Don Mullan, who opened up a can of words which blossomed into the Bloody Sunday Inquiry by Lord Saville with his book 'Eyewitness Bloody Sunday' has now continued his dedicated search for the truth of State murders with this long overdue book on the Dublin/Monaghan bombings by Loyalists from the UVF, aided and abetted by British intelligence.
At 5.30 p.m. on May 17th 1974 three no warning car bombs exploded in central Dublin, killing 26 men, women and children and injuring and maiming hundreds of others. Ninety minutes later another bomb, planted by the Portadown UVF, and made by Brit Intelligence exploded killing a further seven innocent civilians. The day before, during the Loyalist so called 'Workers Strike' Bill Craig had threatened that the South could expect violence shortly.
One of the most horrifying things about the bombings was the Irish Governmental attitude to the victims and the survivors and their relatives. As Frank Massey, who lost his 21 year old daughter in the bombing – she died six weeks before her marriage –, says 'we have been treated like lepers.'
Free State authorities were quickly aware of the names of the perpetrators – wellknown UVF and UDR men like Billy Hanna, Jim Hanna, 'Frenchie' Merchant, UDR Corporal Robert McConnell, Robin 'The Jackal' Jackson, Billy Fulton 'the fertiliser man' and their Brit Intell. handlers Capt. Tony Ball and SAS Major Andy Nightingale (both of whom 'got killed' in Oman in 1981). Other spook names float through the dirty tricks parade – Nairac, Fred Holroyd, Craig Smellie, and the Miami murderers Harris Boyle, the Summervilles, Crozier, McDowell. But Dublin didn't want to know. The RUC and the Britz would do nothing. Brit Intell. had it all sewn up. And the Irish media didn't want to know – some papers, like the Irish Times and Jim Cusack even sought to rubbish the courageous Yorkshire TV expose back in 1993.
And so the Free State government chose to do nothing and to brush the victims under the carpet. And the Garda collusion with the RUC and Brit. Intell. continued for years.
Amazingly, Mullan's excellent tome is at number two in the Irish charts and the reactionary Easons haven't banned this important book yet – although they have banned Bill Rolston's 'Unfinished Business: State Killings and the Quest for Truth', so get down there and buy it while you can!
The only disappointment is that, for ludicrous libel reasons, Wolfhound have decided not to name some of the perps whose names are known to 'the dogs in the street' and have, in some cases been already named on the Yorkshire TV programme "Hidden Hand: The Forgotten Massacre". For those of you who like to know, the Brit Intell officer who made the Dublin bombs was probably Peter Maynard, who used UDR Capt. John Irwin to deliver them to the farm in Glenane which was, and is still owned by former RUC Reserve James Mitchell. Jackson, Davy Payne and Billy Hanna led the Dublin team and Stuart Young was one of the Monaghan bombers. The Badger is of course former Garda Sergeant John McCoy. The Freestate police chief who aided and abetted in the cover up at the highest level was the infamous former Garda commissioner Edmund Garvey. Oh! And according to 'the Derry dogs in the street' the Derry UDA man allegedly seen in Dublin at the scene of the bombings is supposedly Glennie Barr.
Buy this book.
McGuffin