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Top of the Hill bar shooting

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Top of the Hill bar shooting
Part of The Troubles
Annie's Bar (left) in 2009
Top of the Hill bar shooting is located in Northern Ireland
Top of the Hill bar shooting
Top of the Hill bar shooting (Northern Ireland)
LocationStrabane Old Road, Derry, Northern Ireland
Date20 December 1972
10:30 PM
TargetIrish Catholics
Attack type
Mass shooting, massacre
WeaponsSterling submachine gun
Deaths5
Injured4
PerpetratorUlster Defence Association

The Top of the Hill bar shooting, or Annie's Bar massacre,[1] was a mass shooting in Derry, Northern Ireland on 20 December 1972, during the Troubles. Five civilians were killed when members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a loyalist paramilitary group, opened fire on the customers in a pub frequented by Catholics.[2]

Background

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The UDA was formed in September 1971, during one of the most violent phases of the Troubles, after internment was introduced, when several loyalist vigilante "defence" groups combined. They began using the cover name "Ulster Freedom Fighters" (UFF) to claim responsibility for paramilitary attacks, allowing the UDA to remain legal.[3][4] The UDA carried out its first killing on 20 April 1972, shooting a Catholic taxi driver in Ardoyne, Belfast.[5][6] In October, the group was responsible for the deaths of two children when they detonated a car bomb outside a Catholic pub in Sailortown, Belfast.[7]

On 20 December 1972, (the same day as the bar shooting) Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier George Hamilton was killed by a Provisional IRA sniper a few miles outside Derry.[8]

Shooting

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That night, the Top of the Hill Bar (or Annie's Bar) on the Strabane Old Road was packed with customers watching a football match.[9] The pub was in a small Catholic neighbourhood in the mainly-Protestant Waterside of Derry city. At about 10:30 pm two UDA gunmen burst into the pub, one armed with a Sterling submachine gun and the other a pistol.[9] They indiscriminately sprayed the pub with gunfire, killing five men: Catholic civilians Charlie McCafferty (31), Frank McCarron (58), Barney Kelly (26) and Michael McGinley (37), and Protestant civilian Charles Moore (31).[8]

The shooting was seen as a sectarian revenge attack for the killing of Hamilton.[8] The massacre shocked the city, which until then had largely escaped the serious sectarian conflict experienced in Belfast.[9] Although no group claimed responsibility, it is believed to have been carried out by the UDA.[9] At the time it was the UDA's deadliest attack. They did not carry out another attack of this size until 1992 when they killed five civilians and wounded nine in the Sean Graham bookmakers' shooting in Belfast.[10][11]

Nobody was ever charged in connection with the massacre, although in recent years relatives of those killed have been calling for a fresh investigation.[1]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b McKinney, Seamus (21 December 2017). "Calls for Annie's Bar massacre investigation to be re-opened". The Irish News. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 27 July 2020.
  2. ^ "CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 1 June 2018. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
  3. ^ Brown, Derek (20 June 2000). "Ulster Freedom Fighters - the thugs in hoods". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 December 2018. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
  4. ^ Brown, Derek (10 July 2001). "Who are the Ulster Freedom Fighters?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 December 2018. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
  5. ^ "CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 27 August 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  6. ^ "The Troubles". 9 August 2011. Archived from the original on 26 February 2019. Retrieved 26 July 2020 – via Issuu.
  7. ^ Campbell, Brett (22 June 2017). "£30k appeal to save church in Belfast's Sailortown". Belfast Telegraph. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  8. ^ a b c McKittrick, David (2001). Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Random House. pp. 308–309.
  9. ^ a b c d "Annie's Bar - 40 years on". Derry Journal. 20 December 2012. Archived from the original on 6 November 2017.
  10. ^ "Bookmakers killings remembered 25 years on". ITV News. Archived from the original on 23 December 2018. Retrieved 23 December 2018.
  11. ^ "Major deaths in, or associated with, the Troubles Northern Ireland 1969-1998". wesleyjohnston.com. Archived from the original on 2 October 2018. Retrieved 23 December 2018.

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