It was an evening like any other. On the night of December 20th, 1972, just days before Christmas, the attention of the 30 or so customers in Annie’s Bar in the Top of the Hill area in Derry was on the football match blaring from the television in the corner.
The barman, Cyril Doherty, was chatting to one of the regulars, Frankie McCarron, when the door opened.
“This guy comes in with a big hood on him, not a balaclava, a hood, sort of like the Ku Klux Klan.
“He’s lifting a gun, it’s an automatic thing with a magazine [ammunition box] stuck out,” he remembers. “He leaned back with the machine gun and it jerked in his hand. The first blast hit the TV, ‘boom’.
“There were guys standing, they turned round and he started to fire. All I remember then was the red flame coming out, it sounded like firecrackers. Down the counter the splinters went, like in the movies.”
The barman ducked behind the bar; a bullet grazed his forehead, and another flew just above his head. It was, he says, “utter chaos”. Fifty years on, he cannot forget “the smell of cordite from the gunpowder, and the blood”.
Five people were killed in the attack by the loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA): Frankie McCarron (58), Barney Kelly (26), Charlie McCafferty (30), Charles Moore (31) and Michael McGinley (37). Four were Catholic, and one Protestant.
Nobody has ever been convicted for the attack, which it is believed was carried out in retaliation for the killing of George Hamilton, a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment who had been shot dead by the IRA earlier that day.
Everybody knows it was a bar for old men, it wasn’t a bar for IRA men. The only thing they were going to hit in that bar was old men having a drink
— Eddie Nash
Fifty years on, the relatives of those killed in Annie’s Bar are speaking out – many for the first time – to ensure their loved ones are remembered but also to look for answers as to why nobody has been held responsible, and whether these and other murders could have been prevented.
“Everybody says I look like my daddy and I go on like my daddy,” says Gillian McElholm, the only child of Michael (Mick) McGinley, who was a baby when her father was killed. “He never even got to spend his first Christmas with me.
“I grew up never having a father, never having the opportunity to have brothers or sisters ... really all we had was memories,” she says.
“He was the youngest in our family and he was always a happy-go-lucky person, always in good form and joking and would babysit for me,” says Barney Kelly’s sister Bridie O’Donnell.
“He was married that September and they got word that week that she was pregnant, and he was over the moon about it.”
“Charlie and me were the two oldest, only 11 months of difference between us,” says Kathleen Tracey, the sister of Charlie McCafferty. “He was a wee divil when he was young, up to all the tricks of the day, but nothing bad. We were always just happy.”
“He was an old man who enjoyed a pint now and again, a loving father who never harmed anybody in his life,” says Frankie McCarron’s son-in-law Eddie Nash. “They took a good man early.
“What I find really striking is that all the families knew each other, and some of the families knew Mr Hamilton,” says Sara Duddy from the Pat Finucane Centre, which has been supporting the families.
“They lived within a really small area, that was their local bar ... when you have not just the men who are killed but the eyewitnesses who were in the bar, the people who were there and tried to help but couldn’t, [you realise] it was just something that devastated that whole community.”
“Normally I would have been in the bar with Frankie [McCarron],” says Mr Nash. “Everybody knows it was a bar for old men, it wasn’t a bar for IRA men. The only thing they were going to hit in that bar was old men having a drink.”
To this day, Annie’s Bar remains at the heart of the Top of the Hill. A nationalist area perched high on Derry’s Waterside, it overlooks the river Foyle, the Peace Bridge and the city centre. The current pub is a newer premises built next to the old bar, where a memorial stone now stands; inside is another memorial, unveiled on the 30th anniversary, and a framed front page of the Derry Journal. “Derry Community Mourns Victims of Dreadful Murders”, the headline reads.
Many of the relatives still live locally; the barman is Paul McCallion, Charlie McCafferty’s nephew. “I was only two when it happened, but you never forget it.
“It affected everybody back then, but it wasn’t really talked about, other than anniversaries.” The reality is, he says, that “after the 50th anniversary, Annie’s Bar will never be heard tell about again, until the next big anniversary”.
