Survivor of infamous IRA attack describes scene of devastation caused by Bik McFarlane and says people praising him are 'imbeciles'

John Rainey, 73, a retired builder from Carrickfergus, was reacting to the tributes heaped on McFarlane since his death on February 21.

McFarlane and his IRA team attacked the Bayardo Bar on Belfast's Shankill Road, killing five random Protestants, and Mr Rainey has recounted his memories of that night.

McFarlane was buried on Tuesday, aged 74, with a raft of top Sinn Fein figures attending his funeral and Gerry Kelly MLA delivering the graveside address.

Mr Farlane also helpe organise the violent breakout of the Maze in 1983, and is suspected in the murders of two members of the Irish security forces.

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald described him as a "great patriot" and "part of a generation who rose up against oppression, the British occupation and the sectarian Orange state," whose life was "about the uplift of working people".

Mr Rainey was aged 22 at the time of the Bayardo attack, and was out drinking with work collague Hugh Harris, 21, and Linda Boyle, 17.

The trio had arrived in the bar about 10.40pm.

They'd had hardly a chance to drink anything when "there was a lot of gunfire – I actually think a couple of rounds came into the bar, you could hear sort of richochets," said Mr Rainey.

"The next thing was a girl opposite the door, she jumped up and says 'oh my God there's a bomb'," he said.

"I jumped up, as I was right at the door, and looked down and they had set the bomb right beside me."

Many people ran away from the bomb, but Linda was "frozen". Mr Rainey grabbed her.

The bomb was in a chequered bag and it started to smoke.

Then Mr Rainey saw "the bag being sucked inwards, and then there was an almighty flash – it was a blinding flash".

"Then I felt the air pressure hitting me, and I heard the blast. I could feel myself flying through the air, being hit with things.

"I said to myself: Oh my God, I'm 22 and I'm dead. Because I realised I was literally on top of the bomb as it went off. I just didn't have an expectation of surviving."

He ended up buried for about 20 minutes or so, and when he awoke "all I could smell was blood and drink and a sort of burning smell".

He said the scene "has haunted me" and the dead are "always on your mind".

"Sometimes I think to myself it's easier for the people who have been killed; at least that's it. It's final. But we the survivors have to live with this the rest of our lives."

Mr Rainey was left in the hospital for a month with third-degree burns and holes in his stomach, knee, and shin.

"I remember saying whenever they were taking me to the operating theatre and that: 'Don't be taking my leg off – let me die!' I had this awful fear that because my leg was all burnt and blast-damaged they were going to remove the leg."

Whilst four of the five fatal victims of the attack were civilians, Mr Rainey said Harris was a member of the UVF (Mr Rainey said he had no involvement with paramilitarism himself).

Mr Rainey said that the other two attackers besides McFarlane had died years earlier.

When it comes to the praise heaped on McFarlane by the Sinn Fein leadership, he said: "You expect more from your politicians, other than to say: 'What a glorious life that man had, he was a hero.'

"This is somebody who's supposedly guiding us to the future, not taking us back 30 or 40 years to the past.

"Whenever you hear politicians and watch the crowds on TV at the funeral, and the comments people make on Facebook, you say to yourself: Is there ever going to be peace in this country?"

During the week, Celtic FC supporters had unveiled a large banner declaring McFarlane a hero too.

"A hero for doing what? Attacking a bar?" asked Mr Rainey.

"It was the easiest thing in the world to do. There were two men outside the bar. They gunned those two men down. How brave they were! They came and set a holdall ready to explode in the doorway, and ran and got into the car and tried to drive off.

"Where's the heroism in that there? It's sad, you know."

He described those praising him as "imbeciles" and said McFarlane was gone "50 years too late".

But he added: "I feel sorry for the family. There are family members there I'm sure regard him just as a granddad or as a father or as an uncle, and haven't got any political persuasions.

"It's hard to forgive. I have Christian views that I hold sincere. I try to forgive, but it's hard.

"There was only the three of us out [that night] and I survived out of the three.

"I had nobody to talk to, to share the pain. I had my family and that there, my friends, but nobody really knew what I went through."