Trial and error on Guildford Four

Time Bomb by Ros Franey and Grant McKee (Bloomsbury, £4.99).
IT IS HARD to know if Home Secretary Douglas Hurd will read this book before he decides what action to take about the Guildford Four (three men and a woman who were convicted in 1975 of the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings of 1974 and who have consistently claimed their innocence).
Mr Hurd is currently considering what to do in the light of a police enquiry report delivered to him some months ago concerning new evidence in the case which, insist supporters of the four, prove they are innocent.
The authors of Time Bomb have spent years studying the case. They were both part of the First Tuesday documentary team which produced three programmes on the Guildford Four for Yorkshire TV and it is an impressive tribute to their investigative skills that they have unearthed yet more new evidence.
Time Bomb reveals that Carole Richardson, the 17 yearold English girl convicted of the Guildford bombings, confessed to the police after she had been injected with the drug pethidine which, acting with various other drugs in her body, left her in such a mixed-up state that any admission she made must be viewed with suspicion.
There are also convincing interviews with members of the Balcombe Street gang, the IRA outfit which admits the Guildford bombings and which confirms the four are completely innocent.
Some of the most compelling reasons for believing in their innocence are presented in the book, but are not admissable as evidence in a court of law. The adamant pleas of innocence over the last 14 years don't count with judges. Nor do the heartrending letters sent by the four to their friends and relatives.
"Mum", wrote one of the four, Gerard Conlon, "we were fitted up something rotten. . . as you know, Mum, I or the others shouldn't be in prison because we've committed no crime. . . is Dad keeping well? He must have been sick about me, but tell him not to worry, as I'm all right. I can sleep peaceful at night with a clear conscience, can the cops and judges? I wonder if they can. . ."
The four, Gerard Conlon, Paddy Armstrong, Paul Hill and Carole Richardson, are dealing with their ordeal as best they can. Hill has spent a total of nearly four years in solitary confinement and has been moved from prison to prison 47 times. Last year he married. (Sun readers will remember the event, headlined on the front page "IRA Pig to Marry").
Armstrong is on antidepressants and ironically, is imprisoned with Joe O'Connell, who admits it was he who carried out the Guildford bombings. Conlon's father, who came to England when he first heard of the trouble his son was in with the police, got mixed up in the affair and ended up being charged with crimes related to handling explosives.
He died in Wormwood Scrubs in 1980, protesting his innocence to the end.
Brian Dooley