deliberately planted) nitro-glycerine found in his family’s house.
It was an unlikely conviction in a period of national panic.
Gerard Conlon, an equally innocent nephew of the Maguire family, had been beaten up and bullied by the Surrey police into naming someone – anyone – implicated with an IRA bombing of a pub in Guildford where they reckoned British serviceman would be drinking. Once this fictitious information had been extracted, Conlon and three of his equally innocent acquaintances (who became the Guildford Four) were convicted of carrying out the bombing and the Maguire Six were convicted of making the bombs.
An atmosphere of panic had been carefully stoked up and was colluded in by naïve English judges, lawyers, newspaper editors and politicians, all terrified of Irish barbarians at the gate. The IRA had to be crushed. Any collateral damage to individuals had to be tolerated.
Patrick Maguire’s book – a gruesome, honest and harrowing account of a teenager shattered by police and prison violence which was openly tolerated by officialdom – catches the atmosphere of the early 1970s in England exactly – an atmosphere the IRA welcomed.
The book is all about Maguire’s long slow battle to curb his anger, cope with his illnesses and put his life together. After the Appeal Court, with bad grace, finally quashed a verdict they had known for years to be a blot on English justice and let him claim compensation for his years in jail, he was able to book himself into the expensive Priory clinic in Putney where, after a number of blips, he began to rebuild his life with courageous artistic creativity. He has recently had a successful exhibition of prison-inspired art.
His book should be read, particularly by the younger generation, to remind them of a swathe of history which is in danger of being forgotten. Since the scandals of the 1970s – the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, the Maguires and several others not related to Ireland – domestic criminal law has been improved. Tape recording, better forensic services and more independent police supervision have reined in police behaviour which was often out-of-control.
Maguire’s graphic descriptions of how in the late-20th century an over-zealous state repressed and demonised groups of its own citizens, is a grim reminder of the way the US and the UK now export such techniques on to innocent victims in far off countries abroad.
In 2005, when Tony Blair decided to apologise to the Guildford Four, he was reminded that the Maguire family’s ordeal also deserved an apology. The Maguires were invited to the House of Commons alongside the Guildford Four. It was a difficult encounter because it had been Gerry Conlon who had, under insulting and physically violent interrogation, fatally involved the Maguires. But it was an occasion when Patrick buried the hatchet, shook hands with Conlon and on which Blair said he was sorry and that help could be given.
Some time later Patrick wrote to Blair asking for help with the bills he was paying at the Priory, which had diagnosed bi-polar affective disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit disorder. The letter was passed to the Home Office where a methodical civil servant drafted a long reply and which Gerry Sutcliffe, a caring Home Office minister, dutifully signed.
Its final paragraph was eloquent in its negativity. “I am, as is the Prime Minister, sympathetic to the difficulties you have faced [...].
I have, however, had to consider your request amounting to a request for additional compensation, within the terms of the compensation scheme. I do not judge that there are sufficient exceptional grounds to go outside the general policy of not re-opening claims for compensation once a full and final settlement has been accepted by the applicant.”
In the event, Blair’s offer of ‘help’ was a limited one.
The book is not simply a poignant autobiography. It is also an important reminder of a period during which the English judiciary and the Metropolitan Police between them made the defeat of the IRA an alibi for tolerating appaling miscarriages of justice which wrecked the lives of the victims in a way in which no apology and no financial compensation can ever begin to repair.
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