Book Launch “The McGurk’s Bar Bombing” by Ciarán MacAirt
5pm, Tuesday 4th December 2012 (the 41st anniversary of the atrocity)
Long Gallery, Stormont
With Ciarán MacAirt (author/grandson of Kathleen Irvine, one of the 15 victims), other family members and campaigners. MLAs from each of the main parties also invited to speak.
4th December is the 41st anniversary of the attack on McGurk’s Bar which resulted in the death of 15 civilians: men, women and children. More than a dozen more were lucky to escape with their lives. At the time it was the greatest loss of civilian life in any murderous attack in Ireland since the Nazi Blitz.
The following day, Wednesday 5th December, the families will be travelling to Westminster to launch the book at Portcullis House at 1230pm with:
(1) MPs (2) human rights groups (3) Colin Wallace (former member of the British Army’s secret ‘psychological operations’ unit who wrote the book’s foreword and who was working at British Army HQ in Northern Ireland on the night news of the atrocity broke.
Ciarán MacAirt: “These events at Stormont and Westminster, even 41 years after the atrocity, are vital to our on-going campaign for truth. We have the opportunity to remind our politicians that we are still waiting for an Historical Enquiries Team report, six years after it began investigating, and almost two years after PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott unilaterally announced there were no more investigative opportunities”.
The RUC press office told journalists after the bombing that it had detonated INSIDE McGurk’s Bar – the clear implication being that one of the dead was a bomber and it had been premature explosion – or an IRA “own-goal” – but Colin Wallace says different:
“The original information we received from Security Force personnel at the scene indicated that the bomb had been planted outside the pub. Furthermore, the Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team that went to the site of the explosion were of the opinion that the bomb had detonated outside the bar. By the time I went off duty that night, all the ‘evidence’ indicated that the attack had been carried out by Loyalists.”
“The McGurk’s Bar Bombing: Collusion, Cover-Up and a Campaign for Truth” available in book shops including Easons, Waterstones, HMV and An Ceathrú Póilí also online at Amazon.
