https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britain-returning-to-bad-old-days-of-the-birmingham-six

BRITAIN has returned to the “bad old days” of the Birmingham Six, with corrupt judges and police swapping Irish people for black and Muslim communities, top defence lawyers have said.

Fifty years on, the lessons from that monumental miscarriage of justice have “all been eroded” with senior judges back to pushing for guilty verdicts, an anniversary event in Parliament heard.

Renowned solicitor for the six men wrongly convicted of the 1974 terrorist pub bombing, Gareth Peirce, warned “frightening signals” by the Court of Appeal since their sensational 1991 acquittals have led to the “self-imposed censorship” of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) watchdog.

She described how police and prosecutors have found “endlessly innovative” ways to subvert laws which were originally passed to prevent the state framing innocent people for terrorist attacks during the Troubles.

Ms Peirce said the “halcyon” days following the Court of Appeal’s quashing of those wrongful convictions, based on false confessions through police brutality, were over.

“The authorities can distort science in just the same way,” she told MPs, lawyers, victims and campaigners on Thursday.

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“Individuals from communities that have different customs, different faiths, different ways of looking at things — it’s easy to distort those and present to a jury.”

She added: “The experience I and others have had are of ‘back to the bad old days’ of judges helping to push a guilty verdict in these kinds of cases.

“The Court of Appeal isn’t as it once was, in its mind to the possiblity of quashing convictions.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britain-returning-to-bad-old-days-of-the-birmingham-six