An Information Tribunal has ordered the Chief Constable of Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) to hand over evidence in police files regarding the McGurk’s Bar Massacre.
In a historic legal win for the families, the Information Rights Tribunal has ordered the Chief Constable of Police Service Northern Ireland to disclose evidence in Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) files regarding the McGurk’s Bar Massacre following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) battle that has lasted over four years.
Nevertheless, the PSNI has been allowed to redact much of the information and withhold other articles of evidence it has denied us access to for decades.
I am a grandson of two of the McGurk’s Bar victims. My grandmother Kathleen Irvine was one of the 15 civilians murdered in McGurk’s Bar on 4th December 1971. 2 children were among the dead. My grandfather, John, was badly injured but among the few who survived the no-warning bomb attack by British extremists.
Before my grandmother’s remains were even identified, the British armed forces including the RUC police force, buried the truth.
Despite a substantial amount of evidence, including a witness who saw the bomb being planted and lit, the British state blamed the atrocity on the victims and allowed their proxies escape into the night.
I made the original request for information from PSNI in December 2020 under FOIA specifically for the provenance and source of police lies to a high-level Joint Security Committee Meeting soon after the massacre.
At this meeting on 16th December 1971, the then Chief Constable, Graham Shillington, and his head of Special Branch, Assistant Chief Constable David Johnston, presented a police assessment to the Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, the General Officer Commanding the British Army, Lt. General Sir Harry Tuzo, and Minister of State, John Taylor (now Baron Kilclooney) that included the lies:
“Circumstantial evidence indicates that this was a premature detonation and two of those killed were known IRA members at least one of whom had been associated with bombing activities. Intelligence indicates that the bomb was destined for use elsewhere in the city.”
I traced this disinformation to a secret agreement between the commander of the British Army in Belfast, Brigadier Frank Kitson and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) within hours of the explosion.
A log in the Commander’s Diary for 39 Brigade proved that then Brigade Commander Kitson informed Brigade staff at 1am on December 5th 1971, just over 4 hours after the bombing:
“RUC have a line that the bomb in the pub was a bomb designed to be used elsewhere, left in the pub to be picked up by the Provisional IRA. Bomb went off and was a mistake. RUC press office have a line on it – NI should deal with them.”
The PSNI refused this request for the provenance and source of this false intelligence. The Information Commissioner Office (ICO), the statutory authority with the jurisdiction to regulate the FOIA regime, upheld this refusal in February 2023.
Legal Support
With the pro bono support of KRW LAW and senior and junior counsel from 7 Bedford Row (7BR) Chambers in London - Jennifer Carter-Manning KC and Kate Temple-Mabe - I appealed this decision at Tribunal in December 2023.
Our excellent legal team argued before members of an independent judicial panel why this material should be disclosed to the public.
In a massive legal win for the families, the Tribunal agreed that the PSNI refusal and ICO Decision Notice were in error of law and ordered the Chief Constable to hand over, redact and withhold specific articles of evidence.
This evidence included a pernicious lie we now know came directly from RUC Special Branch of a fictitious “man with a suitcase”.
The Special Branch file for the attention of the Chief Constable at RUC headquarters is dated 6th December 1971 records the lie:
“In connection with the explosion at McGurk’s Bar, the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association and the Provisionals [IRA] are after a fellow named REDACTED for it. He was seen with a suitcase by then.”
The RUC knew that day that a witness had seen the actual bomber place the bomb in the entranceway of McGurk’s Bar, light the fuse and escape in a car. We know too that the RUC then set about undermining this witness, young hero, Joseph McClory.
The British Army files also prove that the morning after the Massacre, 5th December 1971, a British Army bomb expert had informed Kitson’s Brigade and Headquarters Northern Ireland that the:
“... bomb was placed in entranceway on ground floor. The area is cratered and clearly was the seat of the explosion”.
Nevertheless, the outworkings of the secret agreement between the RUC and Kitson were already in motion, they briefed client journalists and blamed the victims publicly for the massacre.
At 8am on the morning after the explosion, RUC Duty Officers recorded:
"Just before the explosion a man entered the licensed premises and left down a suitcase, presumably to be picked up by a known member of the Provisional IRA. The bomb was intnded for use on other premises. Before the 'pick-up' was made, the bomb exploded."
This also reads as fictitious. Furthermore, whilst a man with a suitcase is referenced, this is allegedly distinct information. One refers to the IRA looking for a man with a suitcase. The other refers to the fictitious man leaving down the suitcase with a bomb for somewhere else instead exploding.
Either way, again PSNI and the historical investigators could not prove the provenance or source of this false information. HET did record in 2015:
"HET has established that the original intelligence linking a man with a suitcase to the McGurk's Bar bombing was passed to RUC Special Branch by [British] military intelligence and there is no further information about the timing or circumstances in which it was obtained...
