was recited every night and all family members had to attend. Conlon relates how he looked on this period of his life as a happy and carefree time, even though money and luxuries were scarce. He goes on to narrate how, after leaving school, he pursued a career as a petty criminal and shoplifter, and of how he got the boat to England to escape the violent conflict that was engulfing Northern Ireland. Fast-moving, sometimes hilarious, always fascinating, Conlon was like a gondolier on Venice’s Grand Canal, as he navigated his readers through the crowded, choppy waters of his life. The book became an instant bestseller. When asked what he hoped to achieve by publishing Proved Innocent, Conlon said: ‘There is no one person whom I would like to single out for retribution. That and revenge is something that I do not want. All I am hoping to achieve with my book is to point out that sometimes the British justice system does fail. The British don’t have sole copyright on injustice.’10
At the Dublin book launch, Conlon called on the IRA to call off its armed campaign in order to get all the Irish prisoners in English prisons released. In Belfast, on 13 June, hundreds of people formed queues in the street outside Waterstones bookshop and a mighty cheer went up when Conlon appeared. Inside, he signed book after book, inscribing each with a personal message. In a newspaper interview, given on the same day, he once again committed himself to campaigning for the Birmingham Six, saying: ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I walked away. I would do anything or go anywhere to help them.’11 He also revealed that he was ‘living out of a suitcase; my time is not my own. I don’t see enough of my family.’12
On his return to London, Conlon had barely time to unpack his bags before he was getting on another plane, this time to Copenhagen, with other Birmingham Six campaigners, to lobby representatives at a conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Twenty-three out of twenty-eight European and North American countries had sent delegations to the Danish capital. While Conlon could not, and did not, claim credit for convincing the delegates to pass a vote calling on the British government to re-examine the convictions of the Birmingham Six, his participation was nevertheless telling: ‘Gerry’s contribution was crucial,’ wrote Paul May, who chaired the London-based campaign to free the Birmingham Six. ‘Gerry described powerfully how it felt to be brutalised and imprisoned as an innocent man.’13
In between campaigning for the Birmingham Six at home and abroad, Conlon was contractually bound to promote his book in different cities around the United Kingdom and Ireland, while also trying to get a film of his book produced. At the same time, he was struggling to rebuild relationships with his family. The sad reality was that the Conlon family, particularly Gerry, had had to insulate themselves from the world in order to survive their ordeal: they had all been prisoners and each of them was deeply affected by the traumatic events that had been visited upon them. If that was not enough, Gerry had to somehow find a way to temper the guilt that haunted him over the death of his father in prison. Siobhan MacGowan, the sister of The Pogues vocalist Shane MacGowan, met Conlon soon after his release and became a close friend and confidante for the rest of his life. She shared her experience:
Gerry was really deep. We would’ve talked about all sorts of things – his family when he came out and how he couldn’t look them in the eyes because he felt so guilty. He was really soft. That’s why he kept away from Belfast for so long; he couldn’t get past it. He wanted to go home but he couldn’t. And especially his mother – when he looked her in the eye. He was emotionally wounded.14
The extent of this emotional wounding was made apparent in a report compiled by Barry Walle, a counsellor and psychotherapist, to whom Conlon had been referred by senior house officer Dr Joanna Bromley and consultant psychiatrist Dr Geoff Tomlinson in 2000:
Gerry can be described as split: three parts adapted to prison, one part outside. His internal world is almost entirely taken up by vivid and detailed ‘memories’ of his arrest, interrogation/torture, conviction, and prison, so vivid that he is, in effect, reliving it. It is his reality for most of the time without the benefit of the support and companionship of fellow prisoners. Gerry’s behaviour is further confused and complicated because there are no real walls. He often wishes he was back in there because then the way he feels would make sense; he would fit.15
Conlon’s external world was almost as confused, convoluted and perhaps as frightening as his internal one. He had to adjust to a society in which he was viewed as both a lion and a jackal:
My trouble now is that half the people I meet think I’m some sort of hero, which I’m not, and the other half think I’m a terrorist, which I never was. I go to pubs and clubs, and in lavatories everyone wants to shake my hands, and I don’t know where their hands have been. I went to Glasgow for a Celtic-Rangers match and people I never knew were taking off their wedding rings and giving them to me.16
To complicate matters, the Guildford Four were still the targets of attacks from the British judiciary. In a pre-retirement BBC television interview, the Recorder of London and the Old Bailey’s most senior judge, Sir James Miskin QC – the same judge who had said that the release of the Guildford Four was ‘mad’ – offered the ludicrous theory that the IRA could have bribed some young and hard-up policeman to ‘cook up’ certain documents to help free the Guildford Four. It mattered little to Sir James that, other than within the confines of his fertile imagination, there was no evidence of the existence of any such young and hard-up policeman. The possibility was there, and presumably, that would have been enough for him, had he been on the bench of the appeal court on 19 October 1989, to send the Guildford Four back to prison. The same man was no stranger to controversy: at a speech at a Mansion House dinner in London in March 1988, he told a ‘joke’ about ‘nig-nogs’ and said that he was engaged in a trial against ‘murderous Sikhs’ (one of whom he later sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment for murder).
A barrister, and Fianna Fáil member of the Irish parliament, David Andrews, said of Sir James’s comments that he was ‘very concerned that a mind like that can preside over a judicial system in any democracy. I feel a great sense of relief that Sir James is no longer in a position to adjudge cases.’ Andrews went on to say that the comments were ‘so right wing as to be almost fascist.’17 Gerry Conlon said that the judge’s critique was part of an ongoing ‘whispering campaign’ by the British judiciary against the Guildford Four. ‘This has put our safety in jeopardy,’ Conlon said. ‘I would think that any kind of crazy character in this country could believe what Sir James Miskin has said, and, therefore, want to attack us, physically.’18 Arguably, it was not in Sir James’s nature to apologise for anything – certainly not to anyone he perceived to be an Irish terrorist – and he unwisely refused to express regret for his outlandish remarks. But nature and wisdom sometimes make incompatible bedfellows and, as the eminent eighteenth-century Irish parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, once put it, ‘Never, no never, did nature say one thing and wisdom say another.’19
Despite the high-velocity pace of his life, Gerry Conlon did his best to enjoy his freedom. He was not shy and never lacked the confidence to walk up to a woman and strike up a conversation, with the intention of bringing her home to his bed. Nor was he one of those crusading bores who talked about nothing but the good causes that consumed his daily existence. When he was not ‘working’, he embraced life with the passion of one who felt that he had been denied it for too long. One of his many girlfriends was Dublin journalist Fiona Looney. She first met him six months after he was released from prison, though she didn’t get to know him until a year later. She remembers that Gerry and Paul Hill were ‘quite the rock stars’ in Dublin in the months following their release.
I think I first met him in The Pink Elephant nightclub in Dublin after an RTÉ Late, Late Show, but I really just shook his hand and wished him well. For what it’s worth, I thought he was as sexy as fuck! I had known Marion, Shane, Vicky, Siobhan, Louise Neville, and all The Pogues crowd for a few years, and I met Gerry through them. I spent some time with him over the course of a few months, but I wouldn’t describe our relationship as a romance. He was a charmer, but there was also an innocence about him which I found really touching. When I knew him, he was incredibly forgiving and lacking in bitterness over what had happened to him. I was amazed at that – he honestly didn’t seem to bear anyone ill will. On the other hand, he was like a child in a candy shop – and he helped himself to an awful lot of candy. He slept with dozens of women