Pub bombings lawyers push for Hillsborough-style funding

The names of the 21 victims of the Birmingham Pub Bombings were read aloud in Parliament this evening as MPs insisted that the families of those who died should receive sufficient legal aid for fresh inquests. Yardley MP Jess Phillips led the House of Commons debate on the matter. The relatives been told that one of their applications for aid has been successful, but they are seeking advice on other applications.

Over the next hour on this night 40 years ago, lives would be wrecked & families ripped apart, after bombs were planted by the IRA in two pubs in Birmingham city centre.

A warning call would be made to the Birmingham Mail at 8.11pm, saying bombs would go off under the Rotunda and on New Street.

At 8.17pm a device exploded at the Mulberry Bush. Ten minutes later, a second blast destroyed basement bar The Tavern in the Town.

A total of 21 people would lose their lives in the terrorist attacks. In half an hour's time 182 more would be maimed and injured.

One of the survivors on this night in 1974 was Les Robinson. Watch his incredible story above.

Read more: Accounts from those who were there that night

Les Robinson was 22 when a bomb devastated the Tavern in the Town pub in Birmingham city centre on this night exactly 40 years ago.

He was meeting around 15 to 18 friends in the pub that night. Many hadn't arrived when the bomb exploded, but seven of his friends were injured.

None of his friends lost their lives, but Les says friendships did fall apart in the months after the terrorist attacks, but for reasons you'd never expect, as he explained to ITV News Central reporter Chris Halpin.

Full story: Read Les' full account of his fight for survival

Mainland Britain lived in the shadow of terrorism during the 1970s, with bombings commonplace, but the Birmingham bombs were to be the deadliest of the decade.

Attitudes towards the city's Irish community during the Northern Ireland Troubles was tense before that night. Now hostility became hatred.

Bomb survivor Les Robinson, who was stood just ten feet away from the blast in the Tavern in the Town when a device exploded at 8.27pm on this night in 1974.

Here Les explains how the blast divided his family, with his Irish uncle too ashamed to visit him after he was injured.

Full story: Read Les' remarkable survival story in his own words

Les Robinson was 22-years-old went he was badly injured in the bomb blast in the Tavern in the Town on this night 40 years ago.

Devices planted in the Mulberry Bush underneath the Rotunda building, and in the Tavern in the Town on New Street, exploded at 8.17pm and 8.27pm, killing 21 people and injuring 182 others.

Les describes to ITV News Central reporter Chris Halpin his struggle with going into a pub for the first time after surviving the terrorist attack.

Watch: Pub bomb survivor does have closure 40 years on

Full story: Read Les' remarkable survival story of the second blast