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PAGE 21
SHOWDOWN
40 years ago this man killed
my mum, sister and uncle. On
Friday I finally came face to
face with him to ask him why
A FAMILY TORN APART: John and his dad with his mum and sister, who were killed in the McGurk’s Bar bomb
CONFRONTATION:
Bomber Robert
James Campbell
SUNDAY LIFE REPORTER JOHN McGURK RELIVES
THE DAY HE WAS CAUGHT UP IN THE EXPLOSION
IN HIS FAMILY’S BAR THAT KILLED 15 PEOPLE ...
AND CONFRONTS ONE OF THE MEN RESPONSIBLE
TURN TO PAGES 4,5,6&7 FOR THE FULL STORY
www.sundaylife.co.uk
4 | NEWS
Sunday Life 27 FEBRUARY 2011
THE McGURK’S BAR
MOMENT
How I came face
to face with the
man who killed
my mum, sister
and uncle in our
bar 40 years ago
A TRUE GENTLEMAN: John McGurk with his forgiving father Patrick
A SIMPLE SORRY
WOULD BE NICE
JOHN McGURK
“FORGIVE, but never forget’
“ — that is the remarkable
legacy of Christian charity,
humanity and love left by my
father, Patrick McGurk.
“I wish this sacrifice to be
offered up, that peace may
prevail in the community,
that it wouldn’t cause friction and furthermore that, as
the Good Book says, ‘Father
forgive them’.’’
These are the simple but
powerful words uttered by
my father — only one day
after loyalist paramilitaries
murdered his wife, his 14year-old daughter, brotherin-law and 12 customers,
whom he called friends, in
the McGurk’s Bar atrocity on
December 4, 1971.
His moving display of true
Christian charity made me —
his youngest son — literally
gasp for breath after UTV’s
Jane Loughrey discovered
the footage for her balanced,
yet deeply touching news
report last week.
I gasped with emotion as I
saw my father’s face, bearing
thick dark stitches to close
the bloody wounds inflicted
by UVF terrorists.
But it was his calm
strength and lack of bitterness which made me catch
my breath even more so, with
sheer admiration and love
for this most extraordinary
of ‘ordinary’ men.
He coped with the unimaginable pain for the rest of his
life with a dignified reluctance to talk about the night
he lost virtually everything,
except me, my two brothers
— and his faith.
That silent pain was compounded by insinuations that
the explosion had been an
‘IRA own-goal’ and that
decent folk were somehow
responsible for their own
deaths.
The
strangest
thing
though is that my late
father’s TV interview also
made me think of PSNI Chief
Constable Matt Baggott.
Both men share deeply
ingrained Christian faiths
and an unswerving dedication to family, church and
civic duty.
At the time of the
McGurk’s massacre my father
was 50 years of age – Mr
Baggott’s age now.
The Police Ombudsman’s
report into the RUC investigation last Monday found
there had been “investigative
bias” and advised Mr Baggott
to say sorry for the actions of
the force after the atrocity.
Although former Stormont
security
minister
Paul
Goggins apologised in 2008,
sorry seems to be the hardest
word for Mr Baggott to say —
in Northern Ireland anyway.
Mr Baggott also dismissed
the Police Ombudsman Al
Hutchinson’s finding that
there had been “investigative
bias” within the RUC, inexplicably claiming that “several” other reports had reached
different conclusions.
Police Ombudsman Al
Hutchinson displayed a
refreshingly open and honest
ability to admit to past mistakes by apologising to the
McGurk bombing relatives
for his first, highly-criticised
and hastily withdrawn report
into the atrocity.
Surely Mr Baggott, it’s not
too much to ask you to say
that simple word - “sorry”.
[email protected]
JOHN McGURK
TIME TO REPENT: Robert James Campbell was convicted of 16 murders in 1978
THIS was the moment I had
dreaded but waited for all of my
life — staring into the eyes of
the man who murdered my
mother, 14-year-old sister and
uncle.
Robert James Campbell is the
only person to have been convicted of the loyalist murders of
my loved ones and the 12 other
innocent
victims
of
the
McGurk’s Bar atrocity.
He also murdered Protestant
workman John Morrow, who
had been driving five Catholic
workmates through Ligoneil in
1976 when UVF gunmen
sprayed the van with bullets.
