February 1 1974
The anger felt by many people in Britain about loyalists’ efforts to disrupt the Assembly Executive could affect their view about the continuation of military and financial help, a Conservative MP said in the Commons yesterday.
Mr William Benyon asked the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Francis Pym, if he accepted “the anger that so many of us on this side of the Irish channel feel at the efforts being made by so-called loyalists to disrupt the work of the Executive”.
“This must affect the way many of us view the continuation of military and financial assistance to the province”, Mr Benyon added.
Mr Pym said: “I endorse what you say. It is a very great mistake for an elected body to have members who behave in that way.” But he rejected, “for the time being”, a referendum to test the degree of support for the establishment of the Executive. He said everyone in Northern Ireland wanted to give the Executive a chance to work.
Mr Lawrence Orr (U, South Down): “Would not a better and more effective way of testing opinion be to hold a general election for the Assembly itself?”
Mr Pym replied that many people in Northern Ireland had said they have voted quite enough. “They are sick of going to the polls.”
As frustration grew in Britain at attempts by unionists to sabotage the power-sharing executive, one Tory MP suggested the threat of withholding funding from Northern Ireland.
Revulsion at Rush Park Killings
In a shockwave of public revulsion last night at the brutal murder of two Catholic Belfast workmen and the wounding of three others yesterday at Rathcoole, a survivor told The Irish News how two gunmen fired over the heads of kneeling Protestant colleagues into a huddled, terrified group of 11.
Killed instantly were Mr Terence Patrick McCafferty (37), father of three girls, of Ligoniel Road, and 29-year-old Mr James McCloskey, of Locan Street, Beechmount.
They were members of a crew laying underground power cables at Rush Park who had gone to their roadside hut for a meal break. Shortly afterwards two men, one with a Sterling sub-machine gun and the other with a revolver, burst in. They demanded and got the men’s pay packets.
They then asked which were “Prods” and told them to kneel down. Bullets were then sprayed over the heads of the kneeling men at those standing behind. Mr McCafferty and Mr McCloskey died immediately. Three others were each hit twice by bullets. One of them was said to be critically ill early today. He lives in the Falls Road area.