McGurk’s bombing families in High Court action

40th ANNIVERSARY OF UVF ATTACK THAT KILLED 15 | OMBUDSMAN’S FINDING ANGERED RELATIVES

BY PEADAR WHELAN

Wreaths are laid to mark the 40th anniversary of the loyalist bomb attack on McGurk’s Bar which killed 15 people

THE families of the 15 killed and 17 wounded in the UVF bomb attack on McGurk’s Bar on 4 December 1971 have lodged legal papers in Belfast High Court challenging the PSNI and the Police Ombudsman’s handling of the case.
The news came as relatives held a ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of the atrocity. The High Court challenge is expected to be heard early in the new year.
In his second report into the bombing, released in February of last year, Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson found what he labelled “investigative bias” in the original RUC investigations into the attack on the north Belfast bar. This angered relatives, who accused him of side-stepping the use of the word “collusion”.
Hutchinson had been forced to issue that second report as the families involved refused to accept his initial findings as they effectively exonerated the RUC.
The available evidence pointed to an RUC campaign of disinformation where they blamed the IRA for the killings by scoring “an own goal” and ignored eyewitness evidence of loyalist involvement.
Indeed, the RUC briefed senior unionist politicians at the time that it was an IRA bombing mission that had gone wrong. Unionists then used these briefings in both the Stormont parliament and in public.
A Criminal Justice Inspectorate (CJI) investigation also found that the McGurk’s bombing report was among a number of reports that had been altered, without explanation, before publication.
In other information uncovered by Ciarán McAirt, whose grandmother Kitty Irvine was among the dead, secret British military reports from the time point to a campaign of “disinformation [that] was sanctioned and encouraged at the highest levels of government”. McAirt handed his findings to the Police Ombudsman. He said:
“Disinformation is central to the state’s cover-up of the atrocity so I trace its dissemination through governmental, RUC and British military files as it was drip-fed into the media and public consciousness.”
Meanwhile, up to 200 people gathered at the corner of Great George’s Street and North Queen Street on Saturday 3 December to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing.
A mural painted by artist Risteard Ó Murchu depicting the original facade of the bar with owner Patrick McGurk in the doorway has been unveiled.
The names of those killed are Philomena and Maria McGurk, (the wife and daughter of bar owner Patrick McGurk), Tom Kane, Philip Garry, John Colton, James Cromie, husband and wife Edward and Sarah Keenan, Edward Kane, Francis Bradley, James Smyth, Kathleen Irvine, Robert Spotswood, Tom McLaughlin and David Milligan.