Heartbreak of pub bombings still raw 50 years on

 “Unfortunately I could narrate every minute of that evening, from the very moment my sister ironed me a shirt."

Mr Hambleton, then 19, jokingly asked his younger sister Maxine to iron his shirt for him, in exchange for giving her a lift into the city centre.

“That’s what I remember, dropping her off," he says. "Seeing her get out of the car and walk away."

That was the last time he would see his sister alive. Maxine, then 18, was heading for a night out at the Tavern in the Town, a pub in the heart of the city which was popular with young people. At 8.27 that evening it was ripped apart in one of the most horrific terror attacks ever to take place on British soil.

It is 50 years today since the Birmingham pub bombings claimed 21 lives, and injured 182 others. The blast at the Tavern in the Town came 10 minutes after another bomb went off at the Mulberry Bush, a bar at the base of the Rotunda office block.

And half a century on, Mr Hambleton and his sister Julie are still fighting for justice, with their sister's killers having never been brought to justice for the attack.

On the 50th anniversary of the IRA atrocity, the pair have renewed their calls for a public inquiry which they believe will be crucial to uncovering the truth about what happened on that fateful night.

“It’s very hard," says Mr Hambleton. " We have to be hard in all other areas, fighting the authorities to get the truth, and it gets worse every year because we find out more truths of what really happened on the night, as opposed to what the authorities want the public and ourselves to think.”

Mr Hambleton and his sister, who both regard a 2019 inquest into the bombings, which failed to examine which individuals were responsible, as a “whitewash”, hope a public inquiry could force the disclosure of documents currently subject to 75-year secrecy rules.

Julie Hambleton, 61, who has been denied legal aid about 14 times during the group’s campaigning, forcing it to rely on donations, adds: “Every day that we campaign, including Thursday, whilst it will be the day that we remember everyone who was impacted that day, we fight for a statutory public inquiry.