Book description
The intensely moving memoir of Patrick Maguire, one of the 'Maguire
Seven' wrongly imprisoned as a teenager for making bombs for the IRA.
On the night of October 5 1974, an IRA unit left bombs in two Guildford
pubs: five people were killed. On the night of December 3 1974, on the
strength of fabricated testimony extracted under duress from Paul Hill
and Gerard Conlon (whom the police mistakenly believed had planted the
Guildford bombs), Anne and Paddy Maguire, two of their four children,
Vincent and Patrick, plus other family members and friends, a total of
seven in all, were arrested at their home in West London. On 22 October
1975 the Guildford Four were wrongfully convicted of bombing the two
pubs in Guildford. On the 4 March 1976 the Maguire Seven, as they had
become known, were found guilty of possession of the nitro-glycerine
used in those bombings.
On 19 October 1989 the verdicts on the Guildford Four were quashed. On
26 June 1991 the convictions against the Maguire Seven of handling
explosives were quashed and just over a year later, Sir John May, after
producing a report on the Maguire Seven case, described it as the worst
miscarriage of justice he had ever seen.
Behind these dates lie human stories - 'My Father's Watch' tells that
of Patrick, who was the youngest of the accused, at fourteen years old.
He was sentenced to four years and when he came out he had no home and
no family, as both parents were still in jail. This book takes us
through Patrick's entire life, from his working-class childhood in West
London to the difficult life he has led since prison, the roots of which
go back to the wrongful convictions and the destruction of the family
that followed.
Patrick Maguire and the novelist Carlo Gébler have written 'My Father's
Watch' jointly. It is not a ghosted work - told in Patrick's own voice,
it is a lucid and inspiring account of one individual's experience of an
appalling injustice, as well as a reminder, as the war against terror
ratchets up, of just how much harm a state can do to its own innocent
citizens in the name of security. Patrick Maguire is the youngest
member of the Maguire family or the Maguire Seven, who became notorious
for being accessories after the IRA Guildford bombing. Patrick was only
fourteen when he and his family were arrested. It became clear that they
had been wrongly accused and their convictions were soon quashed.
Patrick's first book My Father's Watch
is a memoir which records a series of traumatic events and comments on
the injustices of the legal system.
