Top of the Hill bar shooting
On 20 December 1972, during the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles, a mass shooting took place at the Top of the Hill bar in a small Catholic enclave of the majority Protestant Waterside area of Derry. Five civilians were shot dead by Loyalist paramilitaries from a unit of the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), which is a part of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).[1] The shooting is also known locally as the "Annie's Bar massacre".[2]
| Top of the Hill bar shooting | |
|---|---|
| Part of The Troubles | |
  Location of the shooting | |
| Location | Strabane Old Road, Waterside, Derry, Northern Ireland |
| Date | 20 December 1972 10:30 PM |
| Target | Irish Catholics, Irish Nationalists |
Attack type | Mass shooting, massacre |
| Weapons | Sterling submachine gun |
| Deaths | 5 |
| Injured | 4 |
| Perpetrator | Ulster Freedom Fighters Ulster Defence Association |
Background
The UDA was formed in September 1971 during one of the most violent phases of the Troubles, immediately after internment without trial was introduced, when a number of Loyalist Defense groups combined. They formed a paramilitary wing, the UFF, in 1972 so that the organisation could use the UFF name to carry out violent acts and kill people while the UDA itself remained uninvolved in the attacks and thus legal. The UDA/UFF claimed to be combating the Provisional IRA, but the overwhelming majority of its victims (85%) were Catholic civilians.[3][4]
The UDA carried out its first killing on 20 April 1972, shooting 22-year-old taxi driver Gerard Donnelly in Ardoyne, Belfast.[5][6] In October, the group was responsible for the deaths of two small girls, aged 4 and 6, when they detonated a car bomb outside an Irish nationalist pub in Sailortown, Belfast.[7]
The shooting
On 20 December 1972, the Top of the Hill bar along the Strabane Old Road was packed with customers watching a football match. At about 10:30 pm two men from the UDA burst into the bar, one carrying a Sterling submachine gun and the other holding a pistol. Both were wearing hoods to disguise their identities.[8] The men instantly and indiscriminately sprayed the main room in the bar with bullets. The attack was reported to have lasted less than a minute, but five people were killed and four others wounded. Those killed in the attack were all males: Charlie McCafferty (31), Frank McCarron (58), Charles Moore (31, a Protestant), Barney Kelly (26) and Michael McGinley (37).[2][9]
At the time this was the largest and most deadly attack carried out by the UDA; they did not carry out another attack of this size until February 1992, when they shot dead five civilians and injured nine in the Sean Graham bookmakers' shooting on the Lower Ormeau Road, Belfast.[10][11]
1972 in Derry began with Bloody Sunday in the Bogside and ended with the Top of the Hill shooting. Nobody was ever charged in connection to the Top of the Hill bar murders, although in recent years relatives of those murdered have been calling for a fresh investigation.[9][12]
See also
References
- "CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths". cain.ulst.ac.uk.
- Duddy, Sara (21 December 2017). "Remembering the Annie's Bar Massacre". Derry News – via The Pat Finucane Centre.
- Brown, Derek (20 June 2000). "Ulster Freedom Fighters - the thugs in hoods". The Guardian.
- Brown, Derek (10 July 2001). "Who are the Ulster Freedom Fighters?". The Guardian.
- "CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths". cain.ulst.ac.uk. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
- "The Troubles". Retrieved 26 July 2020 – via Issuu.
- Campbell, Brett (22 June 2017). "£30k appeal to save church in Belfast's Sailortown". Belfast Telegraph. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
- "The Troubles" – via Issuu.
- McKinney, Seamus (21 December 2017). "Calls for Annie's Bar massacre investigation to be re-opened". The Irish News. Retrieved 27 July 2020.
- "Bookmakers killings remembered 25 years on". ITV News.
- "Major deaths in, or associated with, the Troubles Northern Ireland 1969-1998". wesleyjohnston.com.
- "Annie's Bar - 40 years on". Derry Journal. 20 December 2012. Archived from the original on 6 November 2017.
