Joseph Stanley often recalled that 28 December was the Christian feast day of the holy innocents. On that day in 1972, at exactly 10.01 pm, his son Paddy had been trying to phone his family in Clara, County Offaly. Paddy, a sports-obsessed 16-year-old, worked as a delivery assistant on a lorry supplying gas cylinders to businesses around Ireland. He was calling his parents to tell them that he would not be home that night; they had one more delivery to make and the shop in the County Cavan border town of Belturbet was closed. They would have to spend the night in Cavan.

As Paddy stood in a public phone box on the town’s main street, a bomb in a nearby parked car exploded. The phone box was lifted from the ground by the force of the explosion, landing some yards away on the street, where it was hit by falling debris. On hearing the explosion, local mechanic Paddy O’Reilly rushed to help the injured; he discovered Paddy Stanley lying beside the phone box. He gently picked him up: “I … carried him up the street towards the garage. His hair was burning, and half his face was blown away.”

A few yards away from Paddy Stanley, 15-year-old Geraldine O’Reilly had been just about to leave a take-away when the bomb exploded. Her brother Anthony was waiting for her in his car outside. Seriously hurt and requiring hospital treatment, he was nonetheless taken to identify his sister’s body by torchlight. He did so by recognizing one of her tan, knee-length boots, her blue skirt and other fragments of clothing.

Geraldine, like Paddy Stanley, had suffered catastrophic head injuries and died instantly. Several others were treated in hospital for serious burns and lacerations. But the trauma endures. Anthony O’Reilly remains profoundly affected by that flickering vision of his sister’s body on the takeaway floor: “Last thing at night and first thing in the morning, that image still comes back to me. It’s not something you get over.”

Who killed the children of Belturbet? Almost fifty years after the bombing nobody has ever been convicted, or even charged, for the murders of Geraldine O’Reilly and Paddy Stanley. A 2004 report by Mr. Justice Henry Barron named one lead suspect, Robert Bridges, an Enniskillen loyalist who was later convicted of a sectarian murder. Bridges, it was claimed was the most likely leader of a loyalist cell in Fermanagh that planted bombs in the southern border towns of Belturbet, Clones and Pettigo on the night of 28 December (fortunately nobody was killed in Clones and Pettigo).

Barron’s conclusions drew heavily on Garda reports, which were largely based on intelligence received from the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Barron’s reasons for singling out Bridges were also outlined in his report. One of his principal reasons for doing so was that there was a total absence of intelligence on other suspects.

Documents held at the UK National Archives in London prove that intelligence on another lead suspect was available, but that this was not passed on to Irish investigators.

Barely three months after the murders in Belturbet, the commander of the British Army’s 3^rd Infantry Brigade, Brigadier Peter Bush, met with police commanders from Tyrone and Fermanagh to discuss the security situation along the border. At the 29 March meeting in Omagh there was some discussion about a recent arrest in County Fermanagh. The report of the meeting noted that, “Of the two men arrested for robbery at Derrygonnelly [County Fermanagh], one was a leading member of a UDA [Ulster Defence Association] Commando type gang from Belfast who were believed responsible for various explosions in Eire.”

A few weeks later a 3 Brigade intelligence summary noted that, in the case of Fermanagh, “There has been no militant Protestant activity during the period under review. This can be accounted for by the recent arrest of McMurray and Campbell on 14 March. It is assumed that the Co. Fermanagh militant Protestants are undergoing some form of re-organisation.”

On 14 March William McMurray, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, and James Campbell, a former customs officer with addresses in Fermanagh and Newtownabbey, were charged with stealing £312 from a man in Derrygonnelly and the illegal possession of a Walther pistol and ammunition. British military intelligence identified McMurray as the “OC [officer commanding] of a UDA Special Commando Team” in the border region.

British Army intelligence reports also indicated that McMurray was an associate of Robert Bridge (his correct surname), who was described as a ‘lieutenant-colonel’ and possible one-time commander of the Fermanagh/Tyrone UDA. In his court hearing in May 1973 McMurray described himself as a ‘liaison officer’ between the Belfast UDA leadership and loyalists in Fermanagh and Tyrone. Three successive juries failed to agree on whether to convict both men and charges were ultimately dropped – although McMurray was convicted of another, separate firearms related charge.

