Call for UK to hand over files on NI pub blast

The British government should hand over files on one of the biggest massacres of the North's conflict to resolve security force collusion allegations, it was claimed today.

Ministers must come clean on the December 1971 loyalist bombing of predominantly Catholic McGurk’s bar in Belfast which killed 15 innocent civilians including two children, a grandson of one of the victims added.

Northern Ireland Office (NIO) security minister Paul Goggins last night apologised in the British House of Commons for officials at the time blaming McGurk’s on accidental detonation of an IRA device, when it was the work of the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

However, Robert McClenaghan, whose grandfather Philip Garry died, said: “Now that they have openly admitted the innocence of our relatives the logical next step for the British government is to open their files so that the truth about McGurk’s can finally be told.”

The case was raised in the Commons last night by the Labour Party’s Michael Connarty, whose great uncle was Mr Garry.

Mr McClenaghan, from anti-collusion group an Fhirinne, added: “The bombing on December 4, 1971, is now well past the British government’s 30-year rule for the withholding of documents.

“Serious and sustained allegations about collusion and the involvement of the British army’s Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF) still persist to the present day.

“In order to allay the concerns of families and the nationalist community in general the British government should publish the files of the old Stormont joint security committee as well as the British army’s and British government’s own files.”

In 1977 UVF gang member Robert Campbell was jailed for life for the bombing but has refused to name anyone else involved in the attack.

Mr McClenaghan said: “If the British government refuses to hand over the documents then that only strengthens the case for an independent, international truth commission to compel the British government and other state agencies to hand over their files.”

Mr Goggins told British MPs preconceptions had been allowed to cloud the evidence.

“We are deeply sorry, not just for the appalling suffering and loss of life that occurred at McGurk’s bar but also 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 as to who was responsible,” he added.

Mr Connarty said the Ulster Unionist Party’s Lord Kilclooney, who as John Taylor was then a home affairs spokesman in the Stormont parliament, claimed at the time there was no question of Protestant involvement.

He added briefings from the British army prompted press reports blaming the IRA.