Northern Ireland

Birmingham Six’s Paddy Hill remembered as ‘amazing man’

Wrongly convicted of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings Paddy Hill went onto advocate on behalf of victims of miscarriages of justice

One of the Birmingham Six, Paddy Hill, was at the coroners court to hear proceedings 
Paddy Hill pictured in 2016

Paddy Hill, who served 17 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, has been remembered as “an amazing man”.

The Belfast-born advocate on behalf of those jailed as a result of miscarriages of justice died peacefully on Sunday at his home in Ayrshire, aged 80.

Along with five others – Hugh Callaghan, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker – Mr Hill was arrested in the aftermath of IRA bombs at the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town on Birmingham city centre, which killed 21 people.

All had been living in Birmingham since the 1960s.

The group would later become known as the Birmingham Six, and along with the Guildford Four, their wrongful convictions were regarded among the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

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Police used torture to extract false confessions to the crimes, with Mr Hill later recalling how his interrogators had “jammed a pistol in my mouth and smashed it around, breaking my teeth”.

He bore the scars of his interrogation, including cigarette burns, for the rest of his life.

The Birmingham Six were released in 1991 after the Court of Appeal quashed their convictions, with each later receiving awarded compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2m. The Provisional IRA claimed responsibility for the bombings but no-one else was ever convicted in relation to the attacks.

Mr Hill, who subsequently suffered lifelong from the trauma of his violent interrogation and imprisonment, initially lived in London on his release before moving to Glasgow. Latterly he settled in Beith in Ayshire.

Pacemaker Press  28/6/2014
Paddy Hill (BIrmingham Six)  during the  funeral of Gerry Conlon  at St Peter's Cathedral in the Lower Fall area of West Belfast ,   Gerry Conlon, who was wrongly convicted of the 1974 Guildford IRA pub bombings in Surrey, England.

Pic Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker 

30/12/2024
A member of the ÔBirmingham SixÕ group of men wrongfully convicted of carrying out two IRA pub bombings, who went on to set up an organisation dedicated to helping others facing miscarriages of justice, has died. 

Patrick Joseph Hill, 80, founded the Glasgow-based Miscarriage of Justice Organisation (MOJO) after his release in 1991, helping others who were imprisoned despite being innocent of the crimes they were accused of.
Paddy Hill (left) with Gerry Conlon at the latter's mother Sarah's funeral in 2008. PICTURE: CHARLES MCQUILLAN/ PACEMAKER (Charles McQuillan)

In 2001, he founded Miscarriages of Justice Organisation – Mojo – to help other former prisoners, released by the court of appeal after their sentences were quashed.

Those Mojo helped and campaigned for included the late Thomas ‘TC’ Campbell and Joe Steele, who were wrongly convicted of Glasgow’s so-called Ice Cream Wars murders, and Sam Hallam, who spent more than seven years in prison for crimes he was later exonerated of.

Cathy Molloy, the recently-retired CEO of Glasgow-based Mojo who joined the organisation as a mature criminology student more than two decades ago, described Mr Hill as “my best friend”.



“Paddy was an amazing man, he was my hero,” she told The Irish News.

“For somebody to go through what he did and then to set up an advocacy group was really something else – he turned a trauma into something positive. He had the biggest heart and was my best friend.”

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Cathy Molloy of Mojo

SDLP leader Claire Hanna extended her sympathies to Mr Hill’s second wife Tara and the rest of his extended family.

She said she was fortunate to meet and spend time with the campaigner in the past.

“He was a throughly Belfast man - decent, outspoken, combative and with no side to him,” she said.

“He suffered the trauma and injustice of many lifetimes, brutal treatment by the West Midlands police, being framed, and torturously long false imprisonment.”

The South Belfast and Mid Down MP said Mr Hill was “contemptuous of those whose actions had caused his suffering and that of the victims of the Birmingham massacre, 50 years ago last month”.

“He channelled his trauma into the MOJO organisation, alongside his great friend Gerry Conlon,” she said.

Mr Callaghan died in 2023 aged 93, and Mr McIlkenny died in 2006 aged 73