Jimmy Campbell, as he’s
known, was convicted of 16
murders in 1978 and served 15
years in prison — less than one
year for each of the lives we
know he took.
He also inflicted nearly 40
years of pain and loss upon my
family, relatives and friends of
those who perished on that terrible night.
But since his release in the
early 90s he’s never even been
photogaphed by the media –
until now – and he has persistently refused to co-operate with
official inquiries.
He has always resisted pleas
for him to name the rest of the
murder gang.
But could I change his mind
and change our lives for the better, if I confronted him and
actually managed to persuade
him to help us and possibly save
his own soul?
That key question hung heavy
in my mind as I found myself
knocking on the door of his
small terraced house in north
Belfast.
It was like a countdown to
catharsis as I stood there for five
minutes, rapping on the cheap
aluminium knocker.
I don’t know why I persisted.
But my gut instinct told me that
he was there.
Then I peered through his living room window. And there he
was — staring at me motionless,
his glasses glinting in the light
of the television.
It was a look which gave me
the strangest feeling. It was a
gaze which seemed to say: “I’ve
been expecting you, after all
these years”.
I made a sign with my finger
for him to open the door.
Seconds later, there he was in a
shabby blue and grey jumper
and grey sweat pants — greeting
me with a sharp “hello”.
Here, in front of me, was the
man of my nightmares — the
man who had mercilessly killed
my mother and sister and 13
others and nearly killed me,
after being encased in a premature tomb of walls and rubble.
“Hello Mr Campbell,” I said.
“My name is John McGurk. I am
one of the survivors of the
McGurk’s bar bomb. I’d like to
talk to you.”
He nodded at me and ushering me into his hall.
Then, her face flushed with
anxiety and anger, his wife
www.sundaylife.co.uk
27 FEBRUARY 2011 Sunday Life
NEWS | 5
BOMBING 40 YEARS ON
OF TRUTH
me more about what happened
and about the others who carried out the barbaric bombing
with him. But eight times he
refused — repeating over and
over: “I can’t” or “I won’t”.
Rarely looking me in the eye,
he told me that he was “disgusted” with what he had done.
“Unfortunately, I can do nothing to help all those poor people
and all I can say is sorry,” he
said. “Sorry is only a wee word.
But it means a whole lot, you
know. That’s all I can do for you,
boss.”
I countered that — telling
him that he could do “so much
more”.
I told him he could have
proved his remorse by co-operating
with
the
Police
Ombudsman and Historical
Enquries Team reports — something which he refused to do.
But addressing my question
about
possible
collusion
between the UVF and the security forces, he said: “That particular incident... sorry, I actually
knew nothing about that, until
half an hour before it took place.
“And, as far as I know, it was
nothing to do with army, police
or anything, as far as I know.”
But when I asked him if he
was hinting that there could
have been collusion, he dismissed this, with a quick “no,
no”.
An elderly man now — wheezing with poor health — I could
tell that Campbell has a sense of
his own mortality.
Could it be, I wondered, that
he realises it is time to try to
make amends?
As I glanced at the photos of
sons and grandchildren on his
walls, I reflected on how he had
robbed all the families of the
McGurk’s bar bombing with one
of life’s most precious pleasures.
I reflected again on how he
had refused to tell me anything
about the other four men
allegedly involved in the atrocity — even though they are
reputed to be dead.
I reflected on his refusal to
consider meeting any of the
other relatives of the people he
had murdered, with an agitated:
“I just couldn’t handle it.”
Relatives to
meet Chief
Constable
RELATIVES of those killed in
the McGurk’s bar bombing are
to meet PSNI Chief Constable
Matt Baggott on Tuesday.
The meeting comes after
Northern Ireland’s top cop
caused a storm of controversy
following his reaction to the
Police Ombudsman’s report
into the RUC investigation of
the December 1971 loyalist
atrocity.
Mr Baggott questioned the
report’s finding that the RUC
had been guilty of
“investigative bias” because
they had been so focussed on
the idea that the IRA had been
responsible. He also stopped
short of accepting Police
Ombudsman Al Hutchinson's
recommendation to apologise
to the families for his force’s
actions.
And he claimed that there
were “no further investigative
opportunities” into the UVF
bomb attack which claimed the
lives of 15 people, including
two children.
