Why was it so hard for our judiciary to admit they’d jailed an innocent man for 16 years?

The death last week of Birmingham Six victim Hugh Callaghan reminds us that unfettered power can lead to abuses

Hugh Callaghan, a former welder, a follower of Aston Villa football club, born in Ardoyne, Belfast, died late last month aged 93. A man who loved music, he was singing to his nurses until shortly before his final heart attack. He was a gentle, generous individual whom I was lucky enough to meet. He had every right to pass a quiet life, but he spent 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit: along with other members of the Birmingham Six, as they were labelled, he was wrongfully convicted of killing 21 people in 1974 in the bombings of two pubs in Birmingham.

One of the many shocking aspects of the case was the determination of the British establishment – the law, police, politicians, media – to maintain the men’s guilt, and keep them in prison. It would be “an appalling vista”, said the Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, in 1980, if the police were found guilty of violence, threats and perjury – so much so that it would be better if the truth were suppressed. The question for the present is whether, in a time of mounting reports of police misconduct, similar miscarriages and suppressions could happen now.

At the time of the bombings, the British police were generally regarded as reliable, decent and fair, reassuring figures in their old-fashioned helmets, unarmed, portrayed in popular TV series such as Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars as level-headed forces for good. It was barely comprehensible to much of the public that they could act as they did in the cases of the Birmingham Six or the Guildford Four, who were also wrongly convicted of a bombing after beatings by the police.

For Denning and others, it was essential that this perception be upheld at all costs. Before their ultimate acquittal, the six had previous appeals rejected by judges who appeared, as the Independent put it in 1988, to “find the prospect of police malfeasance too frightful to contemplate”. According to Irish cabinet papers from 1989, the Home Office had indicated that its main concerns about the potential overturning of convictions were “to avoid giving scandal” and “the credibility problems for police evidence in court hearings”.

Newspapers played a vigorous part, referring to the six as “the bombers” even before they were first convicted. “We would have been tempted,” said the Sun in 1988, “to string ’em up years ago.” It also ran a front page headline – “Loony MP backs bomb gang” – to denigrate Chris Mullin, the journalist and politician whose persistent reporting eventually led to the release of the six.

No police were ever convicted for their brutal assaults, and smears and innuendo continued even after the men were exonerated. The Sunday Telegraph and the Sun, using discredited policemen in the case as sources, continued to allege their guilt – for which, following legal action by the six, they were obliged to print apologies. In 1998, a former Conservative MP, David Evans, had to pay damages for libel, after he had told a school in his constituency that the men had committed the crime.

It’s likely, as a result of this misinformation, that for some people there’s a lingering sense that the six were somehow a bit guilty. “You’re one of the bad boys,” said a neighbour to Callaghan, when he moved into the east London house where he spent the last years of his life. “Controversial,” said a relative, when I told him I was meeting Callaghan last year. He was neither bad nor controversial – though others’ treatment of him was.

Meanwhile, thanks to the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four cases and notorious events such as the Hillsborough disaster, the police lost some of their public esteem. It became easier to believe that they might do wrong, while procedures for such things as interviewing suspects were tightened up, in order to prevent forced confessions.

But they continue to act with something close to impunity. Despite the widespread horror about the murder of Sarah Everard by the serving officer Wayne Couzens, and the revelations about the harbouring of rapists and sexual abusers within the force, and other tales of misogyny and misconduct, there’s still not much sign of genuine accountability.

Rather, empowered by new laws, the police felt free (for example) to arrest Night Stars volunteers trying to protect women from sexual harassment in central London, on the grounds that the rape alarms they distribute might be used to frighten horses at the coronation. Or, also at the time of the coronation, to arrest and detain peaceful protesters. Sections of the media cheer them on: the Daily Mail described the volunteers, with no evidence, as “militant activists” intent on a “plot” to disrupt the ceremonies.

One of the lessons of the Birmingham Six case is that unconstrained police power leads to abuses. If the media encourage them rather than call them to account, and if politicians and courts seek to excuse them, they only get worse. True justice for the victims of atrocities and security for the British public – as might have been achieved by the conviction of the actual Birmingham bombers – are betrayed.

Mullin once said that something like the wrongful conviction of the Birmingham Six couldn’t happen again, because of the changes in rules about gathering evidence. It’s probably true that such outrages couldn’t take place in exactly the same way. But, in different ways, they assuredly can.