by Ken Wharton
Soldiers returned fire at the gunman who then fired several shots back at them. His rounds missed but either ricocheted from a wall and struck the little girl, or she was hit by one of his almost spent rounds. Siobhan was walking home from her grandmother’s house in McDonnell Street when she was shot, and was only three doors away from her home when she was hit in the lung. The little girl managed to crawl back to her house, but she was mortally wounded and died in her parents’ arms. A PIRA gunman was later jailed for life for Siobhan’s manslaughter.
It was a wicked rumour – an untruth at that – which led to the next death, the sectarian murder of a Protestant at his place of employment in Albertbridge Road, Belfast. A chance remark, probably misheard or even maliciously uttered, that a certain man was an IRA member led to the killing. A UFF murder gang confronted eight workmen at Belfast Ropeworks and forced them to line up against a wall. They singled out John Hunter (57) and callously and cold-bloodedly shot him dead. The father of four was an innocent Protestant with no paramilitary links whatsoever; an ordinary working man earning a living to keep his family. He was shot dead by Loyalists who continued to plumb the depths of depravity.
The events of the following day owe as much to PIRA’s perverted sense of justice as it does to the evil provocation of the Loyalist murder gangs. On the evening of Wednesday 13 March, a car containing a PIRA bombing team set off for the Shankill Road; it could have come from any one of the major Republican areas of North or West Belfast or it could have departed from a respectable ‘mixed’ district; in a safe house in order to not attract the attention of the SF. The Bayardo Bar in Aberdeen Street, just off the Shankill Road was a well-known haunt of the UVF and other hard-line Protestants. A unit of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade, led by Brendan McFarlane, launched a bombing and shooting attack on the pub. Observers of the incident have long considered that it was done in retaliation for the Miami Showband massacre almost a fortnight earlier.
Memorial to those murdered in PIRA bombing of Bayardo Bar. (Author’s photo)
Names of the murdered at the Bayardo Bar. (Author’s photo)
The Bayardo Bar was crowded with people of all ages when, just before closing time, a stolen car, containing a three-man PIRA unit, pulled up outside. The unit included Seamus Clarke and Peter Hamilton and the trio approached the pub’s side entrance and immediately opened fire with an American Armalite, shooting and killing the doorman William Gracey (63) and his brother-in-law Samuel Gunning (55); the pair were chatting outside. One of the other men then entered the pub, where drinkers were finishing off their pints with a sing-song. They dropped a hold-all containing a 10lb bomb inside the entrance. The bombers then ran outside to the waiting car and roared off in the direction of Agnes Street intending to drive onto the Crumlin Road where they could head west to the Ballymurphy, Turf Lodge or Andersonstown or, less likely, east to the Short Strand.
The panicked customers ran to the toilets and other rooms in a desperate bid to escape the explosion but the device detonated and brought down huge parts of the walls and ceilings. The bodies of an innocent Protestant Joanne McDowell (29) and UVF man Hugh Harris (21) were later found beneath the fallen masonry. A teenager was pulled out of the rubble, barely alive, but died of her injuries just over a week later; Linda Boyle was 17. Nearly 50 people were injured, some slightly and some very badly in the blast.
Not content with the carnage which they had just caused, the three IRA men opened fire on a queue of people – including children – at a taxi rank and although there were no further fatalities, several people were wounded. However, the car was stopped at a VCP just a mile or two away and all three men were arrested by the Army. A search of the car found the Armalite and it was forensically linked with the two murders outside the pub. All three men were found guilty and sentenced to long terms in prison. As a postscript, Lenny Murphy of the infamous Shankill Butchers was rumoured to have been in the bar and was reported as having left a few minutes before the attack.
According to journalists Alan Murray and Peter Taylor, the attack was in retaliation for the Miami Showband massacre almost a fortnight before. The IRA did not initially claim responsibility. However, it later explained that the Bayardo was attacked because it was a pub where UVF members and supporters drank and planned sectarian attacks against the nationalist community. The pub was in the UVF-dominated middle Shankill Road area, and the Ulster Banner was displayed from its upper windows.
