Claudy families gather to mark 50th anniversary of bomb atrocity

A cross-community service with readings and hymns took place in the Co Londonderry village.

Nine people, Catholics and Protestants, were killed and 30 injured after three car bombs exploded in Claudy on July 31, 1972. The dead included three children.

The attack was blamed on the Provisional IRA, although the group has never claimed responsibility. No-one has ever been convicted for the bombings.

Representatives from the nine bereaved families played a part in Sunday’s commemoration, which was attended by hundreds of local people.

Bereaved relatives read prayers at the service and afterwards laid floral tributes at individual plaques dedicated to the victims that sit on a wall behind a memorial statue.

Those killed included nine-year-old Kathryn Eakin, who had been cleaning the windows of her family’s grocery business, Patrick Connolly, 15, and 16-year-old William Temple.

The adults who died were Artie Hone, 38, Joseph McCluskey, 39, Elizabeth McElhinney, 59, James McClelland, 65, Rose McLaughlin, 52, and David Miller, 60.

Several of the bereaved families are continuing legal action against the Catholic Church after a Police Ombudsman report in 2010 found that a Catholic priest, the late Father James Chesney, was a suspect.

The report said police, the state and the Catholic Church covered up his suspected role in the bombing.

James Miller, grandson of David Miller, said it was important to keep remembering those who lost their lives.

“I’m here today to remember my grandfather, the grandfather that I never got to enjoy,” he said.

“I was three years of age at the time he was killed, he was brutally taken away from me and the family. We come to remember because we don’t want to forget these people, we don’t want to forget what happened to all nine innocent victims of Claudy.

“They were brutally mown down, some of them in the prime of their life – there was young, there was old, there was Catholic, there was Protestant, male and female and they were all brutally taken away.”

Victims’ Group South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF) has been supporting the families over the last 12 months in developing a range of projects and events designed to mark the anniversary.

After the service, guests were invited to a nearby community centre for the official launch of a new book about the bombings.

The foreword was written by former world champion boxer Barry McGuigan, who has a family connection with the youngest victim, Kathryn Eakin. An artwork created by pupils from two local primary schools was also displayed in the centre.

Ahead of the service, Northern Ireland’s mental health champion Siobhán O’Neill said: “My thoughts are with the relatives and friends of the nine people who were killed in my local village, Claudy, 50 years ago, and all those who continue to suffer as a result of the trauma that day.”

Meanwhile, East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell said the Claudy atrocity was the reality of the IRA campaign, which does not “fit the myth of freedom fighters or brave volunteers,” and added: “Relatives of those murdered... are forced to witness young nationalists singing or chanting in support of the IRA. The same IRA whose bombs blasted Claudy apart”.

The DUP MP went on to say: “If Sinn Fein continue to pay tribute to those who carried out these actions, they actively encourage young people who have no direct experience of many of these incidents to glorify sickening, cowardly and gory acts from which people in all communities, including their own, have suffered.”