The UDA was a new, legal organisation in 1972; it received support from some prominent unionist politicians. In a speech In November 1972 the  Enniskillen-based Impartial Reporter reported on a speech made by in November 1972, John Taylor, a former Northern Ireland cabinet minister with responsibility for security at the Ministry of Home Affairs (1970-1972), in which Taylor, thanked, “… thanked” …God for the imagination of the people who had the wisdom to form organizations like the LAW [Loyalist Association of Workers] and the UDA”, although he believed that, “these forces must be coordinated and led”.

The unionist-leaning Impartial Reporter also reported that Taylor claimed that Taylor also stated that since the loyalist bombings in October 1972 in Clones, County Monaghan and Carrigans, County Donegal there had been an improvement in security on the southern side of the border loyalist bombings in October 1972 in Clones, County Monaghan and Carrigans, County Donegal: “To that extent one must not hesitate to say that these two explosions have been an advantage to Northern Ireland security.”

In late 1972 and early 1973 there was a spike in loyalist activity along the Fermanagh border, including cross-border bombings and robberies. Whereas Barron believed that Robert Bridge was the driving force behind the group that carried out this loyalist border campaign, including the murder of Geraldine O’Reilly and Paddy Stanley, the British Army and the RUC had come to a different conclusion – McMurray was their primary suspect – one they did not share with their Garda counterparts.

According to Barron, in 1973 Garda intelligence identified a former customs officer who they believed was the leader of a group of loyalist paramilitaries operating on the Fermanagh/Donegal border. However, Gardaí were unable to interview the suspect as “he was resident in Northern Ireland” (the suspect, unlike Bridge, is not named by Barron and no more comment was offered by Barron on this intelligence, including any follow-up contacts with the RUC).

Some local residents were in no doubt that the bombing of Belturbet was in response to the re-opening of a nearby border crossing by Cavan County Council, against the wishes of the British government and local unionists. One man claimed that he had sat up for ten nights waiting for a bomb. John Brooke, the unionist chairman of Fermanagh County Council, had labelled the bridge “a highway of death”. It was frequently used by IRA units based in the south who crossed the border to kill part-time Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier and blow up ‘economic targets’, including Protestant-owned shops and pubs.

On 21 September 1972, 53-year-old Tom Bullock, a popular part-time UDR soldier and his wife Emily were shot dead in their home near the border by an IRA unit which had crossed over, and returned by, Aghalane Bridge. Outraged unionists demanded that the British Army should close the bridge until the IRA threat had subsided. The British government was in an awkward position; only unapproved roads could be cratered and shut unilaterally. Shutting a main, “approved” road required the consent of the Irish government, and that would not be forthcoming.

Captain Vernon Rees, the army officer in charge of security in the south-west Fermanagh, believed that he could help solve the problem of Aghalane Bridge. In an interview for the Imperial War Museum’s oral history archive, Rees recalled that, after the killing of the Bullocks, a local RUC chief inspector introduced him to Jack Leahy, a 46-year-old publican in Lisnaskea (Leahy was also a long-standing Ulster Unionist Party councillor).

Rees claimed that Leahy was a leading representative of the UDA in South Fermanagh. In Rees’s view, “… anybody who would help me defeat the IRA would be a friend of mine. And that in those days included the UDA.” By Rees’s account, Leahy asked him to keep his soldiers away from the Aghalane area on the night of 20/21 November. Rees had a moment of nervous reflection,

‘Am I about to cooperate with a terrorist in the Ulster Defence Association in the destruction of a main road in the United Kingdom?’ And I thought, ‘All those little farmers around there. They have never used that road. It’s just far too dangerous. It would be wonderful if that bridge was down.’ So I leaked it through the Special Branch again that there would be no soldiers in that area between 8 and midnight that Thursday night.

At 1 am on 21 November 1972, a Garda patrol car found a string of bales blocking their approach to Aghalane. On top of the bales was a sign marked ‘BOM’ [sic]. Seconds later an explosion ripped through the 19^th century, 40-feet long bridge. However, the structure was only partially damaged.

Captain Rees later described what happened when he arrived on the scene the following day, where he introduced himself to an army explosives expert.

