SDLP leader Gerry Fitt pressed British to blame UVF bombing on IRA

SDLP LEADER GERRY FITT told senior British security officials at a secret meeting in 1971 that the McGurk’s Bar bombing that caused 15 deaths that 4 December was an ‘own goal’ by the IRA. In fact, it was the work of the unionist Ulster Volunteer Force.

Fitt, then MP for West Belfast, told the British spooks that if the bombing could be pinned on the IRA it would “give him an excuse to join discussions” with the British Government.

Gerry Fitt – nicknamed by republicans at the time as “Fitt the Brit” – told British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling that “every effort should be taken to pin responsibility for the explosion on the Provisionals”.

The British Army and RUC consistently fed the mainstream media the lie that the IRA was to blame.

Revelations about the then SDLP leader’s secret meeting and pushing of misinformation came about after confidential British Government files were only recently declassified. Fitt had asked the British to keep his meeting with them “strictly confidential”.

Researcher Ciarán Mac Airt, whose grandmother Kitty died in the McGurk’s Bar bombing, told Allison Morris of the Irish News that Fitt was then the main nationalist political representative.

As such, and only three weeks on from the bombing, Ciarán Mac Airt said:

“Gerry Fitt would have been well aware that the bomb was not the work of the IRA and yet he seemed happy to perpetuate the false version of events for personal gain... for his own political ambitions.”