Memorial service remembers victims on 50th anniversary of Guildford pub bombings

A memorial service to honour those killed and injured in the Guildford pub bombings has been held to mark the 50th anniversary of the atrocity.

The Holy Trinity Church in the Surrey city hosted a service to remember the four soldiers and a civilian killed in the attack on October 5, 1974.

Soldiers Caroline Slater, 18, William Forsyth, 18, John Hunter, 17, and Ann Hamilton, 19, and civilian Paul Craig, 21, died in the attack while 65 people were injured.

The service was attended by families of the victims and survivors, as well as civic dignitaries, representatives of the Women’s Royal Army Corps Association, the Scots Guards Association and members of the public.

Rector Canon Simon Butler told the congregation: “Among us all this morning is a quiet and sincere desire to bear witness and tribute to those who were killed in our town on perhaps the most terrible night of Guildford’s recorded history.

“We are determined not to forget and to honour those who fell this part of the country has deep roots with Britain’s military, indeed, that is perhaps what made it a target in October 1974

The Bishop of Guildford Rt Revd Andrew Watson said: “Along with suffering, pain and grief on all sides, bombs left in pubs to cause indiscriminate suffering is unquestionably both bad and ugly, a truly evil act, whatever the grievances of those who placed them there.

“And whilst the rawness of the wounds of the families and regiments who suffered almost unimaginable loss that night may have dulled a little over the years, the depth of their loss is incalculable.

“And then, of course, there’s the policing and the judicial mess as well, which has lived on for decades after the physical mess in the town centre was cleared up: the arrest of the so-called Guildford Four for the bombings themselves and the Maguire Seven for allegedly aiding and abetting them.

“The mess of unsafe convictions based on partial evidence and confessions obtained by coercion, the continuing mess of crimes unsolved and perpetrators unpunished.

“We may understand the huge pressures under which the Metropolitan Police were operating at the height of the Troubles.

“We may recognise too the complexities of that continuing quest for justice after half a century has come and gone.

“We may be thankful for the Good Friday Agreement, and that the indiscriminate bombing of our towns and cities by Irish paramilitaries has long ceased, but crimes unsolved and perpetrators unpunished still leave so much up in the air, with closure hard to come by.”

One of the first investigations carried out by a new body tasked with probing outstanding cases from the Northern Ireland Troubles will be into Guildford attack.

The Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) will examine the atrocity at the Horse and Groom and a bomb that detonated 30 minutes later at the Seven Stars pub in the city.

The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were wrongly convicted of the attacks in one of the UK’s biggest miscarriages of justice.

An IRA terror cell later claimed responsibility.