“It’s always been classed as the forgotten massacre, and it really was forgotten about,” says McElholm.
“It’s actually shocking,” she says. “At the end of the day, murder is murder.” In another circumstance, she says, there would have been convictions. “Because it was the height of the Troubles it was just brushed aside and forgotten about.”
The year of the massacre had the highest death toll of any year of the Troubles. The book, Lost Lives, lists 497 victims in 1972, of which 259 were civilians. In Derry, it had begun with Bloody Sunday on January 30th, when 13 anti-internment marchers were shot dead by British soldiers, a 14th dying later.
“On Bloody Sunday I was actually there, I heard the live rounds,” says Nash. When told that his father had been injured, he made his way to Altnagelvin hospital to see him. “My Da, he was lying in the bed, and he kept saying to me, ‘Go and get Willie’.
“He said, ‘Go down to that morgue and get your brother out’.” It was only then he realised his brother, Willian Nash, was among the victims. “It was a bad time, and then Annie’s come, and that was even worse.
“It takes a long time to try and forget those memories and forget the people who did it, and we’re still fighting,” he says. “I don’t hate anybody, we’ve never hated anybody ... but we want a little bit of the truth. It’s not much to ask.”
For the families, the thing that hurts most, says Duddy, is that few have heard of the Annie’s Bar killings: “That’s a real hurt for them,” she says, adding, “There has been no real investigation, there hasn’t been any sort of justice.”
New information uncovered by the Pat Finucane Centre has indicated for the first time that a former British soldier was arrested and questioned shortly afterwards, but quickly released. This man, the human rights organisation believes, was the UDA commander in Derry for most of the 1970s.
It is the first time he has been connected to the Annie’s Bar killings, though he has previously been linked to the murders of six others, including the killings only a few weeks later of a courting couple, Oliver Boyce and Brigid Porter, in Burnfoot, Co Donegal, as they returned home from a New Year’s Eve dance.
In all, 11 murders are laid at his door, including killings in 1976 and 1977 of Kevin Mulhern, Jim Loughrey, John Toland and Michael McHugh – deaths that could have been prevented if he had been charged and convicted for Annie’s Bar.
Reports on these later murders by the Historical Enquiries Team, a unit set up to investigate unsolved murders committed during the Troubles, reference an individual known as “Suspect 1″, who it says has been named to them as the leader of the UDA in Derry. The man left Northern Ireland in 1982 though he was able to return frequently and “travelled extensively throughout the world and lived in a number of different countries” and was at one time reported to be running a B&B in Scotland.
After the Annie’s Bar murders, “why was he arrested? Why was he released? Why was there no follow-up? These are legitimate questions,” asks Duddy, “Was he aware they were going to take place? Did he direct them? We don’t know, but these are legitimate questions.
The Historical Enquiries Team’s files do not say that Suspect 1 was a British agent, but it does say collusion was suspected: “The fact that he was able to never be arrested or questioned regarding those murders ... just raises the question, what was his official role?”, she goes on.
This week the families of four of the Annie’s Bar victims met officer’s from the PSNI’s Legacy Investigations Branch and the district commander for Derry City and Strabane, Chief Superintendent Nigel Goddard. He apologised for the lack of engagement since 1972 and said the police would “endeavour to have open lines of communication”. They have agreed to meet again in the new year.
The PSNI confirmed to The Irish Times the killings are not currently under investigation but where “credible investigative lines of inquiry are identified, capable of leading to the identification and prosecution of suspects, [they] will be considered”.
“I don’t think there’s any great optimism that they’re ever going to get all their questions answered or ever going to see prosecutions,” says Duddy, “But it’s really important that we do understand what happened and we do acknowledge the pain and suffering.
On Tuesday, a remembrance Mass – celebrated by a Catholic priest and a Presbyterian minister – will take place at the nearby St Columb’s Church. They will then walk, holding candles aloft, from the church to the memorial where a vigil will be held, and a wreath laid.
Many others who were left bereaved on that night five decades ago will join them: “It will show them there’s still people in Derry that is willing to stand behind them. They’re not forgotten,” says O’Donnell. “They’ll never be forgotten.”
