Patterns of Evidence III - "Because he was a Protestant": Sectarian PIRA Murders in the 1970s

It may surprise many readers of this blog but Republicans have been successful to a degree in maintaining the fiction that they weren’t sectarian. Look up sectarian / sectarianism in the index of a book about the PIRA and you will often find yourselves directed to pages dealing with Loyalist murderers. 

Sectarianism within the PIRA campaign is surprisingly frequently overlooked or minimised.

The PIRA liked to present an image to the world that it was better than the loyalist murder gangs which often went out to “shoot a taig”. Loyalists murderers simply couldn’t - as the PIRA did - target off duty members of the security forces. Hence the pool of “legitimate targets” for Republicans was much wider. They claimed they shot the shopkeeper, the milkman, lorry driver, the farmer, the bin man, etc not because they were Protestants but because they were off duty members of the security forces.

Nonetheless, there are plenty of examples when the PIRA terror campaign targeted people simply because of their faith. To keep the blogpost to manageable length and (hopefully) coherent in terms of a piece of writing I have limited it to some cases in North and West Belfast and Co Armagh in the 1970s. I have not included victims of the PIRA who were members of the security forces. The material is also largely limited to cases I have already tweeted about (i.e. there is little covered after June in any year). It certainly isn’t an exhaustive list of sectarian PIRA murders in North and West Belfast or Co Armagh in the 70s.

Some of the North and West Belfast PIRA sectarian murders in the 1970s

52 year old George Walmsley left Ligoniel Orange Hall just after 11pm on 2nd March 1973. Mr Walmsley, his lodge secretary, had left the hall before the meeting concluded because he was worried about his 83 year old mother who had lost her husband the previous week.

Another man who was with him and was hit 9 times said:
"I felt a terrible pain and I fell to the ground. I remember shouting back into the hall to them to stay in".

Initial reports said the fire came from a passing car but there were subsequent suggestions that there was a sniper at the corner of Limehill Street. 

The attack, which Orange Grand Master Rev. Martin Smyth described as "a brutal murder with all the marks of premeditation”, was never claimed although no one seriously questioned that it was the IRA which was responsible. 

IRA murder victim John McCready

Three years later, on 27th January 1976, John McCready enjoyed a meal of fish and chips with his wife and son. It was a simple way to celebrate Mrs McCready’s birthday. John later went out for a walk but never came home. 

Speaking to the News Letter in 2017 his son recalled how he got a phone call about midnight to say his father had had an accident. In fact he’d been shot. A UDR Greenfinch had given him first aid as he lay on the ground and later accompanied him in the ambulance. She was able to inform the family that John had told her he had been walking home when a car stopped and asked where he was going. Giving his address as Westland Road identified him as Protestant. He was in terrible pain in the ambulance, telling her he was going to die and asking what his wife would do without him.

Martin McCready recalled how he and his mother drove to the Royal to see John before he went in for surgery:

“As he lay there his lungs were full of blood and his breathing was laboured. I could only hear him saying ‘look after your mum for me’.” 

He died 10 days later, aged 56. His wife Renee was plagued with nightmares for years afterwards and died in 2015.

Again the murder was never claimed but fingerprints on the number plate of the getaway car led to a 17-year-old who remained silent during police interviews. The RUC believed he was the IRA man responsible. 

On 20th April 1977 a 100lb UVF bomb exploded as mourners gathered for the funeral of IRA man Trevor McKibben in Ardoyne. 19 year old Sean Campbell was killed and another man, John McBride, fatally injured.

The following day 24 year old father of two Brian Smith from Ballysillan was shot as he and three workmates walked along Snugville Street in the Shankill. Two other men were injured. They were on their way to a bank to cash their pay checks. It was in retaliation for the bombing the day before and claimed under the cover name Republican Action Force. Of course Brian Smith had nothing to do with the bombing the pervious day. He left children aged 4 and 6 months.

There are many other openly sectarian shootings carried out by the IRA in North/West Belfast in the period like that of Kenneth Conway, a 20 year old butcher shot on the junction of Woodvale Road and Glendale Street in June 1975 and dying two days later, or William Martin and Roy McIlwaine  shot outside the Glenburn Social Club in May 1976, which could be cited.

But shootings weren’t the only form of sectarian attack carried out by the IRA in North/West Belfast. 

In December 1971 the IRA bombed the Balmoral Furniture Company showroom on the Shankill Road.

IRA murder victim 17 month old Colin Nichol

The bomb resulted in the murder of four civilians, including one of the youngest victims of the IRA campaign, 17 month old Colin Nichol. The others were 2 year old Tracey Munn, 70 year old Hugh Bruce and a 29 year old Catholic, Harold King.

