BRITAIN has returned to the “bad old days” of the Birmingham Six, with corrupt judges and police swapping Irish people for black and Muslim communities, top defence lawyers have said.

Fifty years on, the lessons from that monumental miscarriage of justice have “all been eroded” with senior judges back to pushing for guilty verdicts, an anniversary event in Parliament heard.

Renowned solicitor for the six men wrongly convicted of the 1974 terrorist pub bombing, Gareth Peirce, warned “frightening signals” by the Court of Appeal since their sensational 1991 acquittals have led to the “self-imposed censorship” of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) watchdog.