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I was upset, but also strangely relieved, when I heard that Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four, died yesterday.

The Guildford Four were wrongly convicted of two IRA pub bombings in Britain in 1974. They were not the only people framed for IRA activities that year. In total, 18 people were wrongly sent to prison by the British legal system, including the Birmingham Six.

In four separate cases, the British police plucked innocent Irish people off the streets, beat them up in cells, lied about them in court and watched as they were jailed for life. Among them were Gerry’s father, who died in prison.

The wrong people went to jail but these were not miscarriages of justice. That term evokes an unfortunate mistake. No, these were not miscarriages but abortions – deliberately carried out by the state.

It was only 15 years later when, thanks to a tireless campaign I was proud to be a small part of, it became too embarrassing for the legal system to keep them in jail, that the Guildford Four were finally released with their names cleared.

I was outside the Old Bailey with other campaigners and relatives when he walked free. I’ll always remember how perfect his first words were.

Within years, the other framed Irish prisoners were also cleared, but it was too late for Gerry’s father.

I met Gerry once, at a party arranged by his family so he could meet the people who had campaigned for him. It wasn’t the most profound of conversations. I was 17, tipsy and overwhelmed. He was recently released from prison and also overwhelmed. Yet his big, sad, warm eyes spoke volumes.

A movie was made about Gerry Conlon’s life, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s a fine work but it should not fool us into thinking that Gerry’s release was a happy, Hollywood ending.

The British establishment, which had stolen 15 years of Gerry’s life and effectively murdered his father, did nothing real to ease his return to the outside world.

Instead, he was left to struggle. He had never thought of killing himself during his 15 years of wrongful incarceration, but he began to regularly think of suicide once he was free, as he struggled with depression and anxiety, and spiralled into alcohol and drug addiction.

He died from cancer yesterday at the age of 60. There is, I suppose, a comfort in that he is now at rest, and with his father again, which is where my strange sense of relief came from yesterday.

Yet none of this needed to happen and there are still systematic injustices meted out by the police and courts, particularly against the Muslim community. Meanwhile, fooled by scaremongers and profiteers of doom, some people call not for more legal safeguards but less.

Gerry passed away yesterday, but the fairy tale of British justice died many years ago.

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