Dublin and Monaghan bombings
The biggest single death toll on one day of the troubles was as a result of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974. The Barron report (by Justice Henry Barron of the Irish Supreme Court) suggested that the Loyalist Glenane gang (who have never been prosecuted) were the immeadiate perpetrators but that the ultimate guilty parties were within the British security services. All victims were random civilian citizens of the Republic of Ireland. The purpose of the attacks was to intimidate the Dublin government into passing anti Republican repressive legislation (for example banning Sinn Fein from the airwaves). In this they succeded completely. For futher information see
Justice for the Forgotten was formed in 1996 with the aim of campaigning for truth and justice for the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974.
34 people, including an unborn baby, died that day, leading to the greatest loss of life in a single day of the Troubles. Our membership includes the overwhelming majority of those bereaved families and many wounded survivors.
In 2001, the bereaved families and survivors of the Dublin bombings of 1 December 1972 and 20 January 1973 united with those of 1974 into a single organisation demanding to know the truth as to why their loved ones died and why so many others were maimed.
Justice for the Forgotten also represents the bereaved families and survivors of the Belturbet, Dundalk and Castleblayney bombings, as well as the families and survivors of the Miami Showband massacre.
Justice for the Forgotten is willing to provide support to all victims of the Northern conflict in this jurisdiction. We welcome any requests for such assistance.
Our campaign
Not a single person has ever been prosecuted in connection with any of the cross-border bombings. Indeed, an official silence was mantained about the events until the early 1990s.
Over the years the bereaved and injured came to question:
The complicity of British state forces in Northern Ireland in the bombings.
The actions of the Irish state in pursuing those responsible.
The integrity of the RUC investigations.
The integrity of the Garda investigations.
Our campaign led to the establishment of two private, non-judicial, inquiries by the Irish Government. These resulted in:
The Barron Report (2003) into the Dublin & Monaghan bombings.
View RTE News coverage of this report: News Report 1 & News Report 2 (You need RealPlayer to run them).
The Second Barron Report (2004) into the '72 & '73 Dublin bombings (and associated reports).
View RTE News coverage of this report: News Report 1 & News Report 2 (You need RealPlayer to run them).
The Fourth Barron Report. (July 2006) into the Dundalk and Castleblayney bombings.
RTE News Report 29th November 2006.
The MacEntee Report (2007) of the Commission of Investigation into the Dublin & Monaghan bombings.
All reports reveal a significant amount of disturbing information.
The MacEntee Report highlighted the huge amounts of relevant documentation that have gone missing from the Garda files and the fact that it is impossible to determine whether further documentation may also be missing due to massive failures in the Garda document management system of the time.
It is therefore impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty from Garda records why the Garda investigation into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings was wound down less than three months after the bombings. Serious questions thus remain regarding the investigation.
Most disturbingly however, it was acknowledged by the authors in all the inquiries that they had been significantly restricted in their investigations by the non-cooperation of the British authorities.
Without accessing crucial documents held by these authorities, deeply worrying questions remain unanswered for the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, for victims of other collusion-related incidents and for the citizens of both states.
British state collusion with loyalist paramilitary organisations has been well documented in several high profile cases from the late eighties such as the murder of the human rights lawyer, Mr. Pat Finucane, and the killing of Raymond McCord.
Justice for the Forgotten believes there is compelling evidence that collusion occurred in the perpetration of many other appalling atrocities across the island of Ireland including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
(For just one example of such evidence, view the following, recently released, Ministry of Defence document. This document discloses the fact that there was knowledge -at the highest British political and military levels - of subversion in the UDR, as early as 1973.)
We continue to be involved in joint research with the Pat Finucane Centre in our efforts to establish the truth. This is as a result of a long-standing mutual interest in a group of security force members and Loyalists who operated out of a farm at Glenanne, Co. Armagh.
This group, which included members of the RUC, UDR and British Army intelligence, as well as Loyalist paramilitaries from Counties Armagh and Tyrone, was responsible for over 100 murders in a series of gun and bomb attacks on both sides of the Border throughout the 1970s.
There is significant evidence (for more, see our Publications page) that this loose grouping operated as a semi-official death squad at the behest of certain British state agencies, and further, that it was instrumental in carrying out the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and many other atrocities across the Republic of Ireland.
