A survivor of the 1974 IRA pub bombing in Woolwich, south-east London, has said the deaths of two men have been 'brushed over' and forgotten. Alan Horsley, 20, and Richard Dunne, 42, died and 35 were injured when the IRA bombed the King's Arms pub on 7 November 1974. Inquests into bomb deaths in Birmingham and Guildford have resumed, but the Woolwich inquest remains unfinished.
Fred Westmoreland, then 26, was playing darts with Horsley when the bomb came through a window. He lost part of his leg and hearing in one ear. 'There was a tinkling noise. I looked up and saw a hole in the window. I saw this smoking thing on the floor,' he said. Westmoreland, now a councillor in Wiltshire, described Horsley as 'like a brother' and 'a nice lad'.
The Woolwich bombing was part of a series of IRA pub bombings in England, occurring a month after the Guildford bombings and two weeks before the Birmingham pub bombings. Two of the wrongly-jailed Guildford Four, Paddy Armstrong and Paul Hill, were falsely accused of murdering Horsley and Dunne. Their convictions in 1975 halted the inquest, which was never resumed.
Westmoreland expressed mixed feelings about reopening the inquest. 'To me it's done, but I believe those who died deserve that serious attention be given to what happened to them although it's 50 years ago,' he said. He added that Horsley's death was 'all brushed over and very quickly everyone forgot about him'.
Greenwich councillor Nigel Fletcher, who campaigned for a memorial, said any future proceedings should be guided by the families. Christopher Stanley, from KRW Law, which has represented families in related proceedings, argued that Woolwich, Guildford and Birmingham should be investigated to the same standards as conflict-related inquests in Northern Ireland.
The coroner's office confirmed that after the Old Bailey notified the coroner of the convictions of Armstrong and Hill on 24 October 1975, the inquest was not resumed. Both men were cleared in 1989 after serving 15 years, in what became known as one of Britain's biggest miscarriages of justice.
