The Information Commissioner’s Office has just upheld a complaint about the infamous bombing of McGurk’s bar in Belfast. The complaint was made against Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI). It concerned the discovery of the covert British Army “ambush observation post” in the vicinity of McGurk’s Bar on the night of the Massacre. The overwhelming odds are that the post was manned by a unit of the notorious MRF on the night. The MRF was a covert unit set up to confront the IRA by Brigadier (later General, Sir) Frank Kitson. It engaged in surveillance and assassination. The British state has been – and continues to be – severely embarrassed by the actions of the MRF. It has denied for decades that it had an assassination role. Whenever the MRF has been attacked in the press, the defence raised by the British state is that it was little more than an organisation that engaged in the surveillance of suspected terrorists. When an organisation lies for decades, one can – I hope – be forgiven for becoming cynical and suspicious. I am deeply suspicious about the lies the British State has been spewing about the observation post which was located near McGurks bar and another licensed premises allegedly frequented by members of the Official IRA. My concerns are heightened by the fact the British state has been lying about every facet of the McGurk atrocity for decades. A detailed account of some of this deception can be found by clicking this link The McGurk’s Bar cover-up. Heath’s Faustian pact. How a British prime minister covered up a UVF massacre in the hope of acquiring Unionist votes to enable the UK join the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU. In summary, a UVF gang planned to attack a pub which they believed was frequented by Official IRA volunteers. The plan was thwarted by the presence of guards who were posted outside the pub. The bombers opted instead to attack McGurk’s bar which was nearby. Eleven people were killed. Kitson and the RUC went into cover-up mode immediately. For reasons which appear perplexing – at least on the surface – they pretended that the bomb was one made by the IRA which had exploded prematurely inside the building; moreover, that the bomb was in transit, the intention to attack another venue entirely. The cover-up was expansive. It employed numerous individuals on both sides of the Irish Sea. Propagandists (probably Hugh Mooney of the infamous IRD) prepared scripts containing questions and answers for a recital of lies to be performed in the House of Commons. It is impossible to think of a more blatant attempt to mislead Parliament than this. Boris Johnson’s deceit pales in comparison. The organisation, Paper Trail, has shown that not only was this deception executed, but that additional scripts were prepared. The extra lines were not spoken as the public had swallowed the deception that the attack was an IRA ‘own goal’. The Tory Party and Official Unionist party, then led by Brian Faulkner, had a motive for disseminating the fiction about the IRA ‘own goal”: they did not want public pressure brought to bear on the Tory government to intern Loyalist paramilitaries. At the time, the British government was interning Republicans but not Loyalists. (Internment was arrest and detention without trial.) For decades, the families of the victims have called upon the British government to release all of the files they have about the atrocity. Nothing less than a full judicial inquiry is merited. Britain will not do so voluntarily. If the proposed legacy legislation is defeated, US Congressional pressure should be sought to bring about an inquiry into McGurks. In the absence of an inquiry, it is inevitable that speculation will fill the void. If the British state feels that this speculation is unfair, it has no one to blame but itself. One possible scenario which explains all the lies is that the MRF was the mastermind behind the attempt to bomb the pub which they believed was frequented by the Official IRA. They may have prepared the bomb, or at least helped in its preparation. At least one member of the UVF gang could have been working with them. In this scenario, the MRF agent inside the gang was not able to stop his colleagues from attacking McGurks after they became frustrated waiting outside the perceived Official IRA pub. In this scenario, it is easy to understand why figures such as Brigadier Kitson, the RUC and an array of ‘useful idiots’ in the House of Commons, became embroiled in a sordid cover-up and smear campaign that continues to this day. The possibility that Kitson was behind the bombing, does not undermine or contradict the theory that the cover-up was designed to avoid the internment of Loyalists. Sadly, both theories dovetail perfectly. There are even more sinister possibilities: the plan might have been to bomb the alleged Official IRA-frequented pub and either {i} portray it as an Official IRA own goal, or {ii} pretend the bomb was placed by the Provisional IRA in order to stimulate a feud between the Officials and the Provisionals. This is not as far-fetched as it seems. I have spoken directly to a Special Military Intelligence Unit officer who was active in Belfast in the 1970s. He told me how he once lifted guns from an Official IRA arms dump planted them with a Provisional IRA cache. Next, British intelligence leaked the whereabouts of the stolen weapons to spark a feud between the two wings of the IRA. This sort of divide and conquer tactic was straight out of Kitson’s play book. The Official and Provisional wings did engage in a murderous feud in the 1970s. If a judicial inquiry into McGurks is ever established, the terms of reference should be wide enough to explore all of the foregoing possibilities by references to the archives of the British Army at HQNI Lisburn, the MoD, MRF, MI5 at the Home Office, MI6 and
