Gem Bar was collusion target, papers indicate
Posted by Jim on December 10, 2018
It has emerged that the British Army raided the pub which was the
original target of the McGurk’s Bar bombers, two nights before the
massacre in which collusion is strongly suspected.
The Gem Bar, just around the corner from McGurk’s Bar, was identified by
British soldiers as a venue frequented by members of the Official IRA.
Secret British Army archives uncovered by a relative of one of the
victims show that its soldiers raided the bar, questioned twenty
customers and sent six of them to Girdwood British Army barracks for
further interrogation.
The names of the six who were detained are recorded but censored as is
other information on them.
But less than 48 hours later, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) targeted
the Gem Bar and their clientele for a major bomb attack. They failed to
get clear access and chose instead to bomb McGurk’s Bar killing 15
civilians including 2 children, and injuring 17 others.
In a suspected cover-up, British authorities immediately portrayed the
attack as an “IRA own goal”.
The only convicted bomber, Robert James Campbell, confessed that the UVF
gang drove to the area to attack the Gem Bar. It is believed that they
could not plant the bomb there as access to the door was blocked by a
group of young men. The bombers then drove around the corner and pulled
up beside the side entrance of McGurk’s Bar
One of the bombers got out of the car and was able to place the bomb in
the entranceway, lit the fuse and ran back to the car which then sped
off down Great George’s Street.
The families have long feared that British military intelligence
facilitated the loyalist killers’ targeting and escape that night by
clearing the area before the attack, and by telling lies about the
victims in its aftermath.
Ciaran Mac Airt is a grandson of two of the victims and he discovered the
secret military documents in the National Archives, London.
He said the files also disproved claims of the police and the Office of
the Police Ombudsman reported to the families. They show the British
Army within an hour had linked the Gem Bar to the bomb attack — but the
British Army’s description of the Gem Bar is still withheld from the
families, even after 47 years.
“I believe the redacted information records that the Gem Bar was a
‘Goulding’ bar which in British military parlance denoted its alleged
affiliation to the Official IRA whose leader at the time was Cathal
Goulding,” he said.
“The reason that it is redacted could be that it shows that the British
Army had correctly considered the Gem Bar to have been the target and
the bombers [to have been] loyalists. This alone would undermine the
botched investigations our families have endured until now.”
Another find also pointed to the presence in the area of a secret
British military killer gang. A log entry shows it was involved in an
ongoing covert operation in north Belfast at that time.
The Military Reaction Force was a clandestine British military unit
deployed on the streets of Belfast by ‘counter-insurgency’ specialist
General Frank Kitson when he was a British Army brigadier there.
Relatives of the victims have never been officially told of the killer
unit’s presence in north Belfast.
“We now know for a fact that the British Army’s covert death squad, the
Military Reaction Force, was operating in the area with 2 RRF [Royal
Regiment Fusiliers] who had raided the Gem Bar and we had long suspected
that it had facilitated and directed the bombers,” said Mr Mac Airt.
Niall O Murchu, a lawyer representing the McGurk’s Bar families, said it
is becoming increasingly clear that the British Army was involved in the
planning and targeting of this bomb attack.
“Nevertheless, the British government and its proxies continue to
withhold and redact critical evidence relating to the mass-murder of
Irish men, women and children in McGurk’s Bar,” he said.
“Through agencies such as the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the
Office of the Police Ombudsman, the British state continues to cover-up
the true circumstances of the McGurk’s Bar massacre.”
“To allay all suspicion, we challenge Chief Constable George Hamilton
and Police Ombudsman Michael Maguire to retrieve this file and release
the information that the British Ministry of Defence is withholding from
the families 47 years later.”