ON 12th December 1975: The Balcombe Street Siege ends. The four members of what became known as the Balcombe Street gang – Martin OConnell, Edward Butler, Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty – were part of a six-man IRA Active Service Unit (ASU) that also included Brendan Dowd and Liam Quinn. Quinn had recently shot dead police constable Stephen Tibble in London after fleeing from police officers. Four IRA volunteers, chased by police, ran into a block of council flats in Balcombe Street, adjacent to Marylebone rail station, triggering the six-day stand-off. The four men ended up in a flat at 22b Balcombe Street in Marylebone, taking its two residents, John and Sheila Matthews, hostage. The men declared that they were members of the IRA and demanded a plane to fly them and their hostages to Republic of Ireland. Scotland Yard refused, creating a six-day standoff between the men and the police. The men surrendered after several days of intense negotiations between Metropolitan Police Bomb squad officers and the gangs leader Joe O’Connell, who went by the name of Tom. The resolution of the siege was a result of the combined psychological pressure exerted on the gang and the deprivation tactics used on the four men. The officers also used carefully crafted misinformation, through the BBC radio news—the police knew the gang had a radio—to further destabilise the gang into surrender The four were found guilty at their Old Bailey trial in 1977 of seven murders, conspiring to cause explosions, and falsely imprisoning John and Sheila Matthews during the siege. During their trial they instructed their lawyers to draw attention to the fact that four totally innocent people were serving massive sentences for three bombings in Woolwich and Guildford. Despite claiming to the police that they were responsible, they were never charged with these offences and the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven remained in prison for fifteen more years, until it was determined that their convictions were unsafe. https://youtube/watch?v=qqgcSzh8Xl8
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 17:27:59 +0000
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