The Guildford Four
How did the Guildford Four become victims of injustice?
4.7 (29)
83 mins
Explore how four innocent people were convicted after the 1974 Guildford pub bombings based on false confessions and flawed investigations. Discover how years of legal battles exposed one of Britain's most infamous miscarriages of justice.
Ep 1:
The Bomb Under the Table
A pub bombing in a sleepy English town leaves five dead and fifty wounded—and sets in motion Britain's deepest colonial fears, priming a justice system to find someone, anyone, guilty.
Ep 2:
Four Lives the IRA Never Touched
Meet Gerry, Paul, Paddy, and Carol—petty thieves, drifters, and a seventeen-year-old vegetarian—wildly unlikely bombers about to be turned into the nation's most wanted terrorists.
Ep 3:
Eight Days to Break a Person
Under a new terrorism law, four exhausted, drugged, and terrified young people are held for days without lawyers until they sign confessions that don't even agree with each other.
Ep 4:
A Verdict Written in Advance
With almost no evidence beyond contradictory confessions, a judge who admits his own bias delivers guilty verdicts and openly wishes he could have hanged the defendants.
Ep 5:
The Confession Nobody Believed
The real bombers confess in open court to a crime four innocents are already serving time for—yet the system dismisses the truth, and a father dies in prison waiting to be believed.
Ep 6:
Fifteen Years, One Note
A dogged solicitor uncovers altered statements, a buried alibi, and a chilling handwritten note that finally cracks open fifteen years of manufactured guilt.
Ep 7:
Free But Never Whole
Released after fifteen years, the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven face addiction, grief, and a world that moved on without them—while some family wounds never fully heal.
Ep 8:
The Tip of the Iceberg
No police officer is ever convicted, the real killers walk free, and Gerry Conlon's warning from the courthouse steps proves this was only the beginning of a much larger pattern.
Discussions (5)
Steve
Level 10 · 2 mo agoGiuseppe came to find a lawyer and never went home. The system looked at that and went 'yeah that tracks, guilty' 💀
Freya
Level 2 · 2 mo agoPACE passed in 1984, they stayed locked up 5 more years
Wally
Level 8 · 2 mo agoThe Balcombe Street Gang did confess in open court to Guildford and Woolwich. O'Connell explicitly named all four and the court still called it a cunning deception. That's documented.
