Prime Minister Edward Heath signed secret surveillance report linking UVF to attack on Kelly's Bar

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER Edward Heath (pictured below) read and signed a secret British Army report which confirms that a car used by the unionist UVF to attack Kelly’s Bar in west Belfast in May 1972 was under surveillance.

According to British Army documents recently uncovered by researcher Ciarán Mac Airt of the research charity Paper Trail, the British Army had put an alert out on a stolen BMC 1100 at 2:30pm on the afternoon of the bomb and gun attack on the bar at the corner of the Whiterock and Springfield Road near Ballymurphy on 13 May 1972.

Mac Airt has also revealed that British Secretary of State William Whitelaw pointed the finger of blame at the IRA in a response reminiscent to that of the McGurk’s Bar bombing.

Secretary of State William Whitelaw (pictured) told the British House of Commons on 18 May 1972 that all indications were that this was an IRA device that had exploded prematurely. He added that the facts did not support the theory that it had been placed by unionist extremists. Ciarán Mac Airt maintains that it was the same UVF gang who carried out both bombing raids.

MacAirt’s research found that the British Army non-commissioned officer who received the alert notice “observed the incident” (the attack on Kelly’s) from an observation post overlooking the bar.

The report adds: “The BMC 1100 which stopped outside Kelly's Bar fitted the description and the movements of its occupants carefully noted.”

Despite all of this, there is nothing to suggest that there was any attempt by the British Army to intervene and thwart the attack or arrest the bombers.

The vehicle exploded at around 5 o'clock, 2 hours and 30 minutes after the alert was issued, injuring over 60 people, some of them seriously.

As customers and staff fled the explosion, loyalist gunmen, who had stockpiled weapons in flats in the Springmartin estate the night prior to the bomb attack, opened fire on fleeing customers.

The incident sparked gun battles, which continued into Sunday 14 May, between the British Army and UVF on one side and the IRA on the other that left seven people dead.

At one point the British Army was billeted in the lower floors of the Springmartin flats while UVF gunmen on the floors above them fired continuously on the nearby Ballymurphy and Springhill estates where 13-year-old Martha Campbell was killed.

Other contemporary reports said that the British Army helped UVF gunmen get into Corry’s timber yard on the Springfield Road which gave them a clear vantage point overlooking Ballymurphy. It was also reported at the time that British soldiers turned a blind eye to a UVF squad hiding weapons.

Accusing the British state of complicity in both the McGurk’s and Kelly’s bombings, Ciarán Mac Airt said:

“The same death squad was guilty of the attack and the British state covered it up in exactly the same way, even blaming the innocent customers in both bars.

“Police – past and present, from the RUC to the PSNI and HET – have failed in their catastrophic investigations of each case.

“Evidence which could substantiate the families version of events was ignored.

“There was no proper investigation by the RUC into the circumstances surrounding the attack on Kelly’s Bar.”