Debate contribution: Kingsmills Massacre: Police Ombudsman’s Report

Debate contribution by Mr Justin McNulty on 4 November 2024.

MLA

Mr Justin McNulty

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

4 November 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Kingsmills Massacre: Police Ombudsman’s Report

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4626067

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The Kingsmills massacre, the murder of 10 innocent men on their way home from work on 5 January 1976, was a crime whose barbarity was matched only by its cowardice. When their work bus was stopped, the men on board thought that it was a loyalist murder gang because the leader asked for the one Catholic on the bus to be identified. Reggie Chapman took the hand of Richard Hughes and squeezed it as if to say, "We will not give you up. We will not let this happen to you". Imagine that. Reggie Chapman held on to his humanity while staring into the cold faces of an evil murder gang. Richard Hughes was then ordered away, and the remaining Protestant men were lined up against the bus and riddled with gunshots. There were more than 100 spent cartridges found at the scene. Ten of the 11 men died. One man, Alan Black, whom I spoke with today, miraculously survived. The scene could only be described as a bloodbath. In a disturbing reflection of the gruesome realities of the time, the hearses of two young men who had been murdered in Whitecross the night before, John Martin and Brian Reavey, had to be diverted because 10 men lay dead on the Kingsmill Road. Anthony Reavey died in the following weeks, leaving three Reavey brothers dead. I call attention to Eugene Reavey, who became great friends with Alan Black, and to the important role that they and their families played in building peace. It is also worth noting that those atrocities were followed by the murder of Majella O'Hare, just up the road in Ballymoyer, seven months later. It is hard to comprehend the sheer saturation of trauma in such a small rural area in such a short time, in Whitecross, Kingsmills and Ballymoyer. In a coordinated familicide — the mass shooting of an innocent Catholic family by the UVF — the O'Dowd brothers were killed on the same night as the Reavey brothers. The excruciating weight of grief, fear and horror that engulfed south Armagh in the wake of the massacres of January 1976 left permanent scars in the psyche of people and neighbours throughout our community. In the village of Bessbrook, where nine of the 10 murdered men came from and where Catholics and Protestants lived side by side, a coldness began to emerge. My late friend and the MP at the time, Seamus Mallon, vividly described the atmosphere in the years after the massacre. He said:

"The constant drizzle and a dank grey mist added to the pall of grief that seemed to envelop the silent, heartbroken village. I felt desperately alone as a nationalist politician among those grieving unionists; I could hear my own footsteps."

Nothing can ever undo the horror of what happened at Kingsmills. Nothing can ever bring back or replace the fathers, brothers, sons and husbands who were so cruelly and needlessly ripped away from their families on that dark night in January. It always astounds me when people glibly or even petulantly suggest that we should "move on and leave the past behind", because there was simply "no alternative" to the wanton violence, murder and maiming. Those same people continue to happily and gleefully celebrate and commemorate the violence and the perpetrators of violence. However, there is a stubborn and simple fact: there has been not so much as a charge, let alone a conviction, for the mass murder that occurred on 5 January 1976 when 10 ordinary working-class men were pulled out of their work van and slaughtered at the side of the road. The Police Ombudsman's office holds a report on those murders that it has so far failed to publish. It must do so without delay. At a time when so many families are struggling for truth and justice across the North, it is unacceptable that the Police Ombudsman is holding back the report on Kingsmills. The ombudsman must produce the unvarnished truth of the report, even if it is uncomfortable — especially if it is uncomfortable — because what an obscenity it would be for Alan Black to survive the Kingsmills massacre, to survive the spray of gunfire but not to survive to see the findings of the ombudsman's report. We will never see true reconciliation without justice, and we can never hope to see justice until there is truth. None of us should have anything to fear from hearing the truth. Alan Black and the Kingsmills families have spent too long campaigning for answers to those questions to be told to wait longer for the findings of the ombudsman's report. Telling them to do so is cruel, and the ombudsman must release the report on the Kingsmills massacre without delay. Day by day, the delay being faced by the families of the Kingsmills massacre, in the continued absence of information from the Police Ombudsman to explain the delay, is detrimentally impacting on confidence in the office of the Police Ombudsman. No victim should be expected to lodge two pre-actions for —

— access to truth and justice via our own Police Ombudsman.

854 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:30 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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