Commons apology over 1971 bomb disinformation PDF Print E-mail
Northern Ireland

Tom Griffin, 18 July 2008

The Government this week apologised for smearing the victims of one of the first major bombings of the Troubles.

McGurk's Bar on North Queen Street in Belfast was blown up on 4 December 1971, killing 15 people including two women and three children. Allegations quick surfaced that the dead included IRA members who had accidentally detonated their own bomb.

Among those smeared was 73-year-old Philip Garry, the great-uncle of Linlithgow and East Falkirk MP Michael Connarty, who raised the case in a Commons adjournment debate on Monday.

Connarty highlighted documents uncovered in the National Archives which revealed the Army's role in spreading the smears:

The Pat Finucane Centre submitted those reports, having found them, to the historical inquiries team. It is clear from the reports that there was a travesty involving the Army, which said in the report that the bomb was clearly inside the pub, because five men standing around it were blown to smithereens. The Army said that the bombing was clearly an IRA own goal—it said that the bomb was, in effect, in the pub in transit. That was then. The historical inquiries team report says that it was recommended that the Secretary of State answer a question in the House confirming that story.

That was never done, but, sadly, a former Member of the House, now Lord Kilclooney, said on television and in Stormont that the bomb was an IRA bomb. He said that there was no question that the bombing was a Protestant paramilitary operation.

The Army's account was reflected in press reports at the time. The truth only began to emerge in 1977, when one of the bombers, UVF member Robert Campbell, was arrested on a separate matter.

For six years, the approach taken in all the police reports—this is clear from the historical inquiry team's report of the police reports—was to keep trying to turn the evidence to suggest that the Army report was correct. The reports said things such as that the forensics showed there was no doubt that the bomb had been inside the pub. The forensic evidence did not come out until February, but Dr. Hall, who produced it, said that there was no doubt that the bomb had been placed outside the door or adjacent to it—not in the pub at all. However, the police reports still spread the same story, and every single inquiry in the report shows that the police tried to pin the bombing on the people in the bar to show that they had killed themselves and their fellow citizens from the community. That is unforgivable.

The debate was closed by Northern Ireland Minister Paul Goggins,who delivered an apology on behalf of the Government.

Although we cannot speak for the Ministers who made statements at the time, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are deeply sorry not just for the appalling suffering and loss of life that occurred at McGurk's bar, but for the extraordinary additional pain caused to both the immediate families and the wider community by the erroneous suggestions made in the immediate aftermath of the explosion about who was responsible. Such perceptions and preconceived ideas should never have been allowed to cloud the actual evidence.

Goggins told the House that the Police Service of Northern Ireland's Historical Inquiries Team had found no evidence that the security forces had colluded in the bombings. However, some relatives question why the army was so quick to lay a false trail of suspicion.
Philip Garry's grandson, Robert McLenaghan, has called for an investigation into allegations that the bombing was a false flag operation.

The claims surfaced last year, when a number of newspaper articles quoted a loyalist using the pseudonym 'John Black.' He claimed to have been working with the a secretive British Army unit called the MRF. Some of Blacks claims, such as the suggestion that MRF members were present in Derry on Bloody Sunday, are regarded as outlandish within the North's human rights community. However, the MRF is known to have conducted plain-clothes patrols in Belfast in the early 1970s, and to have recruited paramilitaries from both sides.

On a visit to England last month, McLenaghan called on former British service personnel who may have knowledge of Black's allegations to come forward. "We would like a public forum, which is international and independent of both the British and Irish Governments for him and others like him to be allowed to speak, he said.
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