Richard O'Rawe is extremely well qualified to write this book. He is a brilliant writer with an extended and memorable turn of phrase, However there is one major error of fact on page 4 of the book that cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged and if there is a reprint (as I hope there will be) that error must be corrected by the writer and the publishers.
Gerard Conlon (and Paul Hill) had falsely implicated Gerard's aunt, Anne Maguire, in their so called 'voluntary' statements to the police under caution, claiming she had shown them how to make bombs. As a consequence all the adults who had been in the family home and three of Anne Maguire's children were detained by the police on the evening of 3 December 1974.
Some of the forensic tests were carried out by a police officer who had received one day's training in such procedures, and he seemed unable to remember whether he had washed his hands between swabbing the suspects, as he should have, to avoid the risk of contamination.
Richard wrote at page 4 "Mrs Maguire's protestations of innocence counted for nothing when police alleged they had found traces of the explosive, nitroglycerine, on her hands and on the person of the other six members of her extended family". That statement is totally wrong. I set out the actual situation regarding the presence of nitroglycerine alleged by the prosecution at the Maguire Seven trial.in my book 'In Search of the Truth - British Injustice and Collusion in Northern Ireland'. The forensic evidence sought to prove that four of the Maguire Seven allegedly had traces of nitroglycerine on their hands - not on their person - and Mrs Maguire's forensic sample was entirely clear - there was no trace of nitroglycerine on her hands, her person or her clothing. Her two sons allegedly had traces of nitroglycerine under their fingernails not on their person. In fact there was not a trace of nitroglycerine anywhere in the house at all. That result must have dismayed the police because the only person they sought in the Maguire household on the basis of false allegations was Anne Maguire and there was no incriminating forensic evidence against her.. The very next day the police returned to her house and in what I claim was an illegal search took possession of some 40 pairs of gloves that Anne Maguire wore when she did the housework because of a skin condition on her hands. The gloves were taken to Scotland Yard and there they remained for five days. They were then tested by a 17 year old Assistant Scientific Officer who had worked at the laboratory for some two months. His rather limited qualifications included O Level physics. In spite of the fact that the hand held sniffer device used by the police to search the Maguire house on 3 December found no trace of nitroglycerine anywhere, including the drawer in which the gloves were found, things were to change for sometime during the five days the gloves where in the possession of the London Metropolitan police before they were sent to the laboratory for tests, suddenly but perhaps not unexpectedly, the 17 year old's tests found traces of nitroglycerine on the gloves. It has always been my view that if Anne Maguire had been forced to confess to involvement in the Guildford pub bombings, as alleged against her by Gerard Conlon and Paul Hill, the police would not have proceeded against the other six people detained at her house on the night of 3 December 1974. She made no such confession - to do so would have sent her to prison for life, instead of the fourteen years imposed upon her (and her husband) for an offence she and he had not committed. She has endured suffering beyond description by the State enforced separation from her husband and her children. Her daughter Anne Marie was only nine when her mother went to prison - she was nineteen when her mother was released. The family's suffering should not be increased by the inaccurate statements in this otherwise splendid book and it is to be hoped that they will not be allowed to stand.
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