Sarah Conlon (née Maguire; 20 January 1926 – 19 July 2008) was an Irish housewife and a prominent campaigner in one of the most high-profile miscarriage of justice cases in British legal history.
[1][2] She spent decades clearing the names of her husband Giuseppe and son Gerry over the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) pub bombings at Guildford and Woolwich,[2][3] and helped secure an apology from former British prime minister Tony Blair in 2005 for their wrongful imprisonment.
"[8] The 1993 film In the Name of the Father, while changing some of the details of the cases from real life, showed how the Maguire Seven and Guildford Four became victims of a police force desperate to obtain a conviction under any circumstances to appease an upset public and senior justice officials.
"[10] Father McKinley, a priest who noticed Sarah crying after the 1977 appeal was turned down, and others helped her begin a campaign to free her husband, son and other members of the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven.
[10] She took to lobbying dignitaries, church leaders and the media, in addition to writing to numerous Irish politicians, including the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) members of parliament Joe Hendron and John Hume, to ask for their support.
Once again she led the campaign, lobbying church leaders and politicians, among them the Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who pledged his support, which culminated in Tony Blair's apology to the Conlon family.
[3] Conlon was described as a woman of "immense Catholic faith"[2] who was protective of her son Gerry, and who held the family together with her hard work, wanting their life to be respectable, holy, and quiet.