The May Inquiry
01 January 1991
The May Inquiry
artdoc August=1994
The Final Report of the May Inquiry was published on 30 June - some five years after the discovery
of the documents which freed the Guildford Four. It had cost £2.15 million pounds. It must be seen
within the context of a long line of judicial inquiries into various issues arising out of the conflict
in Northern Ireland over the last twenty five years. Like many of the others it will do little or nothing
to dispel the view that once again the judiciary has been called upon by the politicians to perform
a `cover-up'. In the meantime the whispering campaign that the Four were guilty in any event and
were released only on a technicality continues unabated.
The Government limited the powers of the inquiry from the outset. May could not therefore
demand documents or subpoena witnesses. Lord Donaldson, the trial judge, and later Master of the
Rolls, declined to give evidence. Other evidence failed to reach the public domain because May
himself decided to hold private hearings for the lawyers involved in the case and Sir Peter Imbert
of the Metropolitan Police. Most were accompanied by their legal representatives. Full transcripts
of these secret hearings were taken and have been seen only by Ministers.
The report is some 309 pages long and contains 56 pages of appendices. May's approach is to
select out a number of key issues and analyse them in depth. These include the number of arrests
at the time of the arrest of the Guildford Four, the circumstances in which a potential alibi witness
for Richardson came to be arrested twice after he had volunteered his alibi evidence; the
circumstances in which the evidence from two other potential alibi witnesses for Hill was not given
at the trial; the evidence which might have been given in support of an alibi for Conlon (the famous
Burke alibi) and the circumstances involving its non-disclosure to the defence; whether there was
any failure to disclose the forensic correlation statements comparing the various bombing incidents
and why the original correlation statements were amended in 1976; why the counts relating to the
Guildford and Woolwich bombings were not included in the indictment ultimately laid against the
Balcombe Street gang; why the police failed properly to pursue the allegations and alleged
admissions made by the Balcombe Street gang; whether there was any culpable delay on the part
of the prosecuting authority in disclosing the fact of such admissions to the Guildford Four and their
advisers; the approach of the Court of Appeal in the case; and handling by the Home Office of
representations made on behalf of the Guildford Four.
Significantly May fails to investigate the rumour that a Senior Police Officer in retirement had his
home raided by the Special Branch where files relating to the Guildford Four were found and
removed. The rumour, if true, raised a number of questions. Why did the police officer have the
files? Why were they removed? Did they contain incriminating evidence against one or more state
officials which had been removed from other files and documents?
Intelligence reports
Before looking at the issues which he selected, May provides another highly significant contextual
chapter entitled `The Guildford Four - Their Background, Identification, and Arrests'. Here, May
describes a number of intelligence reports which note that Hill was a member of D company of the
2nd Battalion of the IRA. One report, and it is unclear from May's ambiguous comments, whether
it was a Special Branch or army report, recorded that Hill had left for England in August to join a
bombing team. May, however, applies to this information none of his rigorous analytical skills which
he uses throughout the rest of the report to exonerate state officials. Yet anyone with a little
knowledge of events in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s would know that Army and Special
Branch intelligence were often hi