ON THE EVENING of 17 May 1974, Bernie McNally was walking down to the basement of O’Neill’s shoe shop on Talbot Street where she worked when she heard a loud bang.
Not really recognising the sound – thinking it might be a clap of thunder or a far away explosion of some sort – she continued down to get a pair of sandals for a customer.
When she emerged, the shop’s owner Joe O’Neill and the customer May McKenna were looking out onto the street. May – who lived above O’Neills on Talbot Street – asked McNally did she hear a bomb go off.
“And I said, ‘Yeah, I think maybe it was a bomb’,” McNally (66) told The Journal.
“And as I stepped into the ladies’ shop with the sandals, I was right beside the big display window into the street. There was a big flash in the sky, and I looked up into the flash – thinking it was thunder and lightning – but then I was hit with the blast.”
McNally was thrown to the floor by the force of the blast, which ripped through the shop and the nearby buildings on Talbot Street. She completely lost her sight temporarily, but remained conscious.
“After the vibration stopped and the ground settled down a bit, I could hear a lady groaning in what felt like rubble, but I had no sight at that stage, and I was trying to find her but I couldn’t, so eventually I got up and I realised I had no sight then,” McNally said.
The sight began to return to her left eye, and McNally was shocked by what she saw.
“It was like a demolition site, it was like… I don’t know. I didn’t see anybody and there was a silence that was almost palpable,” she said.
“There was dust in the air and I remember standing in the window in O’Neill’s looking over towards Guiney’s.
And I don’t know how long after this was… but there was a fireman… and he was lifting what I know now was a body out of the window, but I thought he was taking out the mannequins at the time in case they were broken.
McNally was taken to nearby Moran’s Hotel, and then onto the hospital where she would spend the next six weeks. She lost sight in her right eye, and would eventually have to have it taken out. While McNally suffered greatly as a result of the bombing, she was one of the lucky ones.
Joe O’Neill the shop owner was badly injured in the blast. He survived, however, and later reopened his shop a few doors down where it remains open today. He has since passed away.
May McKenna, who had been standing by the door, was killed almost instantly.
She was 55 years old and one of 27 people killed that day in three separate explosions that happened in close succession in Dublin city centre. The first bomb that McNally heard went off in a car on nearby Parnell Street, at the junction with Marlborough Street; shortly after the Talbot Street explosion, another car bomb detonated at the intersection of Nassau Street and South Leinster Street.
A fourth car bomb was detonated in the middle of Monaghan Town later in the evening and killed a further 7 people, bringing the total death toll to 34, including an unborn child. It was the biggest number of people killed on any one day during the Troubles.
It would take almost 20 years before the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) claimed responsibility for the attack. However no one has ever been brought to justice.
Widespread reports and claims that the explosion was carried out with collusion from British security forces have never been proven, and inquiries into the bombing have been frustrated, with a lack of access to key documents, and evidence going missing.
On the bombing’s 50th anniversary today, McNally and the family members of the victims have many grievances and questions that still need to be answered.
“To deny the people the truth is just so wrong,” McNally said.
And it will never never go away until it’s righted. It will always be there, it will always be hanging over us all.
The Dublin and Monaghan bombings and what happened after is the subject of a new documentary, directed by Joe Lee and produced by Fergus Dowd.
May-17-74: Anatomy of a Massacre centres the families and survivors of the blast and the long campaign for answers and justice.
“I was very curious and fascinated to find out why it had fallen away from the news so much,” Joe Lee told The Journal, explaining what motivated him to make the documentary.
“It was really curious that nearly in some ways the victims and the families were forgotten about so quickly.”
Despite being the day on which most people died throughout the entire length of the Troubles, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings were not properly investigated at the time, with the gardaí closing the case after just eight weeks.
“It was as if the Government of the day was worried that the Troubles in the North would spill down here,” said Lee.
The bombings took place during the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) strike, a general strike of unionists in the North opposed to the Sunningdale Agreement, which was an attempt to establish powersharing between nationalists and unionists.
