Bayardo Bar Attack
In 1976 McFarlane was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with a gun and bomb attack on the Bayardo Bar on Aberdeen Street in the Protestant Shankill Road district of Belfast that killed five people (three men and two women) and injured 60 more. This had taken place on 13 August 1975. In a 1995 House of Lords debate, Gerry Fitt, formerly nationalist MP for West Belfast, alleged that McFarlane had machine-gunned three pedestrians who were passing by the Bayardo as it was blown up. The bar was attacked because it was allegedly frequented by member of the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The IRA initially denied it had carried out the attack. The attack occurred against a background of severe sectarian violence. The IRA killed 91 Protestant civilians in similar attacks in 1974-76, in reprisal for loyalist attacks on Catholics, which killed 250 civilians in the same period.
According to journalist Peter Taylor the attack was carried out by the IRA in retaliation for the UVF's ambush of the Dublin-based The Miami Showband on 31 July 1975 which had resulted in the shooting deaths of three bandmembers. One of the five people killed in the Bayardo attack was UVF man, Hugh Harris.
Read more about this topic: Brendan Mc Farlane
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