Today the bar no longer exists but there is a memorial which displays photographs of the five dead people, flanked by the Union flag and by the red hand of Ulster; it proclaims: ‘5 Innocent Protestants Murdered’ and displays a large photograph showing the bombed-out ruins of the bar. McFarlane has never publically spoken about the killings, and the IRA leadership, which saw the attack as damaging their non-sectarian image, has never admitted responsibility. Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams apparently told a journalist that McFarlane ‘… hadn’t a single, sectarian bone in his body …’
Forty-eight hours later, the IRA killed a former RUC Reservist, having abducted and taken him to a place of torture. His ‘crime’ was not only to have been associated with ‘Crown Forces’ but he was also accused – wrongly – by the ever paranoid Provisional IRA of spying on behalf of the Army. William Meaklin (29) was abducted by the IRA whilst he was delivering groceries from his store in Newtownhamilton, Co Armagh, two days after the Bayardo Bar explosion. Republican sources are reported to have said that the former RUCR man was tortured in terrible fashion in order to force him to confess; an innocent man has nothing to confess and Mr Meaklin died in vain.
William Frazer of Fair (Families Acting for Innocent Relatives) made this comment: ‘… in a farm in Co. Monaghan, William Meaklin was born. There was nothing extraordinary about his birth or significance in the fact that he was the third child of his parents. There was nothing extraordinary about his life either, which would distinguish him from other young men of his generation, except, that is, to those who were closest to him. To them he was extra special, a loving husband, a good son, a faithful brother and a loyal friend. By the normal course of events and in peaceful days he might have expected a long life of happiness. But events are not normal and days are not peaceful and on Friday night in a lonely country lane, separated from his loved ones, William was cruelly and brutally murdered. In a moment of time a young life was senselessly extinguished.’
On the same day, another PIRA unit, this time in the Clonards, Falls Road area acted against another man who was ‘…helping Crown Forces.’ Samuel Llewellyn (26) was employed by Belfast City Council and he had been dispatched to the site of an earlier explosion in order to effect temporary repairs to doors and windows which had been damaged. IRA gunmen attacked him and bundled him into the back of his Council vehicle and beat him severely in sadistic fashion before shooting him repeatedly. The last few shots were into his lifeless body as the ‘urban guerrillas’ acted in an almost bestial manner. His death prompted even the PIRA supporters in the area to rail against the men who had killed Mr Llewellyn.
The Shankill Road, deep in Loyalist territory. (Author’s photo)
One of the murderers was caught by Garda Siochana in the Republic and he is alleged to have made the following statement: ‘All right, I fucking well shot him. What can you fellows do about it? I told you that I shot him, you can do nothing about it. I will be here [in the Republic] for the next 30 years. If you try to extradite me, I will get bail. It only means two days inside, and then I am out and you won’t see me again.’ (Lost Lives, p.563) These words of contempt from the mouth of a cowardly and sadistic murderer encapsulates the contempt which the terrorist had for the process of justice, knowing full well that places such as the USA and the Irish republic were safe havens for Republican terrorists.
There was still another two hours before the end of that fateful 15 August and at around 22:00 hours, an IRA bombing unit attacked the Traveller’s Rest pub in the South-Eastern part of Belfast close to the Rep
ublican Twinbrook. A device inside a bag was left in the pub by a drinker who then left and was driven off by accomplices in a stolen car. The device exploded, demolishing part of the pub and killing Cecil Anderson (52) and injuring over 30 drinkers, some very badly. Only a blind man or a hypocrite could have argued that the PIRA ceasefire was still being maintained.