When the original intelligence is contrasted with the duty officers' report, it is clear the core information has been expanded upon with reference to the named man 'leaving a suitcase in the bar' and the presumption it was going 'to be picked up by a known member of the Provisional IRA and intended for use on other premises'".
This in itself was an open admission by HET that the RUC had fabricated intelligence from uncorrobrated and undated intelligence given to it by British military intelligence from an unknown source.
Nevertheless, PSNI was allowed to redact the whole of the actual report in the release of information which remains ludicrous.
Thereafter, RUC Special Branch’s fictitious man with a suitcase disappeared once more and did not feature in a list of other anonymous lies in RUC files listed in this release of information.
British military intelligence and RUC Special Branch simply injected this lie into the intelligence stream and then disappeared it. The cops are still hiding it today.
We now know too that the RUC disappeared the car abandoned by the bombers nearby and two sets of finger prints from it.
Readers should also note from the Tribunal's Decision Notice on the National Archives website that the protection of Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) remains central to the RUC/PSNI cover-up to this day. Discussion of CHIS - state agents - featured in the Tribunal's closed, seceret session - we know this as the acronym is defined in the open judgement and we now have the disclosed but redacted proof that PSNI disclosed to us.
Colin Wallace Recalls
"I was on duty at Army HQ N Ireland on the night of the explosion. I discussed the initial reports of the attack with Major Bernard Calladene, the senior bomb disposal officer at the HQ that evening. He told me that, despite the debris caused by the explosion, the two bomb disposal officers at the scene were satisfied that the device had been planted at the entrance to the pub.
The following morning I was told by the Operations Room that the scenario had changed because Brigadier Kitson had obtained reliable information that the device had gone off inside the pub. That information was at odds with the original expert opinion that a combustion fuse was used to detonate the device. I don’t think I was made aware of the source of Brigadier Kitson’s information.
Sadly, Major Calladene was killed shortly afterwards defusing a bomb in Belfast."
Significance of Legal Victory
This important legal victory before the Tribunal establishes that PSNI cannot or will not explain the secret agreement between British Army Commander Frank Kitson and the RUC to blame the victims for the McGurk’s Bar Massacre or the following false information disseminated by the British armed forces, including RUC.
We have repeatedly asked successive Chief Constables to prove the police lies or admit that the police fabricated them. Each Chief Constable has failed.
This important win also proves that PSNI not only withheld significant information from the historic investigations, courts and families, but also continues to withhold critical evidence in the mass murder of our loved ones. PSNI chooses to cover up for a sectarian police force in the past and protect its agents rather than protect and serve innocent civilians.
The judgement also highlights how police lies and the protection of state agents remain central to the cover-up and the police's treatment of the atrocity.
Little has changed between RUC and PSNI.
Different name. Same aim. Collusion and cover-up.
KRW LAW Quote
Christopher Stanley of KRW Law commented on the significance of the legal victory:
“This FOIA application for information relating to the McGurk’s Bar Bombing 1971 was made in 2020. It is now 2025. This was one of many similar applications for information held by state agencies, in this instance the PSNI. Judgment was delivered in February 2024 by the Tribunal but disclosure has only been made in January 2025. The decision remains to be published.
First, this disclosure further exposes the failure of state agencies, in this instance the PSNI, to recognise information retrieval and truth recovery as central tenets to peace and reconciliation in post-conflict Northern Ireland. The information disclosed last week confirms the policy of disinformation at the heart of the counter-insurgency operation throughout the course of the Conflict. Further, it establishes further demands for the exposure of Loyalist and State collusion in the McGurk’s Bar Bombing.
Second, the PSNI, at significant public expense has dissembled throughout point to frustrate the FOIA process in this matter. It has admitted there is no prospect of a criminal investigation – which it cannot conduct in any event because of the jurisdiction of the ICRIR (whatever the future of that structure is and when the McGurk’s Bar relatives will not engage with it). It has now disclosed information which should have been in public domain pursuant to previous Legacy-based investigations and which will now be pursued with the same intensity by the relatives of the bombing on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves and whose memory has been maligned because of the stench of collusion and cover-up so prevalent in British security force policy and practice throughout the course of the Conflict.
Jon Boutcher has demonstrated both sense and courage previously in these Legacy issues – including on the chilling effect of the NCND ‘policy’ which was deployed as an excuse not to disclose the requested information in this FOIA application – and he should read this judgement – when the Tribunal eventually decides to publish it and reflect upon it – when it found that the public interest in transparency and closure for victims' families outweighed the reasons for withholding information.”