Northern Ireland was reminded of the case when Colin Nichol’s father resigned from the Victim’s Forum - a body set up to represent victims from across the Province - after he discovered that the Forum’s membership included a convicted PIRA bomber. (Incidentally another attack on the Balmoral company resulted in the arrest of PIRA Hunger Striker Bobby Sands. Sands was one of three terrorists arrested not far from the scene of the October 1976 bombing of the company’s premises in Dunmurry and sentenced for possessing a gun.)

On 5th April 1975 a UVF bomb exploded at McLaughlin’s pub on the New Lodge Road. 18 year old Kevin Kane and 20 year old Michael Coyle were murdered while seven other innocents were injured, one very seriously, when a gas-cylinder bomb left by a young blonde girl in the front porch exploded without warning. The coroner described those who carried out the bombing as “lunatics who use a satanic approach”.

Less than three hours later two IRA men walked into the Mountainview Tavern on the Shankill.  Like McLaughlin’s the bar was packed with people watching horse racing - it was the day of the Grand National. One of the terrorists was armed with an automatic pistol and began shooting. As people dived for cover from the gunman a box was left inside the door and the fuse lit. Seconds later there was a flash followed by an explosion which killed four instantly with a fifth dying the following day. The force of the explosion brought the roof down on the packed bar.

A surviver described what happened in the incident which left 61 people injured:

“I was hurled to the floor. I felt my face opening and a pain in my arm. I tried to get up but I couldn’t because of the blood and beer on the floor.”

A woman claiming to be from the “Young Militant UDA”said they had carried out the attack and that it was aimed at the UVF.

Ironically, one of those murdered in the bombing, William Andrews, received a UDA funeral. None of the other victims of the bombing had links to any paramilitary group. And no one seriously questioned the RUC assertion at the inquest that the IRA were behind the bombing.

While the PIRA often simply didn’t claim such openly sectarian attacks, when their members got caught there could be no more pretence.

That’s what happened following the Bayardo Bar attack four months later on 13th August 1975.

Memorial to the victims of the Bayardo Bar attack: Linda Boyle (17), William Gracey (63), Samuel Gunning (55), Joanne McDowell (29) and Hugh Harris (21).

In an article for the Belfast Telegraph in 2011 Alan Murray recorded:

More than 50 people were injured when the old pub structure crumbled, engulfing them in bricks, wooden joist frames, plaster and roof tiles.

Samuel Gunning was chatting to his brother-in-law, William Gracey, who worked in the bar, when the IRA unit arrived at Aberdeen Street in a stolen car and unleashed a fusillade of bullets from an automatic weapon, killing both men.

The gunman's accomplice then walked into the crowded bar and left a bag with a bomb inside it. Customers ran to the toilets in the hope of finding sanctuary, but the bomb exploded, trapping many beneath the rubble - just as the McGurk's bar bomb had done. Hugh Alexander Harris and Joanne McDowell were found dead beneath the rubble and, even though she was pulled alive from the debris, Linda Boyle didn't survive her rescue.

The IRA had explained the attack on the Bayardo as an assault on a pub where individuals associated with the UVF relaxed and planned terrorist assaults against nationalists.

As they were driven away from the attack along Agnes Street, the IRA gang fired indiscriminately at a group of women and children queuing at a taxi rank.

Presumably, they, too, were suspected of planning UVF attacks. The Provisionals didn't admit responsibility for either attack, but in a statement three months previously its leadership had ominously warned that 'retaliatory and defensive actions' could be sanctioned after a loyalist attack was perpetrated.

Two days after the Bayardo massacre, Samuel Llewellyn - a Protestant who worked for Belfast City Council - was abducted and murdered by republicans on the Falls Road to where he had been despatched to ferry materials to board up buildings damaged in a loyalist bombing. He too, seemingly fell to the 'retaliatory' strategy prevailing within the IRA.

The Bayardo Bar attack wasn’t initially claimed by the PIRA but in May 1976 three men were convicted. One of them went on to become “officer commanding” of the PIRA prisoners in the Maze and as an article on The Pensive Quill notes: 
"Nobody in Crumlin Road Prison, where I first met him, regarded Skeet as a member of the North Belfast Catholic Reaction Force. He was IRA to his bones."

A year after the Bayardo Bar bomb Robert Groves, a 50 year old electrician, and Edward McMurray, a 41 year old labourer, were murdered when the IRA bombed the Times Bar on the junction of York Road and Mountcollyer Road. A 10 lb bomb was left in the corner of the bar and injured 18 in what the coroner called a “really horrific and disgusting” attack.

In response to the Times Bar bombing the UVF attacked the Chlorane Bar in which five civilians were murdered - three Catholics and two Protestants.

