IT WAS one of Ireland’s worst atrocities: a trio of no-warning car bombs exploded in Dublin city centre within the space of three minutes, killing 27 and injuring 258. Barely 90 minutes later, another car bomb detonated in Monaghan town, killing seven more people.
With 34 lives lost, May 17 1974 was the deadliest single day of the entire Troubles. Yet, despite evidence implicating known loyalist paramilitaries, no-one was ever brought to justice for the attacks.
Now, almost exactly 50 years later, the new documentary May-17-74: Anatomy of a Massacre revisits the bombings, hearing from eye-witnesses, survivors and relatives of those killed in the blasts about their continuing campaign to get answers.
The film explains how the Garda investigation was mysteriously disbanded just seven weeks after the attacks, with crucial evidence sent north to the RUC being subsequently lost and/or destroyed, while the official inquest into the 34 deaths was never completed.
It also examines accusations of collusion between British intelligence and loyalists believed to be involved in perpetrating the attacks, including the notorious Co Armagh-based UVF outfit the Glenanne Gang, which included UDR and RUC personnel, who went on to carry out a number of other notorious Troubles killings including the Miami Showband Massacre.
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“I remember I was playing a football match out in Coolock,” explains Dublin director Joe Lee, who was 16 at the time of the bombings.
“We heard the bombs – everybody on the pitch sort of stopped for a moment and then continued on.
“Later on, I thought I’d maybe just made that memory up in my mind, but in making the documentary it turns out that people up to four or five miles outside of Dublin city centre heard the blasts.
“For a lot of people in Dublin that I’ve spoken to, it was something like a ‘JFK’ sort of moment, almost – they could remember exactly where they were.”
As Lee explains, May-17-74 also focuses on the work of Justice For The Forgotten, a victims group formed in 1996 by bereaved families and survivors to campaign for the truth behind the bombings.
The film has its roots in his previous project, last year’s 406 Days – The Debenhams Picket Line, which centred on workers’ protests staged in the wake of Debenhams pulling out of Ireland in 2020.
“When we were making 406 Days, the 50th anniversary of the bombings was coming up,” explains Lee, who worked with producer Fergus Dowd on both documentaries.
“Justice For The Forgotten told us they liked the approach we were taking with that film, which was very much centred on people’s stories.
“Our whole idea [for May-17-74] was to make something that was about the people most affected, the victims and their families, and look at it from that perspective. So Justice For The Forgotten sort of came on board with that idea.
“We made it with them, in a sense.”
The film begins by hearing first-hand accounts from those who experienced the carnage on Parnell Street, Talbot Street, South Leinster Street and North Road in Monaghan town centre.
We hear from victims like Bernie McNally, a shoe shop worker blinded in one eye by the Talbot Street attack, who explains “it was like you were transported into a war zone”.
The late Derek Byrne, who passed away last year after taking part in the documentary, was severely injured in the Parnell Street blast while filling his car with petrol: he recounts how, initially, he thought he had somehow caused the explosion, then awoke hours later in the morgue, having been mistakenly pronounced dead at the scene.
Andy Rowen, caught up in the Parnell Street explosion as a child while helping his delivery driver father on his rounds, recalls one of the deceased victims being covered with newspapers which turned red from the blood. Kevin Rowe, a Dublin bus driver, explains how he fetched a bus from the depot to ferry the injured to hospital; former taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, describes how he and colleagues from the nearby Mater Hospital rushed back to work after encountering the aftermath of the bombings at the end of their shift.
While the documentary makes good use of archive news footage and photographs from both Dublin and Monaghan town, Lee also takes several of his subjects out onto the streets to better explain what happened, allowing them to compare the present day scene to period photos of the aftermath displayed on an iPad.
May-17-74 also highlights how in 1993, as the 20th anniversary of the bombings approached without any sign of a breakthrough, a shocking Yorkshire Television documentary titled Hidden Hand: The Forgotten Massacre helped put the atrocities back on the news agenda by making well-sourced allegations of collusion between the Glenanne Gang and British intelligence: many believe this programme prompted the UVF to suddenly claim sole responsibility for the attacks by way of deflection.
An official judicial inquiry was finally commissioned in 1999 on the 25th anniversary of bombings. Delivered in 2003, the Barron Report revealed it was “likely” that British security personnel had been involved, but its investigations remained inconclusive due to a lack of records provided by MI5 and MI6.
Justice for The Forgotten is now pursuing a civil case against the British government in relation to the bombings. Meanwhile, just as Westminster is attempting to draw a line under the Troubles with its almost universally-derided legacy act, Operation Denton – carried out by the Operation Kenova team led by Jon Boutcher until his appointment as PSNI chief constable – is due to present its findings into the activities of the Glenanne Gang later this year.
“It was really shocking to realise that these things had been done with the support of military people in Northern Ireland,” explains Lee of how his powerful film deals with these murky issues.
“Collusion was a very big part of [the bombings], obviously, but once you go down that rabbit hole, it’s very, very difficult to come out again – so we tried very much to only include what was knowable and what was there in the public record.”
May-17-74 premieres in Dublin today before screening at Dublin’s IFI on May 16, the Nerve Centre in Derry on May 17 and in Monaghan, at the Garage Theatre, on May 24.