Norman ‘Mooch’ Kerr (28) was a disc jockey (DJ) from the Portadown area in Co Armagh and well known in the pubs and clubs of the town and surrounding districts. He was also, allegedly, an associate of Harris Boyle (see Chapter 7) who was killed in a UVF ‘own goal’ explosion when placing a bomb aboard the Miami Showband minibus the previous month. He was targeted by an IRA murder gang who traced him to the Carrick Bar in Armagh City. A gunman wearing a mask shot him several times as midnight approached; ‘Mooch’ died at the scene. The Provisional IRA is a many-tentacled beast, whose appendages reach far and wide. It was clear that PIRA were ruthlessly set on revenge for the Miami and those same tentacles of revenge would reach into many Loyalist crevasses before their bloodlust was sated.
William Daniel (27) was a rarity; a Catholic who lived in the predominantly Protestant Crumlin Road area; further, he was a Catholic in a relationship with a Protestant woman. On the night of the 16th, he was out with his partner and had just returned to her house at Glenbank Place on the north-western outskirts of Belfast and close to Ligoniel. As the two chatted in his car, masked gunmen from a UVF murder gang sneaked up to the car window and shot him in the head from very close range; he died six days later in hospital. He had previously been targeted by Loyalists who had attached a UVBT to his lorry, but it had failed to explode.
PIGS on parade! (Mark ‘C’)
ANNOYING THE INTERNEES
Steve Martin, Royal Artillery
In 1975 I did my first tour of NI; I was serving with 27 Medium Regiment RA at the time and I was attached to 6 Battery doing Prison Guard Force at Long Kesh. My first impression after landing at Aldergrove was to think how strange it was seeing troops patrolling in a British environment; I mean the houses and shops were the same as back home; people watched ‘Corrie and ‘Top of the Pops’ and it just felt weird.
We arrived at Long Kesh and were shown to our accommodation which were portacabins. I think there were about 30 of us to a portacabin. On my first stag we were driven around the outside of the prison to our guard tower; once inside we were there for two or three hours, or more if anything happened. We looked out over a view of Nissan huts in compounds all separated by fences and barbed wire; each compound contained a different terrorist faction. In the morning the internees were let out of their huts and some would hold parades similar to our own troop parades and then they would either lounge around or do physical training; I must admit it scared me at times when I saw how fit some of them were. One inmate I remember would just run around the compound for hours and hours; fit bastard he was.
Sangar: North Belfast. (Mark ‘C’)
I remember when stagging on – because it was summer time – the internees would climb on top of the Nissan huts and reflect the sun off mirrors etc into our faces in the guard towers. After a week or so of this, as you can imagine we were getting rather pissed-off; so to get our own back we bought catapults; I believe the Black Widow was a favourite. Personally I had a fishing ‘Baitapult’. When we went on stag we would pick up small pebbles or acquire some ball bearings from somewhere. If anybody tried to shine mirrors into your tower, the nearest guy to the compound doing the shining would catapult the pebbles at the guy holding the mirror; even if we missed the mirror we would hit the annoying twat and forced him off the roof. Very soon we got a message via the Prison Governor to stop firing things at the prisoners as it was annoying them. Annoying them; what do you think being blinded was doing to us?
On 20 August, Linda Boyle (20), who had been badly injured in the Bayardo Bar atrocity, died of her wounds. Just a few hours later, the UFF shot and killed John Finlay (36) as he walked from his home in the Republican Duncairns towards his place of work nearby. The gang spotted Mr Finlay on Brougham Street and approached him, as he looked up, they shot him and he crumpled to the ground; they shot him twice more in the head before driving in the direction of the Loyalist Tiger Bay.
Just a few short hours later, Republicans – likely to have been PIRA – walked into a second-hand car dealers in Glengormley, Co Antrim, close to Newtownabbey and approximately three miles north of Belfast. They shot dead Protestant David Davidson (30) one of the salesman, also endangering a four-year old child who was nearby and then another man, wounding him, as he repaired a car. Mr Davidson was killed as a direct reprisal for the murder of John Finlay that same morning; the deadly game of tit-for-tat continued.
