Henry McDonald and Owen Bowcott
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 16.05 GMT
A report into one of the biggest atrocities of the Troubles has severely criticised the Royal Ulster Constabulary for being biased in its investigation – but cleared the force of actively colluding with the loyalist bombers.
Northern Ireland’s police ombudsman, Al Hutchinson, has released the results of an inquiry into the circumstances of the McGurk’s bar bombing in 1971. Fifteen people including two children died in the attack by the Ulster Volunteer Force in the Catholic New Lodge area close to Belfast’s city centre.
Up until the Omagh bomb in 1998, which killed 29 people, the pub bombing was the biggest single loss of life in the Troubles.
Hutchinson’s report found the RUC was so biased in its belief that the explosion was the result of an IRA “own goal” that it ruled out the possibility that loyalists were behind the atrocity.
In his conclusion, the ombudsman said there was an “investigative bias” in relation to the mass murder. He had originally intended to publish the report last summer but withdrew it after it was criticised by survivors and the families of those who died. Its original conclusion that, on the balance of probabilities, the police conducted a “reasonably thorough investigation” was criticised by some people who called it “patently ridiculous”.
In a new report published on Monday, Hutchinson said the RUC’s “investigative bias” undermined “both the investigation and any confidence the bereaved families had in obtaining justice”. He found that police gave selective briefings to the government and to the media that republican paramilitaries were behind the attack.
Shortly after the incident, the then Unionist home affairs minister, John Taylor, repeated the false claim that an IRA unit had stopped off for a drink with the bomb before taking it to another location. This line was peddled in loyalist publications by extreme loyalist and British army agent John McKeague.
Most of the British media including the Guardian bought into the erroneous own goal theory.
Hutchinson said this had caused great distress over the years to the families of the victims. He said he could not find any explanation as to why successive chief constables had not tackled “this erroneous perception”. He called on the current chief constable in Northern Ireland, Matt Baggott, to do so.
But he found no evidence that the RUC helped the passage of the UVF bomb team or police helped the bombers get away.
In 1978, the UVF member Robert Campbell was convicted of his role in the attack.
In a statement issued through the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry, the families and relatives of those who died or were injured in the blast said: “We broadly welcome those findings, particularly that there was investigative bias by the RUC, but disagree with his finding that there was no collusion. Before going any further, we state that although the bombing took place nearly 40 years ago, we all still live every day with the pain and loss inflicted on us.
“That pain was exacerbated by a deliberate lie, created in the aftermath of their horrific deaths, that our loved ones had been responsible for the explosion. The so-called IRA own goal theory added intolerable insult to our unbearable injury and grief.”
The McGurk’s bar victims group added: “We lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, grandfathers, grandmothers, good neighbours and friends. Those who were injured have also had to live with horrific consequences and the lies told about them. The lie that smeared the good names of the dead and injured immediately afterwards, and which was spread by the RUC, British army and leading Stormont politicians, compounded that tragedy and exculpated the guilty.”
Paul O’Connor from the Pat Finucane Centre said the fact that police and the British army briefed the media with the own goal theory in the hours after the bombing had prevented police properly investigating loyalist involvement.
“What the police did at the time was investigate what they claimed was an IRA bomb. The question is – did they think it was an IRA bomb?,” he said. “What role did British army HQ play at the time and what was the context for this?”