I said … ‘I’m Captain Rees. I’m very glad you’ve come out to look at this. There’s some very unstable explosives up there and I don’t want it moved really. I want you to destroy it on the bridge.’ He went up and he came down and he said, ‘It’s mud.’ And I said, ‘No, no, it’s not mud. It’s unstable, homemade explosives.’ And he said, ‘If I blow that up there, sir, it will blow the central arch down.’ And I said, ‘If that’s what happens, that’s what happens.’ And he said, ‘Are you telling me … ?’ And I said, ‘Go up there and clear that thing.’ Anyway, he blew it up with about a quarter of a pound of PE [plastic explosives]. Both the arches flew out and the central arch collapsed. Ten minutes later I go up and there is this inspector from the Gardaí who says, ‘What have you done?’

Lieutenant General Harry Tuzo, the most senior officer in Northern Ireland, made it clear to the Northern Ireland Office that he was “delighted” that the bridge was now closed and wanted to keep it that way indefinitely. But, on the other side of the border, engineers from Cavan County Council believed that they could erect a temporary bailey bridge – despite the two explosions, much of the bridge remained intact.

Frank Steele, an MI6 officer seconded to the Northern Ireland Office, passed a message to the Irish government though the embassy in Dublin – the unilateral erection of a bailey bridge and the reopening of the road would be viewed as going against “courtesy and perhaps of law”.  Such remonstrations were ignored; the temporary bridge was installed, and the road was reopened on 24 December 1972. Barriers erected by Fermanagh County Council on the northern side of the bridge were removed by local nationalists. John Brooke was outraged, describing the bailey bridge as “an invasion of United Kingdom territory by a foreign power.”

On the night of the bombing of Belturbet the bomb car, a red Ford Escort, crossed over the Irish bailey bridge. It was stopped by a Garda on duty on the bridge who took the licence number before waving a male driver and female passenger on. The crossing of the temporary bailey bridge, which was now frequently policed after the November attack, was probably not coincidental. Other, safer routes were available to cross the border. But this was likely a warning to the Irish government, as some in the British Army were quick to recognise.

Writing to an official in the Northern Ireland Office three days after the Belturbet, Clones and Pettigo attacks, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Millen at military Headquarters Northern Ireland observed that,  “ … these incidents should encourage the Republic’s authorities to support our wish to leave the road physically (opposed from legally) closed.” John Brooke, while extending his sympathy to the victims, also noted that the unilateral reopening of the bridge at Aghalane by Cavan County Council meant that loyalists could just as easily use that route to inflict terror on the people in Cavan as the IRA did when attacking targets in Fermanagh. Brooke hoped that Irish government policy would now change.

On the morning of 11 January 1973 Aghalane bridge was again targeted in another bomb attack. The force of the explosion ripped out the steel girders of the bailey bridge. A Fermanagh nationalist politician, John Carron, appealed to the Irish government not to be bullied. They should restore the bridge and dare the bombers to try again.

The government ignored Carron’s request; Aghalane remained closed to vehicle traffic for more than two decades. In the weeks after the border bombings, politicians and businessmen demanded a more intensive Irish security presence on the border. Belturbet’s Town Commissioners insisted on a 24-hour security presence on the remaining border crossing of Leggykelly.

Other locals requested that the Garda and the Defence Forces systematically check vehicles, “the same as they were doing in Northern Ireland”. Under pressure, the government of Taoiseach Jack Lynch responded by further stepping up its security presence in the Cavan and Monaghan border area. This was of course welcomed by the British Army and mainstream unionist representatives, who noted a pattern of increasing arrests of IRA suspects.

The loyalist border campaign of the early 1970s was a brutal attempt to force the Irish government to do more to secure the border and counter IRA activity. It can be argued that, from the perspective of loyalist paramilitaries, terrorism worked; an increased Irish security presence to frustrate possible future loyalist attacks also served to restrict the IRA’s ability to operate in the border region. But the bombing of Belturbet, like other loyalist attacks south of the border, did irreparable damage to the British government’s reputation in the area. An editorial in the Fermanagh Herald, observed that, “People are not fools. They see Unionist terrorists doing pretty well what they please.” On Aghalane, Lord Kilbracken, the Leitrim peer and decorated Royal Navy pilot, told the House of Lords that it was, “remarkable that the destruction of a bridge by terrorist forces should be considered an act which is indispensable for security purposes.”

The sense among nationalists that loyalist terrorism was ignored, tolerated or even facilitated by the British Army and the RUC severely undermined the security forces’ declared objective of winning trust and information among the nationalist population. A failure to pass on valuable intelligence about the murder of two children in Belturbet is an ugly indictment of a complacent, if not sometimes complicit, attitude towards loyalism in the early 1970s.

This article was first published by the Irish Times on 14 December 1920.