On 22 August, the UVF launched a gun and bomb attack on McGleenan’s Bar on Upper English Street, Armagh. One gunman opened fire while another planted the bomb, which exploded as they ran to a getaway car; the building collapsed, killing two innocent Catholics and mortally wounding a third man; dozens were badly injured. Those killed were the eponymous John McGleenan (45) and Patrick Hughes (30); Thomas Morris (22) was terribly injured in the blast and remained in a coma until he died on 27 August. The bar was Catholic-owned and all the dead and injured were Catholics.
Within 48 hours of the UVF attack on McGleenan’s Bar, their blood lust still not sated, the Loyalist murder gang struck again, this time killing two Catholics who had just returned from a GAA game in Dublin. The Gaelic Athletic Association (Irish: Cumann Lúthchleas Gael) is an Irish and international amateur sporting and cultural organisation which focuses primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of Hurling, Gaelic football, handball and rounders. To the irrational and blind, Catholic-hating Loyalists, the GAA was synonymous with Republicanism and attracted the same venom which they had previously reserved for PIRA. As two friends travelled through Newtownhamilton, they were stopped at a roadblock purporting to be an official Security Force VCP. With chilling echoes of the UVF’s bogus checkpoint near Newry just three weeks earlier, the ‘soldiers’ were in fact a Loyalist murder gang. The two men were abducted and murdered, both being shot in the head at close range. Colm McCartney (22) and John Farmer (22) were two innocent GAA supporters and both died instantly.
On the following day, the UVF lost one its members, when Robert McCreight (21) was killed by an ‘internal disciplinary’ squad. It was alleged that he had been speaking with the UFF’s political wing, the UDA. He was telephoned at work and ordered to meet other UVF members near Newtownabbey. He was abducted on arrival and taken to Templepatrick, Co Antrim where he was cold-bloodedly shot in the head and his body dumped on farmland. Templepatrick is situated halfway between Belfast Lough and Lough Neagh.
On the 26th, the UVF attacked a petrol station at Shore Road in North Belfast, close to where the busy M2 motorway now speeds traffic to the north of the city. A man was sitting in a lorry when he was shot at point-blank range. The Catholic lorry-driver died of his injuries on 8 October.
August was turning into another bloody month and there were more Troubles-related deaths to come in the last five days of that month. On the same day as the death in hospital of the last McGleenan’s Bar victim, the UVF deliberately targeted a man whom their flawed intelligence system claimed to be a Republican. In fact, the victim had no known paramilitary links and the death was just another perverted sectarian murder. John Barry (42) lived at The Crescent at Erinvale, Finaghy in South Belfast. He was at home when he got up to answer his front door; as he approached, he was shot through the glass panelling and died within seconds. The UVF killers escaped in a stolen car.
Baton Rounds – or ‘rubber bullets’ in popular speak – were an essential part of the British soldier’s armoury during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Rubber bullets are rubber or rubber-coated projectiles that can be fired from either standard firearms or dedicated riot guns. They are intended to be a non-lethal alternative to metal projectiles. Like other similar projec
tiles made from plastic, wax, and wood, rubber bullets may be used for short range practice and animal control, but are most commonly associated with use in riot control and to disperse rioters. These types of projectiles are more correctly called baton rounds. Such kinetic impact munitions are meant to cause pain but not serious injury; in short, they are expected to produce contusions and abrasions. Tragically, they also caused deaths during the Troubles. On the afternoon of the 28th, soldiers were sent to control rioting at Cullingtree Road, close to Albert Street Mill in Belfast.
Cullingtree Road was an important cut through from Albert Street to Grosvenor Road and it was important that the road was kept open. Around 60 young people began stoning soldiers and an order was given to use baton rounds. Stephen Geddis (10) was tragically hit in the head and mortally wounded. He was rushed to the nearby RVH where he sadly died the following day. Sinn Fein, the apologists for PIRA, claimed that the young child had been hit from very close range rather than from a ricochet which the Army and RUC stated. The truth will probably be never known, but whatever the reason, another innocent child was dead.