Member's statement: Bayardo Bar Bombing
Member's statement by Mr Phillip Brett on .
- MLA
- Mr Phillip Brett
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 24 February 2025
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Bayardo Bar Bombing
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4813416
Read the official Assembly record
Text
In August 2016, the 'Belfast Telegraph' led with a story that was headlined:
"Why the victims killed in the Bayardo Bar massacre also deserve to be remembered".
Following the public commentary that has disgracefully emanated from the party on the Benches opposite this weekend following the death of IRA man Brendan McFarlane, it is my moral imperative to ensure that they are not forgotten. On 13 August 1975, under the cover of darkness, three cowardly terrorists, led by McFarlane, set out to murder and maim their Protestant neighbours. They arrived at a packed bar, where they opened fire indiscriminately and planted a 10 lb bomb at the entrance to ensure the maximum number of casualties among innocent Protestant men, women and children. The IRA, in its actions, killed five people, the youngest of whom, Linda Boyle, was just 17 years old, and injured 50 others. Thankfully, Mr McFarlane and his accomplices were caught by the security services that night and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1983, Mr McFarlane led the Maze prison escape, during which a prison officer died. In 1983, he was charged with the kidnapping of a supermarket executive in the Irish Republic, which led to the deaths of a further two individuals. In all the public pronouncements from Sinn Féin eulogising Mr McFarlane, there was not a single sentence — not a scintilla — of a "sorry" for the victims of his evil deeds. The Sinn Féin Member for North Belfast, who represents the very place where the bomb went off, managed to say in his remarks that Mr McFarlane did all that he could in the struggle for Irish unity. Did that struggle include the murder of an innocent 17-year-old girl? The leader of Sinn Féin described him as a "great patriot". Do great patriots plant a 10 lb bomb at the entrance to a bar to tear the heart out of the Shankill Road and then celebrate the murder of five people? I was raised never to speak ill of the dead, and I recognise that a family is hurting, but my community and my constituency hurt every single day as a result of Mr McFarlane's actions. Sinn Féin's failure even to acknowledge that fact is nothing short of a disgrace. No amount of whitewashing or saying that the IRA's actions were justified will ever stop my party calling out the rank hypocrisy of the Members opposite.
403 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Awaiting analysis
This record has not been analysed yet. It is not counted in any total until it has been assessed.
Disagree with this assessment?
Classifications can be challenged. A person reviews every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.