It is believed that the
families will raise a number of
issues including new leads
unearthed from the RUC/PSNI’s
own files and presented in the
Ombudsman’s report.
DEEP SADNESS: John McGurk leaving Robert Campbell’s house (left and
right) and (main image) rescuers, soldiers and civilians, digging with bare
hands in the smoking rubble of McGurk’s bar in North Queen Street, Belfast
ordered me to get out.
But Campbell remonstrated:
“No, no, no, no. Not this one.
This one is different. Stay here.
Come on in.”
As I told him that I was there
to find out if he was genuinely
sorry for what he had done, he
put his arm on my shoulder and
repeated “I know, I know”.
It had been suggested to me
that this encounter could provide me with my own ‘five minutes of Heaven’, just like Jimmy
Nesbitt’s character confronting
Liam Neeson’s loyalist killer
character in the film of the same
name.
But what ensued for me was
15 minutes of limbo — as I witnessed an old man apologise to
me over and over again but
refuse to say more about what
happened.
As I listened to him, I
wavered between belief and
cynicism — and all emotions in
between.
There was still a steely
strength in his refusal to tell me
anything more.
Eight times I asked him to tell
CONTROVERSIAL: Matt Baggott
As he grasped my hand for a
second and third time, I
thought that he may truly be
sorry for what he did. Then the
75-year-old loyalist killer told
me that he “could not handle”
our meeting any longer.
But I told him: “It is very hard
for me. And you’ve also got to
understand that I am sure what
you are going through now is
nothing compared to what me
and the other families have
gone through for the 40 years.”
Then I gave him a final
opportunity to make his peace
with me.
And I knew that I was also
giving him the chance to do
something good for himself.
“I think that you could make
your peace by helping me and
those other people,” I told him.
But the man who murdered
so many, wouldn’t, or maybe
just couldn’t, take up that
chance of spiritual salvation.
Casting his eyes to the floor
and shaking his head, he whispered: “I can’t Mr McGurk. I am
very, very sorry... You are going
to have to leave me alone.”
Was he expressing sorrow for
me and the others whose lives
he ripped apart? Or was his sorrow motivated by a fear for himself?
As I left him, without a backwards glance, I suspected that it
was both.
During our encounter, he said
that he had asked God “many’s a
time” to forgive him and that he
thought God had forgiven him.
As I closed the killer’s door —
the man who had taken my
mother and sister away from me
— I thought about my father
and what he had always taught
me and my brothers.
By his Christian example, he
taught me to try and forgive
Robert James Campbell and the
men this killer protects to this
very day.
But my dad also reminded us
that God will judge us all, if we
do not show true repentance for
our sins, through our actions.
Mr Campbell, if you are reading Sunday Life, maybe you
should surely reflect upon this
today, before it is too late.
[email protected]
DAY MY CHILDHOOD WAS SHATTERED PAGES 6&7
REMEMBER
THE VICTIMS
FIFTEEN innocent people
ranging in ages from 13 to 73
were killed in the ‘no warning’
UVF bombing of McGurk’s bar,
near Belfast city centre on
December 4, 1971.
They were: Francis Bradley,
61, dock labourer. John Colton,
49, coach builder and part-time
barman at McGurk’s. James
Cromie, 13, schoolboy. Philip
Garry, 73, school lollipop man.
Kathleen ‘Kitty’ Irvine, 45,
mill worker and mother of five.
Her family is at the forefront of
the campaign to uncover the
truth about the tragedy.
Edward Kane, 25, married
man with a family. Thomas
Kane, 45, livestock drover.
Edward Keenan, 69, retired
dock labourer. Sarah Keenan,
58, wife of Edward.
Maria McGurk, 14,
schoolgirl. Philomena ‘Phyllis’
McGurk, 46, mother of Maria
and wife of bar owner.
Thomas McLaughlin, 55,
foreman labourer. David
Milligan, 52, dock labourer
James Smyth, 55, docker.
Robert Charles Spotswood, 38,
slater.
www.sundaylife.co.uk
6 | NEWS
Sunday Life 27 FEBRUARY 2011
THE McGURK’S BAR
My life was shattered
took away my mum,
JOHN McGURK
BEING buried alive by a UVF bomb in
my father’s bar is buried deep, very
deep in my consciousness.
Memories of staring death in the
face in the utter blackness of a collapsed home — a premature tomb —
are locked away somewhere inside me.
