In the Name of the Father: (Re)Framing the Guildford Four

In the Name of the Father (1993) is a drama based on the wrongful imprisonment of the Guildford Four for the 1974 Guildford pub bombings. Retrospectively, examples of incompetence and malpractice have become significantly more apparent, not only in the judicial and policing system (illustrated, for example, by the 2017 outcome of the Hillsborough inquest). Revelations concerning such incidents effectively bracket an era of change, for prisons and more widely across all institutions, and constitute a revised “structure of feeling”, as described by cultural studies scholar, Raymond Williams (The Long Revolution, Parthian Press, Cardigan, 2011). This chapter examines In the Name of the Father in light of the facts that later became known about the falsification of evidence that led to the wrongful imprisonment of the Guildford Four and locates the film in the broader zeitgeist of institutional failures and miscarriages of justice that emerged from the 1970s onwards. Drawing on Gerry Conlon’s (Proved Innocent: The Story of Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four, Penguin, London, 1994) biography, as well as archival evidence from the trial, the chapter considers how Sheridan’s film, despite its inaccuracies, is effectively a document that pinpoints one incident in an extensive spectrum of institutional failings.