The strike was effective in bringing down the agreement.
In relation to the bombings, the perpetrators were never identified or brought to justice, and the incident, the victims and their families receded from the public mind.
The Hidden Hand
This changed in 1993 when a documentary – Hidden Hand: The Forgotten Massacre – was made by Yorkshire Television, a division of ITV. The documentary stated that the attacks had been carried out by the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), and claimed the group had been assisted by British security forces.
Following this, the UVF finally claimed sole responsibility for the attack but denied colluding with security forces.
The documentary led to a renewed interest in the bombing, and Justice for the Forgotten was formed in 1996 with the aim of campaigning for truth and justice for the victims.
The group eventually tracked down many survivors and family members of the victims of the bombing. It also grew to encompass the victims of other “forgotten” bombings and incidents in Belturbet, Dundalk, Castleblaney and others.
“All of these people were crying out for help basically and had no place to turn, because these victims have been completely ignored,” said chair of the group and longtime campaigner Margaret Urwin.
All these bombings happened in the early- to mid-70s and now you’re up to nearly the year 2000 and they had been just totally ignored by successive Governments.
Following pressure from the group, the then-Government ordered an inquiry into the bombing which was carried out by Mr Justice Henry Barron. In 2003, Barron released a comprehensive report into what had happened.
The judge was critical of the Irish government at the time and the garda investigation into the bombing, but the inquiry was hampered by a lack of cooperation from the British government in granting access to key documents.
Since then, Justice for the Forgotten has continued to campaign for answers. Joe Lee thinks that while the British government should release whatever information it has, the Irish state also let the families down.
“I think on the Irish end as well there seems to be almost nothing in terms of what [the garda] investigation found. They did find things initially, but that material seems to have mysteriously disappeared,” he said.
So I suppose you could say on both sides the Irish state and the British state let these families down. Because all they’ve ever wanted really is to find out what happened. Why and who was responsible. That’s what they wanted more than anything else.
While the road has been long, on the 50th anniversary today there are some grounds for hope that the survivors and families may still get the answers they are looking for.
There are a number of reports and decisions due soon that may shed further light on the bombing.
An independent British report from a review into the activities of the notorious loyalist Glenanne Gang, known as Operation Denton, is due to be published later this year and may shed further light on what happened.
As well as this a civil case taken by the families of those killed in the bombings is due before the Belfast High Court following years of delays. There is also a probe being carried out by the Police Ombudsman in the North into possible collusion by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) during the Troubles.
“There is more hope but of course the families have to remain sceptical because they’ve been let down so many times,” said Margaret Urwin.
“And all they’ve ever wanted really is the truth. The vast majority of the families, they haven’t got their minds fixed on having people prosecuted.
That’s not to say that they wouldn’t like people prosecuted but the main focus always of our campaign has been on getting to the truth of what happened.
In their interviews, Urwin, Lee and McNally all mentioned one survivor and longtime campaigner Derek Byrne, who was just 14 when he was seriously injured in the bombing. Byrne was pronounced dead and spent three hours in the morgue before he woke up and was taken to the hospital for lifesaving surgery.
Byrne died in November last year at the age of 63, having never gotten the answers and the justice he had been campaigning for for much of his life. The surviving campaigners said they continue to fight for Byrne and others who have died, and for all those who were killed in the fire.
“People used to say to me ‘you’re so lucky, you’re so lucky’ and I could never understand why people would say that because here I was with this horrible eye looking back at me,” said Bernie McNally.
“But you know, as you grow older… I went on and I got married and I had children and now I’ve grandchildren and I’m so grateful to have survived.
“And when I think of the people who didn’t survive. This campaign is about them. All these people, 34 people killed in the streets of the city and no questions answered.
Neither the government, nor the journalists of the day. It was hushed up. Can you imagine that happened today?
May-17-74: Anatomy of a Massacre premiered at the Light House Cinema in Dublin on Friday, and will be screened at the Never Centre in Derry today and the Garage Theatre in Monaghan on Friday 24 May
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