It’s mental survival by necessity —
the human spirit determined to get on
with life and make the best of what
you have.
But even 40 years on, lightning
quick flashes of sheer horror can occasionally strike my senses.
My happy childhood memories
before the bombing will forever be
darkened by the murderous shadow of
what happened on that cold December
night just three weeks before
Christmas 1971.
Singing for my mother and aunts;
sleeping peacefully in my dad’s arms
on a Sunday night; great ‘bucket ‘n’
spade’ holidays to the seaside; playing
football on the deserted city streets are
all blasted sideways by the catastrophic consequences of that merciless loyalist murder attack.
That particular Saturday night, I
was playing table soccer with my
brother Gerard and his friends Seamus
Kane and Jimmy Cromie in the sitting
room above my dad’s bar. I was 10
years old.
I could hear the happy chattering of
the customers, if I pressed an ear to
the floor.
Suddenly, there was an ominous
boom and a horrific rumbling noise.
Then came a chasm of hellish roars;
swirling, gushing wind — a vortex of
nightmares sucking me in and tumbling me around and around in kaleidoscopic freefall.
Nothingness,
unconsciousness.
Then an awakening into the unimaginable — blackness. Was I dreaming?
Was I dead? Furious scrambling, desperate attempts to find out where I
was.
In the white heat of pure terror, I
realised that I was trapped under
slabs of concrete and tons of rubble
— walls which used to be my happy
family home.
I was utterly alone, trapped in the
abyss, roaring for help; and smelling
gas as I feverishly recited my childhood prayers over and over again.
Any movement was dangerous.
Sand and grit and dust would fall and
sprinkle itself onto my body and into
my parched mouth. I knew that I desperately needed to preserve my voice
— my only lifeline to be heard, to be
saved from suffocation or choking.
I could feel our old wine red velvet
settee upturned with my left hand.
Maybe its size had helped shield me
from death.
Was it 30 minutes that I was
trapped and unable to move in the
HAPPIER TIMES: John McGurk, aged 10, and (above) inside McGurk’s Bar and (below) the outside the bar
REPORTER JOHN McGURK RECALLS THE DAY
dark? Was it 40 minutes? Was it an
hour or two hours? It felt like an eternity.
I could hear noises which filled me
with hope — the shouts of local people
and emergency services clawing their
way through the rubble.
But the agonising sounds of others
trapped in the debris also filled my
senses with dread.
In the middle of that nightmare, I
thought that I could hear a tiny female
voice. All it could whimper was a weak
‘help’.
It sounded like the low wail of a
ghost, calling directly to me. Was it my
sister Maria? I roared her name over
and over again. But there was no
response, no recognition... just a dwindling, weaker call, until I could hear
nothing more above the noise of others literally pleading for their lives.
Eventual rescue for me came like a
coffin lid being opened — with dirt
and rubble cascading on top of me.
But those minutes of salvation
would later be tinged with the heartbreaking sadness that the man I
remember pulling me from the wreckage, John O’Hanlon, was later tortured
and killed by a UVF gang just seven
months later.
Other slivers of memory still peek
through today from that night.
I remember the overwhelming emotion of my injured father holding my
hand in the back of a shared ambulance and me wondering why a priest
was anointing me.
Memories of the subsequent days
are confined to some black corner of
my mind.
But at times like this, when I reluctantly prise open that Pandora’s box, I
can recall other moments of the day
that robbed me and my brothers of our
mother, sister, uncle — and our childhood innocence.
I clung to a desperate lingering hope
that my mother and sister had not
been caught up in the blast, as they
had gone to Saturday night mass in St
Patrick’s Church.
But I sobbed and sobbed as one of
my aunts cradled me in her arms the
next afternoon and whispered “your
mammy has gone to Heaven”.
There are other slivers of recollections in my mind — like my agitated
refusal to say “goodbye” to my mother,
sister and uncle as their bodies lay in
O’Kane’s funeral parlour and the silent
resentment I felt as strangers pointed
and whispered as we passed by.
www.sundaylife.co.uk
27 FEBRUARY 2011 Sunday Life
NEWS | 7
BOMBING 40 YEARS ON
by the bomb that
sister and uncle
UVF LEADER: Sectarian killer Billy Mitchell
KILLERS WERE
AMONG THE
UVF’S MOST
RUTHLESS
ALAN MURRAY
CIARAN BARNES
MEMBERS OF THE
McGURK FAMILY: (Left)
Philomena and Maria
McGurk with the rest of
the McGurk family on
holidays in Butlins in 1969.