We are continuing to campaign for the establishment of a mechanism that can persuade the British Government to provide us with the documentary information - currently being withheld - that can carry these investigations further. Such a mechanism must be able to accommodate the additional problem of cross-jurisdiction.
Without co-operation from the British Government enabling us to access vital information, the question of who was culpable for so many murders remains, and will remain, unanswered.
Quote:
BRITISH SECURITY FORCES COLLUSION
http://irishfreedomcommittee.com/HISTORY/DublinMonaghan/dublin_monagha n_historybackground.htm
From the beginning, there have been strong suspicions of British intelligence and British security forces involvement in the planning and execution of the attacks. The loyalist group who eventually claimed responsibility for the bombings, the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force), did not have the ability to have carried out these bombings unaided. Materials used in the bombings had never been used by the UVF previously, and no similar bombing action was ever repeated by the group. In point of fact the coordinated Dublin and Monaghan bombings bore all of the hallmarks of a highly skilled military operation.
The Dublin bombs were all detonated within a five-minute period. Their timing and placement was clearly intended to cause maximum death and injury. Two other bombs at crowded locations in Bus Aras (bus station) and in Amiens Street were also planted at the same time but failed to detonate. The Monaghan bomb exploded outside a busy pub ninety minutes later at 6:40 PM, as the Friday night patrons watched the carnage in Dublin on the evening news.
Four cars were stolen in Belfast and Portadown for the attacks. Barely ten hours lapsed between the theft of the bomb cars and their synchronized detonation at four locations in Dublin and Monaghan.
A British Army bomb disposal expert has concluded from technical examination that the bomb material could not have been manufactured by the loyalists and must have been provided to them by military sources, possibly from confiscated republican arms dumps.
In 1993 Yorkshire TV Channel Four presented a documentary “HIDDEN HAND – THE FORGOTTEN MASSACRE”. This explosive documentary forever changed the atmosphere of official silence and denial surrounding the events before and after the bombings, and made a strong and conclusive case for the direct involvement of British security forces in the mass murder.
Among some of the evidence unearthed by the documentary follows:
- Three known loyalist paramilitaries were identified as having stolen the cars used in the bombing
- Witnesses identified EIGHT FACES from official police photos, including two of the drivers
- Within weeks of the bombing Irish Gardaí police had a list of TWENTY suspects
- The British RUC colonial police (Royal Ulster Constabulary) had a similar list of suspects
- All of the suspect were connected with the UVF
- British military intelligence had infiltrated the UVF in Portadown
- The British military had permitted the UVF to carry out atrocities
-THREE of the suspects were paid British informants
- The suspects included FORMER and SERVING members of the British security forces
- The bombings bore hallmarks of a sophisticated and technical military operation
Nine days after the documentary aired, the UVF officially claimed responsibility for the bombing – nearly TWENTY YEARS after it took place.
EVIDENCE DESTROYED, GONE ‘MISSING”
Further evidence of the complicity of State forces in the bombings has been confirmed by the unusual treatment of forensic evidence from the massacre.
For reasons unknown, physical evidence from the bomb blasts was divided up and sent to two different labs. The majority of the bomb evidence was sent to the Northern Ireland Forensic Laboratory, but was not officially received there until the 28th of May; eleven days after the blast. No results from the Northern Ireland Forensic Laboratory were ever sent to the Irish State Laboratory. In addition, the delay in sending critical evidence to the North of Ireland could have seriously compromised the evidential integrity of the samples; had those results ever been made public or used in a criminal investigation.
To this day the actual whereabouts of the forensic evidence from the bombings is unknown. It defies belief that crucial evidence in the single largest mass murder case in the history of the Irish Free State, should be missing or unaccounted for.
