'Any effort to directly link IRA Kingsmills Massacre to UVF murders 24 hours earlier is very wrong'
A victims campaigner has spoken out to assert that it is “very wrong” to directly connect the Kingsmills Massacre with six loyalist murders the day before.
Kenny Donaldson, the director of victims groups SEFF, was speaking to the News Letter at the scene of the Kingsmills Massacre 50 years ago to the day that the atrocity took place, on Monday.
The Kingsmills Massacre took place near Kingsmills in south Armagh on 5 January 1976 when the IRA gunned down 10 Protestant factory workers as they travelled home in a minibus.
The 10 men were Robert Chambers, 18, John Bryans, 46, Reginald Chapman, 29, Walter Chapman, 35, Robert Freeburn, 50, Joseph Lemmon, 46, John McConville, 20, James McWhirter, 58, Robert Walker, 46, and Kenneth Worton, 24. Sole survivor Alan Black survived being shot 18 times.
The day before, the UVF shot brothers John Martin Reavey, 24, and Brian Reavey, 22, who lived near Kingsmills. A third brother, Anthony, 17, died several weeks later from his injuries.
Also the day before, the UVF also gunned down three members of the O'Dowd family near Gilford, brothers Barry, 24, and Declan, 19, and their uncle Joe, 61.
But speaking after the Kingsmills roadside commemoration on Monday, Mr Donaldson countered common claims which suggest Kingsmills Massacre had been in retaliation for the six UVF murders.
He added: "I think in all of the coverage that has existed around this atrocity it's very important that there is clarity given around the backdrop to this heinous sectarian atrocity.
"The Kingsmills Massacre was planned for many months in advance by the Provisional IRA as confirmed by the PSNI Historical Enquiries Team (HET) report.
“Any effort to directly connect this incident to the horrific events of the day before, when six innocents from the Reavey and O'Dowd families were murdered is very wrong.
"We must be very clear that the Provisional IRA utilised the perfect opportunity to execute the Kingsmills attack, knowing that they could hide under that propaganda of the previous day's events."
Looking to the findings of the Kingsmills Inquest - which he described as "very broken" - he said that nevertheless, it found that information was coming from within the factory where the Kingsmills men worked to advise who was likely to be on that bus on the evening of the atrocity.
"That intimates that there was a watchful eye going on for a period of time ahead of what happened here on the 5th of January, 1976," he added.
He was affirming the view of the coroner in his Kingsmills findings. He said: "The attack, while ostensibly in direct response to the murderous attacks on the Reavey and O’Dowd families by loyalist terrorists on the evening of 4 January 1976, was not spontaneous but had been planned well in advance."
The coroner added: “It was mounted because the deceased men were Protestants and for no other reason."
One local who also attended the Kingsmills commemoration said that the Provisional IRA had murdered around 40 members of the security forces within a 5-10 miles radius of the atrocity.
The eight mile road from the Kingsmills memorial to Newtownhamilton had seen at least four members of the security forces murdered, he said.