Some of the PIRA sectarian murders in Co Armagh in the 1970s

Nakedly sectarian attacks such as this were not limited to urban Belfast. I’ve previously blogged about three examples from Co Fermanagh. Let’s look at some examples from Co Armagh.

Newspaper report on the murder of 3 Protestants shot coming home from a dog show.

On 3rd June 1975 John Presha, David Thompson and Alfred Doyle were coming home from the Ulster Canine Association Show. What happened isn’t exactly clear but at the inquest a year later a man told how as he crossed the border near Newry he was flagged down at what appeared to be an Army checkpoint. The man, who was waved through, said: “The man didn’t have an English accent and his face was not blackened”.

The car in which Presha, Thompson and Doyle were travelling in was discovered 150 yards on the northern side of the border around midnight when others returning from the dog show came upon what they thought to be a car accident. On closer examination the car was found to be riddled with 60 bullet holes.

Alfred Doyle was a part time UDR sergeant and the only one of the three to have security force connections. He had lost his brother-in-law Robert Buckley, an RUC officer with two daughters aged three and one, to the PIRA terror campaign in February 1971. 

Doyle’s wife was expecting the couple’s first child at the time of the murder.

Again the IRA denied involvement. However, as the RUC pointed out at the inquest the weapons employed in the attack (three Armalite rifles were used and the full twenty round magazine of each emptied into the car) “could be tied in with the type used in other attacks in the south Armagh area by the IRA”.

Robert Chambers, John Bryans, Joseph Lemmon, James McWhirter, Robert Freeburn, Robert Walker, Reginald Chapman, Kenneth Worton, John McConville and Walter Chapman - 10 men shot by PIRA murderers after their van was stopped on the way home from work because they were Protestants.

Less than a year later there was another, more infamous, roadside multiple murder when 11 men were lined up and shot at Kingsmill after the only Catholic in the group was told to “get down the road and don’t look back”. 10 of the men died with one, remarkably, surviving. Earlier this year he gave a first hand account of what happened that night on RTE radio (if you haven't yet heard it you should give 20 minutes to the video at that link).

Again the attack was never claimed - and to this day is listed as the work of the "South Armagh Reaction Force" on the CAIN website. It is worth noting that while CAIN is in many ways an excellent resources it fails to attribute a number of attacks to the PIRA which clearly were the work of the group.

The sensitivity of Republicans to accusations of sectarianism is seen in the fact that Sinn Fein to this day maintain that the PIRA was not involved in Kingsmill. Responding to the Historical Enquires Team report on the massacre in 2011 which pointed the finger at the PIRA, Mitchel McLaughlin said: 

“I am prepared to accept the evidence if I have access to that independent process, I am prepared, even though I believe and have believed up to this point the denials by the IRA that they were involved in it. If someone has proof that the denial does not stand up to examination then I would be obliged to consider it as a republican and I would, because I do not believe republican principles permit people to be involved in sectarian activity”.

Sinn Fein maintain this denial in spite of the fact that the weapons used in the attack were also used in a large number of attacks claimed by the PIRA including the the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. 

4 of the victims of the Tullyvallen Massacre - William Herron (68), John Johnston (80), James McKee (73) and Ronnie McKee (40). A fifth victim of the attack, Nevin McConnell (48), isn't pictured here.

Another blatantly sectarian mass murder took place in Tullyvallen on 1st September 1975 when the PIRA attacked an Orange Hall murdering five. The oldest of the victims was 80 year old John Johnstone. Again it was never claimed but guns used at Kingsmill were employed in this massacre as well.

These mass murders, while not remembered as they should be, are relatively well known even today. While researching cases for the twitter account through I’ve often found the details of forgotten individual murders at least as harrowing. 

Murders like that of Robert Mitchell.

Around 9:30pm on the evening of 26th February 1977 two gunmen forced their way into the home the 69 year old shared with his elderly sisters outside Newry.

Robert was not at home so 72 year old Ada Mitchell opened the door:

“I screamed to attract attention as I was forced back into the hall. One of the men caught me by the hair and dashed my head against the glass panel in the porch”.

The sisters were held hostage as the gunmen watched TV waiting for the retired grosser, Orangeman, justice of the peace and vice-chair of South Down Unionist Association to return home. 

When, shortly after 11, Robert did he was shot in the hallway. One of his sisters recounted what happened next: 

“When I went into the hall I saw my brother lying on the floor and realised there was nothing I could do. I shouted at one of the men, “You’ve shot him”, and he struck me in the mouth with his fist, knocking me down over my brother.”

The other sister, 89 year old Elizabeth Mitchell, made her way to the home of a local minister to raise the alarm once the IRA men were gone.

