Memorial to Kelly's Bar victims unveiled

A plaque in memory of three men killed when loyalists bombed Kelly's Bar in West Belfast was unveiled on Thursday 13 May to mark the 32nd anniversary of the attack.

Kelly's bar was located at the junction of the Whiterock and Springfield Roads in West Belfast when it was targeted by loyalist bombers and snipers on Saturday 13 May 1972. John Moran, Gerard Clarke and Tommy McElroy, all members of staff in Kelly's, lost their lives as a result of the attack.

A car bomb left outside the premises exploded, injuring over 60 people. Nineteen-year-old John Moran died from his injuries ten days later while Gerard Clarke never recovered from his injuries and died 17 years later.

Immediately after the explosion loyalist gunmen, operating from the nearby Springmartin area, opened fire on survivors as they searched through the rubble and tried to help the wounded.

The loyalists firing continued for some time later and it was during this shooting that barman, 50-year-old Tommy McElroy, was shot dead.

John Moran's son, John Joe, born three months after his father's death, unveiled the memorial. Speaking after the unveiling, he accused the British Army of colluding with the loyalist attackers.

In a statement released at the time, the British Army claimed that a number of men parked the car, went into Kelly's, and when they returned to the car it exploded.

Mark Thompson of the human rights group, Relatives for Justice, told the large crowd that the attack on Kelly's Bar was a "classic example of British counter insurgency and of propaganda".

Five days after the attack, the then British Secretary of State, William Whitelaw, told the British House of Parliament that all the indications were that the bomb which exploded at Kelly's "was an IRA device which had exploded prematurely".

Whitelaw went on to assert that the IRA was trying to provoke "a Protestant backlash" and that the facts did not support the theory that "Protestant extremists" were behind the attack on Kelly's.

Such claims were not new as only months before, in December 1971, after the UVF bombing of McGurk's Bar in North Belfast, the British planted stories in the media saying that that attack - which claimed the lives of 15 people — was "an IRA own goal".

Later that evening, as the British Army and loyalist gunmen continued shooting in the area, Moyard resident Robert McMullan was shot dead and Fian Michael Magee was found shot in the chest in Ballymurphy. He later died following what is now thought to have been an accidental shooting.

As the IRA engaged the loyalists and British Army, they killed a member of the King's Own Scottish Borderers.