Veteran campaigner Paul May, a key figure in several miscarriage of justice campaigns, including that of the Birmingham Six, has died aged 74.
Breda Power, whose father Billy (80) was among the six men who walked free from the Old Bailey in 1991 after 16 years of wrongful imprisonment, said on Sunday: “There will never be another Paul.”
May, she said, was “the heart and the backbone” of the campaign to free the six men from Northern Ireland who were jailed for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings carried out by the IRA.
Their convictions were quashed as unsafe and unsatisfactory in 1991 and the six were later awarded financial compensation.
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May founded the campaign to release the six, was the main liaison person with the men’s lawyers, and it was thanks to his efforts over years that the campaign “went global” and ultimately led to the men’s release, said Power.
His determined campaigning also helped secure the overturning of the convictions of several others, including the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven, two groups of people mainly from Northern Ireland wrongly convicted in connection with the 1974 Guildford pub bombings and the 1974 Woolwich pub bombing.
Other campaigns in which May played a key role included that of Danny McNamee from Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, whose conviction in 1987 of conspiracy to cause explosions, including the 1982 Hyde Park bombing, was quashed in 1998.
May was central to the efforts that secured the release in 1992, after she had served 17 years imprisonment, of English woman Judith Ward who was aged 25 when wrongly convicted of the IRA bombing of a coach on the M62 in northern England in 1974.
“Paul helped so many people, he got so many innocent people out of jail. He was invaluable in so many miscarriage of justice campaigns and was still campaigning to the end,” said Power, who works with the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas.
Through his work with the disability charity Scope, May also helped secure improved facilities for disabled prisoners, Power said.
Lawyer and human rights activist Michael Farrell said May was “a key figure in the campaign for the release of the prisoners wrongly convicted for a series of IRA bombs in Britain in the 1970s”.
“He was the chair of the London section of the campaign, holding together members of the Irish community in Britain, the lawyers involved in the cases, the church-supported Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas, and a number of sympathetic politicians including a young Jeremy Corbyn. Paul went on to campaign for the release of a number of other wrongly convicted prisoners which all led to important changes in British law.”
London-born, May pursued his unpaid campaign work on top of his full-time employment as a director of housing with Islington Borough Council.
He studied law as a mature student at Birkbeck University of London where he met his wife Jane Mair. Both graduated with first class honours degrees in 2000.
May continued his campaign work and was instrumental in securing the overturning in 2012 of the 2005 conviction of Sam Hallam for the October 2004 murder of Essayas Kassahun who died when he came to the aid of a friend who was being attacked in London by a mob of youths over a perceived insult.
The funeral of May, who died at his home in York last month, takes place on Friday. He is survived by his wife Jane and his two sisters.