(Above) Philomena, Maria
with Patrick McGurk and
son John. (Right) Maria,
aged 14, and (below)
Patrick McGurk
AN EXPLOSION RIPPED THROUGH HIS FAMILY’S BAR
My youthful inability to comprehend how my father could forgive the
bombers mellowed with maturity and
transformed into heart-bursting admiration for his extraordinary Christian
compassion.
I have no, or very little, recollection
of my mother, sister and uncle’s funerals. Even after all these years, the pain
must still be too searing for me to
unlock and recall.
Nightmares came, but eventually
faded away. So too did a recurring
dream, where my mother had survived, only to be shattered every time
I opened my eyes to daylight.
During my tender years, my aunts
and uncles – who helped to take care
of us – protected me for the most part
from the outrageous government and
security force briefings which spread
the lie that the IRA had been responsible for the bomb.
But even as a young boy, I could not
fail to notice how the innocent people
of the McGurk bar tragedy were omitted from some media reports about
the Troubles or portrayed as culpable
for their own fates.
My father suffered the prejudice of
government attitudes — when his paltry compensation award, for the loss
of his business and his loved ones, was
reduced on appeal.
As a young teenager, I was bullied
by the legal profession to accept an
insultingly small, out-of-court settlement — such was the perception even
then, that my family had somehow
supported terrorists and that we were
not deserving of recompense for losing everything but the clothes we
stood in.
The money meant absolutely nothing to me.
So, shaking with rage, I told them
that if they were prepared to go
through what I had endured for a few
hundred pounds, then they could have
the money.
Yes, it all still hurts after all of these
years. But I also realise that I am so
lucky to be alive and so lucky that my
father taught me never to hate anyone
just because of their religion.
He taught me to respect every
human being of every race, creed and
colour.
Thanks to him, I have the faith to
forgive.
But I will never forget the terrible
loss of innocent lives on that life
changing, hate-fuelled night.
[email protected]
THE McGurk’s Bar bombers were part of
a Shankill UVF gang notorious for its
savagery.
A week after the pub bomb outrage,
an IRA bomb devastated the Balmoral
Furniture store on the Shankill Road,
killing two adults and two infants —
setting the pattern for a litany of ‘tit-fortat’ bombings and shootings that
brought misery to Belfast.
The UVF waged a ferocious sectarian
assault on the nationalist community
and it wasn’t until 1983 that its
relentless capacity for murder was
checked with the emergence of the
‘supergrass’ Joe Bennett.
Ruthless characters including Billy
Mitchell, Shankill Butcher gang leader
Lenny Murphy, John Irvine, John
Bingham and Frenchie Marchant cut
their teeth in the ghastly street killings
of the 1970s.
It was Gusty Spence who set up the
new UVF in the 1960s before being
convicted of sectarian murder.
His older brother Robert was a bomb
maker who may have played a pivotal
role in the McGurk’s Bar atrocity.
Robert Spence was jailed for 14
years for making a 35lb bomb and
placing it outside a Falls Road pub.
In 1976 he was also sentenced to 10
years for building St Valentine’s Day
card bombs and making powerful nail
bombs. If he were alive today, Robert
Spence would be sought for questioning
about the McGurk’s Bar bombing by
both the PSNI and the Police
Ombudsman’s investigators.
But he died in 1980 while jogging
around a compound of the Maze Prison.
With Spence in the H Block was
fellow UVF man Robert ‘Jimmy’
Campbell, the only man convicted of
the McGurk’s Bar murders.
Another two of the suspected bomb
gang are dead. They are Glasgow
loyalist ‘Big’ Bill Campbell and PUP
founding member Billy Mitchell. Both
men were questioned in the bombing’s
aftermath by RUC detectives.
A former prison prison pal of ‘Big’ Bill
Campbell claimed in a 1997 newspaper
interview that he admitted the bombing
to him while they were in a Scottish jail.
Convicted double murderer Billy
Mitchell was the UVF’s north Belfast
commander in 1971, and would have
had to give the McGurk’s attack the
green light.