On 4 December 8:45 p.m., a UVF gang set out on a bombing mission. One of those involved was Robert James Campbell. The UVF bomb exploded outside a small pub in Belfast called McGurk’s, a cosy place where Catholics and Protestants from the same neighbourhood – all of whom knew each other well – met for a few drinks.
The UVF unit left the bomb outside the pub, not inside it.
It consisted of forty to fifty pounds of gelignite. It was ignited by lighting a fuse, not a timer.
A paper boy saw the UVF car pull up and a man deposit the bomb outside the pub before fleeing. He spotted the fuse sparking and warned the man not to go up the road.
According to Robert James Campbell, his UVF unit had originally wanted to attack another establishment which they believed was frequented by the Official IRA and its supporters, but it had two guards posted outside. After waiting for an hour for them to go inside, the UVF unit decided to go elsewhere. They drove to McGurk’s.
The British Army had two Ammunition Technical Officers, i.e., bomb disposal experts, circulating around Belfast on standby in case a bomb was detected. They attended at the scene in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Because of the darkness and the debris, they were unable to determine the exact location of the detonation. They decided to carry out a further inspection at daylight the next day.
Following the daylight inspection, the Army’s 39 Brigade HQ in Lisburn recorded in its Ops Log at 11.10am:
‘ATO is convinced bomb was placed in the entrance way on the ground floor. The area is cratered and clearly was the seat of the explosion. The size of the bomb is likely to be 40/50 lbs.‘
This information corroborated what the paperboy had witnessed.
The bomb killed fifteen people, two of whom were children. Another seventeen were badly wounded. The building was demolished.
A knowingly and thoroughly dishonest statement was issued stating that the bomb had been brought inside the pub by the IRA and detonated prematurely. The insinuation was that the bar was a safe haven for the IRA to stage operations, and that at least some of the victims were IRA sympathisers.
The disinformation charge was led by Frank Kitson. At the time, he was in charge of British military activities in Belfast and its environs. He was also an expert in counter-insurgency (i.e. dirty tricks, collusive murder, torture and black propaganda).
Paper Trail, a charity which helps victims of atrocities such as McGurk’s, has been digging into Britain’s National Archives to try to understand what happened. The work it has undertaken has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bomb was not an ‘IRA own goal’. Aside from a few die-hard Unionist bigots, no sane and respectable commentator bothers to recirculate Kitson’s lies any more.
But there is more, a lot more to this scandal, than meets the eye. Paper Trail uncovered military logs relating to the attack which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had failed to release when it made other logs available. Happily, the same logs were available elsewhere. Paper Trail submitted a complaint about this development to Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO announced in 2022 that it accepts the MoD’s explanation, namely that the relevant logs were in the process of being scanned before allegedly being destroyed and that the crucial logs were accidentally omitted during the scanning process.
This explanation is trite.
The time has long since passed for a full judicial inquiry.
A full breakdown of the Information Commissioner’s conclusion and the evidence unearthed by Paper Trail can be found here: https://mcgurksbar.com/ico-accepts-mod-excuses-for-missing-massacre-files/
The Paper Trail website can be accessed here: https://www.papertrail.pro/
David Burke is the author of four books published by Mercier Press.
