Posts made in November 2024

Ciaran MacAirt, Fr. McManus, and John Teggart. Washington, D.C. March 2011. The Irish National Caucus arranged for them to testify at a Congressional Hearing on Northern Ireland.

Nov. 21, 2024 

IRISH CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING

Distributed to Congress by Irish National Caucus

“Ciaran MacAirt has done extraordinary work in exposing British collusion in the McGurk Bar bombing in which his grandmother Kitty Irvine was murdered. How sad he still has to counter England’s Big Lie.”—Fr. Sean McManus

Outrage as Taylor appears to query the “innocence” of McGurk’s massacre victims

Two children were among 15 civilians killed when the UVF detonated a bomb at the bar in 1971

Connla Young. Irish News. Belfast. Thursday, November 21, 2024

FORMER Stormont minister John Taylor is facing criticism after he appeared to question the innocence of 15 Catholics killed in the McGurk’s Bar atrocity.

Mr. Taylor, also known as Lord Kilclooney, made the remarks on social media platform X in recent days.

Fifteen civilians, including two children, were killed when the UVF detonated a bomb in the North Queen Street bar, in north Belfast, in December 1971.

Security forces claims that the IRA was to blame were later shown not to be true.

Mr. Taylor, who was a Stormont minister at the time of the atrocity, wrongly said it was an IRA bomb that exploded prematurely.

During an exchange on X this week the former Ulster Unionist MP again appeared to cast doubt over the innocence of the victims.

The former politician was responding to a post by an account entitled Séamus Bryson’s Attic Trapdoor that referenced the “innocent people murdered in the McGurk’s”, and also urged him to apologize for previous remarks made.

In response the Mr. Taylor said: “You claim they were innocent.”

The following day another post by the same account again referenced the “innocents of the McGurk’s atrocity” to which Mr. Taylor replied, “you clearly do not understand the word ‘innocent’.”

Mr. Taylor’s remarks came after McGurk’s Bar campaigner Sam Irvine, who lost his mother Kitty in the attack, was laid to rest last weekend.

His nephew Ciarán MacAirt was critical of Mr. Taylor’s remarks.

“John Taylor has yet to account properly for the disinformation he parroted in the aftermath of the McGurk’s Bar massacre,” he said.

“This most recent slur occurs just weeks before the 53rd anniversary of the mass murder and cover-up, and just days after the burial of another McGurk’s Bar campaigner.”

Mr. MacAirt said Mr. Taylor’s comments will hurt relatives.

“His baseless slurs will do nothing but hurt the families once again at a particularly difficult time for them,” he said.

In 2018 Mr. Taylor was criticized for claiming McGurk’s Bar was a “drinking hole for IRA sympathizers” who have run a “political campaign to place the blame on the UVF”.

A year earlier he refused to apologize when challenged online by a McGurk’s Bar relative over declaring the atrocity was an IRA ‘own goal’.

Other social media remarks have also caused controversy including his description of former taoiseach Leo Varadkar as “the Indian”, and a claim that unionists and nationalists are not political equals.

 

 

 

November 20, 2024

IRISH CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING

Distributed to Congress by Irish National Caucus

“Belfast Protestant Raymond McCord, Sr. keeps up his unique campaign for justice. Raymond is the first Protestant from Northern Ireland in the current phase of The Troubles to break rank and testify in Congress about British collusion in the murder of a Protestant …That takes extraordinary courage and integrity.”—Fr. Sean McManus.

 

On Thursday, October 31,  my solicitors McIvor & Farrell issued legal papers in Belfast’s High Court on my behalf for a Public Inquiry into the murder of my son Raymond, Jr.

Due to the courts shutting down young Raymond’s inquest because of the Legacy Act of the Conservative government—and a senior judge ruling that the Legacy Act is incompatible with human rights, and the most senior judge Lady Chief Justice ruling that ICRIR also set up by the Conservatives is also incompatible with the human rights of victims—  I have nowhere else to go except to fight for a full Public Inquiry for my murdered son.

A large part of my legal argument is the fact that collusion between the British state’s Special Branch, a secret department of the Police Service of Northern Ireland,  colluded with the proscribed terrorist organization the UVF in the murder of Raymond, Jr. and the cover-up of it.

This is the inquiry the British government and its security agencies fear more than any other because the British government accepted the independent Police Ombudsman report in 2007 that there was collusion between the State Forces and the UVF in my son’s murder. Yet no one has been brought to justice.

I ask politicians and citizens in America to support me in my call for a Public Inquiry, and I take this opportunity to again thank Father Sean McManus, Barbara Flaherty, and the Irish National Caucus in Washington, D.C.,  for their fantastic support over the years for justice for young Raymond.

On November 9, my son will be dead 27 years, no inquest, no justice, no truth,  but I will not give up and on his anniversary, I ask all in America to say a prayer for justice for Raymond, Jr.