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4 March 2011

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Ghost of bad policing hangs over McGurk’s bomb report

A DAY of “vindication and victory” for the families of 15 people killed in the 1971 McGurk’s Bar bombing turned sour after PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott refused to accept Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson’s finding of RUC bias in the force insisting republicans were responsible rather than loyalists. The bomb attack was later proven to have been the work of the UVF.
Matt Baggott said:
“There was no evidence linking this to any deliberate police actions.”
Baggott’s response flies in the face of a reality laid bare in Al Hutchinson’s report released on 21st February in Belfast.
On 4th December 1971, a bomb exploded in the hallway of the Tramore Bar, owned by the McGurk family, in Great George’s Street in north Belfast.
Fifteen people, ranging in age from 13 to 73, died in the attack.
Within hours of the bombing, the RUC was setting out its stall, issuing information saying the bombing was the result of an IRA ‘own goal’, a premature explosion.
The RUC maintained (page 17 of the report):
“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; 15 persons were killed and 13 injured.”
It was on the back of this baseless RUC duty officer’s report that the lie about the McGurk’s pub bombing was rolled out and used by the then Unionist Government and the British in their propaganda war against republicans.
Unionist Prime Minister Brian Faulkner travelled to London and briefed British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling. Minutes of the meeting show that Faulkner, who died in 1977, told Maudling the IRA was behind the bombing.
Faulkner also asked the RUC to check the backgrounds of those killed to establish if any of the dead were involved.
John Taylor, who served in the Unionist regime as Minister for Home Affairs, fuelling the myth that the IRA was responsible, told the Stormont parliament in December 1971:
“The plain fact is that the evidence of the forensic experts supports the theory that the explosion took place within the confines of the walls of the building.”
Taylor (now Lord Kilclooney) refused to co-operate with the Ombudsman and has consistently refused to meet the relatives of the dead and wounded.
The premeditated RUC decision and determination  to accuse the IRA contradicted or ignored evidence from an eyewitness.
One of these, an eight-year-old boy, spotted a man leaving a parcel in the hallway of the bar before getting into a car containing two other men and driving off.
The boy (interviewed by the RUC on 6th December) gave them a partial description of the man and told them the car had a small Union Jack in the window.
He was also able to describe the parcel and said he saw “sparks coming out of the parcel”.
A woman (interviewed on 7th December) also recalled a man running from the doorway of McGurk’s pub and down the street to a dark-coloured car parked on the York Street side of McCleery Street.
This witness evidence and a claim by the ‘Empire Loyalists’ (a splinter group believed to be linked to the UVF) made on 6th December 1971 claiming responsibility for the attack seems not to have affected the RUC who continued briefing the media that the IRA were involved.
In 1978, loyalist Robert Campbell was convicted of the McGurk’s attack. It later transpired that from as early as 1975 Campbell was known to the RUC as a senior UVF figure and that he and four others were believed to be responsible for the killings.
The head of the RUC’s Criminal Investigation Department had lodged this information yet it was not passed on to those investigating the McGurk’s attack.
What the Ombudsman’s report has established is that the RUC demonstrated a clear “investigative bias” in its responses to the bombing of McGurk’s bar.
He stopped short, however, of accusing the RUC of colluding with the UVF, a position the families have disagreed with.
According to the families of the dead and wounded, the depth and scope of the RUC’s, “bias”, amounted to collusion.
Robert McClenaghan, whose grandfather Philip Garry was killed, said:
“If it talks like a duck and walks like a duck then it’s a duck.”
The families pointed out that the Ombudsman upheld three of the four complaints he investigated in respect of the RUC’s behaviour.
His verdict was that the RUC “was selective and misleading” and “failed to investigate effectively the information received”.
In respect of the RUC briefings to the Unionist Government, the Ombudsman ruled that the RUC briefings were misleading.
Likewise, the Ombudsman upheld the families’ complaint that the ‘own goal’ theory spread by the media came about through RUC and British Army internal briefings.
Concluding their response, the families said:
“All of the above, taken as a whole, amounts to collusive behaviour by the RUC. It amounted to corrupt practice and obstruction of justice. It is disappointing that the Ombudsman does not agree.”
Giving Sinn Féin’s response to the report, North Belfast MLAs Gerry Kelly and Carál Ní Chuilín, who attended the launch of the report, said:
“While the report, in most part, vindicated the families’ complaints it was disappointing the Ombudsman couldn’t accept that the deliberate actions of the RUC in allowing the real killers go free amounted to collusive behaviour.”
Reacting to PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott’s refusal to accept the Ombudsman’s findings, Gerry Kelly said:
“Successive RUC chief constables have refused to look at the evidence surrounding the attack on McGurk’s bar and that force’s cover up.
“Al Hutchinson has lifted the lid on the RUC corruption and it would be better for Matt Baggott to acknowledge that and apologise to the families instead of opening old wounds.”

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