In a 1993 article for the Sunday Business Post, journalist Frank Doherty stated that he had uncovered proof that key forensic evidence was handed over to the very same British security officers suspected of having had a hand in the bombings. His British intelligence source indicated that a concerted effort to recruit British intelligence agents in the Irish security forces was underway at the time of the bombings—a claim that 1970’s Irish Labour TD Justin Keating had also made about the Gardaí, saying they were "heavily penetrated by British agents" at the time. On In December 1972, British agents John Wyman and Patrick Crinnion were arrested and accused of infiltrating the Garda Siochana to steal state secrets and to provide British intelligence with information.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan lays a wreath at a commemorative event to mark the 43rd anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan lays a wreath at a commemorative event to mark the 43rd anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Members of the public tend to the injured following the detonation of a bomb on Talbot Street in Dublin in May 1974. Photograph: Tom Lawlor
Members of the public tend to the injured following the detonation of a bomb on Talbot Street in Dublin in May 1974. Photograph: Tom Lawlor
Simon Carswell
Updated: Wed, May 17, 2017, 19:44
Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan has renewed his call on the British government to release all its files relating to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in May 1974.
On the 43rd anniversary of the attacks, Mr Flanagan said he hoped the UK government that takes power after next month’s election would release files that shed light on the perpetrators behind the Loyalist bomb attacks which killed 33 people, including a woman who was nine months pregnant.
Members of the public tend to the injured following the detonation of a bomb on Talbot Street in Dublin in May 1974. Photograph: Tom Lawlor
Members of the public tend to the injured following the detonation of a bomb on Talbot Street in Dublin in May 1974. Photograph: Tom Lawlor
The May 17th, 1974 attacks marked the highest number of deaths on a single day of the Troubles. The victims and survivors were remembered during a ceremony at the memorial on Talbot Street in Dublin where one of the three bombs in the city exploded.
The names of the victims were read out followed by a minute’s silence and wreath-laying by Mr Flanagan, Lord Mayor of Dublin Brendan Carr and relatives of the victims.
“I know that the pain of the families and of the survivors continues to endure. That pain is compounded by the absence – after more than four decades – of the full truth of what happened,” Mr Flanagan told a group of about 200 people gathered at the memorial.
“My Government colleagues and I are determined to continue, and to complete, our efforts to seek the truth of those awful events. Every year that passes we must renew our determination to establish the truth and so secure some measure of comfort for all who have suffered.”
British help
Justice for the Forgotten, the group representing the families, has campaigned for years for an inquiry into claims that British security agents helped the bombers carry out the attacks.
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Rosanna Grace (10) from Malahide whose grandmother Breda died in the Dublin bombings during the wreath-laying ceremony in Talbot Street, Dublin. Photograph: Gareth Chaney Collins
Three bombs were detonated during a busy Friday rush-hour on Parnell Street, Talbot Street and South Leinster Street to maximise fatalities as people made their way home and to train stations.
A fourth bomb exploded about an hour and a half later in Monaghan in what was believed to be a diversionary tactic to allow the Dublin bombers cross the border and return to Northern Ireland. No one has ever been charged over the bombings.
Margaret Urwin from Justice for the Forgotten helps mark the 43rd anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Photograph: Gareth Chaney Collins
Aidan Shields, whose mother Maureen was killed in the attacks, said he was hopeful there would be “some news” from the investigation by the Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland into the Glenanne Gang of loyalists from mid-Ulster who are believed to have been involved in the bombings.
The gang is suspected to have included serving members of the Northern Irish security forces.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan lays a wreath at a commemorative event to mark the 43rd anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Mr Flanagan said he and the Taoiseach had “vigorously” pursued their request to the British government to hand over its files on the bombings to an “independent, international judicial figure”.
Fresh inquiry
He said it was “imperative” that a fresh independent inquiry take place “to discover the facts around the horror of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings”.
“There are issues that the British government don’t feel comfortable with but I believe it is important in the spirit of true reconciliation across the island of Ireland that all papers and documents, however sensitive they might be, be handed over to the authorities,” he said.
Delivering the oration at the commemoration, Denis Bradley, the former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, rejected the British government’s reason for not releasing files on the bombings on the basis of national security.
While working on policing issues in the North, he said, national security “kept popping up” but they found that such an issue could be solved within days and later within hours.
“This is not a serious issue to be solved,” he said. “It can be solved in days or hours and people have become very skilled at actually getting around and past that, and it is not a serious issue for serious men and women about serious issues.”
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, who attended the commemoration, said the people who were preventing the truth from coming out about the bombings were the British government.
“It is they who are putting the block on this,” he said.
Northern Ireland decides _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
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