At the age of 25, Paddy Armstrong was one of four people falsely convicted of the Guildford pub bombings. He was arrested 50 years ago and spent 15 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. After a long campaign for justice, the convictions were finally overturned in 1989.
The group of people who became known as the “Guildford Four” also included Armstrong’s first love, an English girl called Carole Richardson (then 17), and fellow Belfast men Gerry Conlon (21) and Paul Hill (21). Richardson died in 2012, Conlon in 2014.
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis consulted Armstrong and Conlon to perfect his accent and prepare for his Oscar-nominated role in In the Name of the Father (1993), based on the Guildford Four’s story, in which he played Conlon and Pete Postlethwaite played his father, Giuseppe.
Armstrong’s 2017 memoir – Life after Life – written with journalist Mary-Elaine Tynan, has recently been adapted into a play starring Don Wycherley. A new documentary shown this week on TG4, Ceathrar Guildford: 50 Bliain na mBréag, which delves into the miscarriages of justice, features Armstrong and never-before-seen footage of his late friend, Conlon.
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At the time of his December 1974 arrest Armstrong was living in a London squat with Richardson. The couple were engaged to be married. He’d had several sleepless nights, on “a three-day speed and Tuinal [a barbiturate] party,” as he describes it in the book. Drugged and weak with exhaustion, Armstrong was taken into custody and coerced into admitting to a crime he didn’t commit.
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Four British soldiers, Caroline Slater (18), William Forsyth (18), John Hunter (17) and Ann Hamilton (19), and a civilian, Paul Craig (21), had been killed and 65 people injured in the IRA attack on October 5th, 1974, in which bombs were detonated in two pubs in the town of Guildford, in Surrey.
While in police custody he endured intense questioning and threats were made against his family and his life. He recalls being hung out of a window at one point and a “snarling mutt” being brought into the room if he paused for thought.
Speaking in his home in Dublin, he recalls now that the questions were “rapid fire”.
“I couldn’t keep up with them,” he says. “There were no breaks in between. I was barely able to keep my eyes open.”
Eventually Armstrong signed papers confessing to the crimes he was accused of. By October 1975 he had stood trial, along with the other three accused. They were convicted just over a year after the bombings.
After serving 15 years as a Category-A prisoner, sometimes living in solitary confinement, Armstrong was released on October 19th, 1989, after his conviction and those of the other three were finally acknowledged to have been a miscarriage of justice and quashed. He finds it difficult to talk about life behind bars today, but recalls the emotional reunion afterwards with his family.
One moment shared with his younger sister Josephine, who he had not seen in several years, is particularly poignant. He remembers, trying to hold his emotions together after his release, looking at her in astonishment. She must be in her 20s now, he guessed aloud. “No, Paddy, you’ve been in 15 years. I turned 30 in August, two months ago,” was Josephine’s response.
After his release Armstrong spent six months living with his British solicitor, Alastair Logan, in Guildford. “That was strange, living in Guildford,” he reflects.
“Alastair was a great person, the way he fought for me and all. He said, come on and stay with me for a bit.”
He had become institutionalised, he recalls. “The first morning I got up, he came up and he said, ‘What’s the problem?’ I said I was waiting on the screw to open the door for me so I could get out.”
Adjusting to how much the world had changed in the 15 years he had been in prison took some getting used to. Things were strange and new. Armstrong says the concept of traffic lights at pedestrian crossings was entirely new to him. This took a while to grasp and more than once, Logan had to grab him as he tried to cross a busy road.
The pain that’s kind of hidden by him at times – that’s underneath, but you don’t really see that from Paddy. Sometimes he might go into it but he generally tends to lighten it, to get away from it
— Don Wycherley
“Before I went into prison you didn’t have to worry about rushing to cross the road. When I got out he said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘to cross the road’. He said, ‘No you can’t, you eejit you. It’s different from what you’re used to.’”
Inflation was another thing that struck Armstrong forcefully in those first few months. Getting a new wardrobe was fairly high on his agenda, he says, recalling his horror at being charged £50 for a new pair of jeans. He remembers saying to the shopkeeper: “What? The last time I bought them they were a fiver.” To which they replied: “Where have you been living, in a time warp?”
Armstrong recalls the huge media attention he inititially received as having been difficult to deal with, and says he has chosen to live a mostly private life since his release.
Through it all, he has maintained a remarkably positive outlook on life after prison.
Speaking fondly of Day-Lewis, he recalls the actor saying: “‘Paddy that was the greatest time I’ve had, going around with you in pubs and all the talk and listening to you,’ ... ‘You’re a gas person, after what you have went through.’ He said, ‘You’re amazing, the way you are.’”
“I think people were amazed,” he reflects now. “People thought I was going to be bitter and twisted when I came out. When I was in prison I said to myself, if I ever get out I’ll get out and enjoy myself. Who am I going to be bitter and twisted against, only the [British] government?”
After some travelling, including a trip to Goa in India and a road trip with Conlon travelling across the United States, Armstrong settled back into a routine in Dublin, and was a frequent visitor to Lillie’s nightclub. The first time he met his now-wife Caroline, a schoolteacher, at a gig in The International Bar in the summer of 1996, he cut straight to the chase.
“I’m Paddy Armstrong. Of the Guildford Four,” he said, as he lit her cigarette.
Caroline joins the interview in the couple’s home at this point. She agrees she was intrigued, but her brother was a garda who knew Armstrong socially and urged caution at first. However, Armstrong made it his mission to meet Caroline again. Her family ended up welcoming him with open arms. The couple have two children.
Armstrong says he couldn’t have imagined being able to live such a “normal” life post-release.
“When you’re in prison you don’t think of things like that, because you’re saying to yourself, ‘No less than 35 years’; when you’re 24 going in and the judge tells you: ‘Armstrong, life imprisonment. Serve no less than 35 years.’ I would have been maybe 59. You wouldn’t be thinking about getting married.”
Having already seen the theatre adaptation of his memoir three times, Armstrong has nothing but praise for Wycherley’s depiction of him.
“It was very, very good. The way he played the part of me was very good, because that’s the way I went on. That’s the way I done things. He was absolutely amazing.”
The songs featured in the play hold special significance for Armstrong. He recalls listening to music in prison and hearing one song in particular which reminded him of Richardson.
He gives an impromtu rendition of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, warbling: “We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year ... The same old fears, wish you were here.”
Wycherley, speaking about bringing Armstrong to life on stage, says capturing his unique character and sense of humour was central to this.
“I suppose I would bring that knowledge of what is required on stage to make it interesting or watchable or dramatic, so there has to be a little bit of a struggle and there has to be humour. And that humour is what just bounces off Paddy, and so I was going to have to access that. Some of the jokes you’d hear him coming out with – and we’ve got to get those kind of gaggy bits – he’s quick with a line.”
While conscious not to impersonate Armstrong, Wycherley says “there’s certainly aspects of him [in the performance], and the life is there. And hopefully, when I say the life is there, the life he has, the energy that is Paddy, some of that is there, as well as some of the pain that’s kind of hidden by him at times. That’s underneath, but you don’t really see that from Paddy. Sometimes he might go into it, you know, but he generally tends to lighten it, to get away from it.”
After a recent sold-out run at Clontarf’s Viking Theatre, Paddy – The Life and Times of Paddy Armstrong will be touring Ireland from January 2025, with performances at the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin on January 14th and 15th. lifeandtimesofpaddy.com
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