Victim’s grandson calls out PSNI chief over ‘cover-up’ ahead of McGurk’s Bar bombing anniversary

A GRANDSON of one of the 15 civilians murdered in the McGurk’s Bar Massacre has demanded that the Chief Constable of the PSNI “do his job” and quash a flawed report by the defunct Historical Enquiries Team on the atrocity before the 45th anniversary of the attack on 4 December.

On 4 December 1971, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) planted a no-warning bomb on the doorstep of McGurk’s Bar. The bar was located at the corner of North Queen Street and Great Georges Street, close to St Patrick’s Church in north Belfast. As the bomb exploded, 15 men, women and children lay dead; 16 others were seriously injured as the building collapsed.

Ciarán Mac Airt, is a grandson of McGurk’s Bar victims Kathleen Irvine (who died in the attack) and her husband, John (who survived).

His call follows his discovery of a ground-breaking archive which proved that a British Army bomb expert at the scene informed British Army Headquarters that McGurk’s Bar was attacked.

The archive records:

“ATO [Ammunition Technical Officer] is convinced bomb was placed in entrance way on ground floor. The area is cratered and clearly was the seat of the explosion.”

The police had sight of this evidence but instead blamed the civilians in the bar and recorded in an RUC Duty Officer’s Report:

“At 8:45pm on Saturday, 4th December 1971, an explosion occurred at McGurk’s licensed premises, 83 Great George’s Street. The charge, estimated at 50lbs, completely demolished the two-storey building.

“Just before the explosion, a man entered the licensed premises and left down a suitcase, presumably to be picked up by a known member of the Provisional IRA. The bomb was intended for use on other premises. Before the ‘pick-up’ was made, the bomb exploded.”

Ciarán Mac Airt says:

“I contacted the present Chief Constable of the PSNI over a year ago and pleaded that he retrieve this file as I was barred from accessing it for another 40 years. I knew it contained critical evidence relating to my grandmother’s murder and the McGurk’s Bar atrocity which was, at that time, the single greatest loss of civilian life in any murderous attack since the Nazi Blitz of Belfast a generation before.

“Chief Constable George Hamilton acted like Pontius Pilate and washed his hands of this evidence which we now know does indeed relate to the mass murder of innocent civilians and the heinous police cover-up.

“I was right. This file proved that the British state and the police perverted the course of justice and covered up the true circumstances of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre, allowing sectarian mass murderers to kill again and again.”

The campaigner said that if the PSNI Chief Constable fails to quash the HET report “he is helping to perpetuate this police cover-up”.