Let’s take one last Co Antrim example.

IRA murder victim William Clarke, murdered by the PIRA "because he was a Protestant"

On 2nd April 1977 31 year old father of three Hugh William Clarke was digging drains at a farm near Mullaghbawn when he was abducted by three armed masked men. His body was later discovered on the roadside near Crossmaglen. He’d been shot three times in the head.

In a statement the IRA claimed he had been involved in the killing of IRA man John Francis Green, a claim which was dismissed. 

SDLP representative Paddy O’Hanlon gave a more plausible explanation which also provided me with a title for this blog: 

“He was murdered by the IRA because he was a Protestant as well as being a man who worked for a living. The perpetrators of this foul deed, like their compatriots in the UVF, would crucify Christ if he appeared in the north of Ireland this week, and the leadership of the IRA show no hesitation in supplying the nails.”

So Many More

Lots more could be said. 

I’ve limited myself in terms of both geographic area and date and this isn't close to a comprehensive catalog of sectarian murders in the 1970s even in those areas.

Had I been less restrictive I could have considered the Coleraine Bombing in 1973 in which a group of Protestant pensioners were murdered, the La Mon Bombing in 1973 when the PIRA napalmed the Irish Collie Club dinner and dance in East Belfast murdering 12 (researching the tweets for that one kept me up at night), the Dobson brothers murdered in their egg packing factory in May 1976, Herbert Burrows murdered when a bomb went off as he polished a limo for a wedding, Enniskillen in 1987, what the PIRA intended to do on the same day as the Enniskillen bombing in Tullyhommon when they attempted to bomb a Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade parade (i.e. youth organisations for children aged from 3 to the early teens), Jillian Johnston in 1988, the Shankill in 1993, …..

Well you get the idea.

While Loyalist murderers had no qualms about claiming their bloody sectarian handiwork the PIRA often used a cover name or simply didn’t claim the murders at all. 

They weren’t big on truth.

While some of these murders were set in a context of loyalist attacks some were not. Pure sectarian hatred was the motive behind the cases listed above.

Other cases - such as the murder of Irish Senator Billy Fox which I intend to write about in the future - display ample evidence that the PIRA were unquestionably a deeply sectarian organisation.

I’m aware this blog has been a long and dark read so let’s close with a bit of poetry about a bright summer's day in a quiet Ulster village in 1972:

The Sperrins surround it, the Faughan flows by

At each end of Main Street the hills and the sky

The small town of Claudy at ease in the sun

Last July in the morning, a new day begun.

How peaceful and pretty, if the moment could stop

McIlhenny is straightening things in his shop

His wife is outside serving petrol and then

A child takes a cloth to a big window-pane.

And McCloskey is taking the weight off his feet

McClelland and Miller are sweeping the street

Delivering milk at the Beaufort Hotel

Young Temple's enjoying his first job quite well.

And Mrs. McLaughlin is scrubbing her floor

Artie Hone's crossing the street to a door

Mrs. Brown, looking around for her cat

Goes off up an entry, what's strange about that?

Not much, but before she comes back to the road

The strange car parked outside her house will explode

And all of the people I've mentioned outside

Will be waiting to die or already have died.

An explosion too loud for your eardrums to bear

Young children squealing like pigs in the square

All faces chalk-white or streaked with bright red

And the glass, and the dust, and the terrible dead.

For an old lady's legs are blown off, and the head

Of a man's hanging open, and still he's not dead

He is shrieking for mercy while his son stands and stares

And stares, and then suddenly - quick - disappears.

And No! little Katherine Aiken is dead

Mrs. McLaughlin is pierced through the head

Meanwhile to Dungiven the killers have gone

And they're finding it hard to get through on the phone.

A note on sources (and the lack thereof)

Online articles used to compile this piece are linked to in the relevant places. That aside the material is either drawn from Lost Lives by McKittrick et al or The British Newspaper Archive.

An appeal for information about the subject matter via the twitter account proved fruitless and it simply could not have been written if I hadn't have access to Lost Lives.

A Legacy of Tears: 30 Years of Protestant Suffering at the Hands of Irish Republican Terrorists in South and North Armagh: 1969-1999 by David Patterson is a worthwhile book but apart from Kingsmill it largely focuses on murders where the victims were connected to the security forces.

As was the case when it came to writing my blog about the murders of some Protestants in south Fermanagh I felt that there was a telling absence of resources on the subject matter. There are books about the UDR, the RUC and (thanks to Ken Wharton) the Army but little that I know of on cases like those discussed above.

If anyone knows of additional resources on the cases dealt with above please email me at onthisdayni@gmail.com , message the Facebook page or send me a PM on Twitter. 

If there are any factual errors I welcome correction.