Families to come together for Claudy 50th anniversary

On July 31, 1972, three cars were driven in convoy into the heart of the picturesque village in Co Londonderry.

All three vehicles had been stolen and loaded with explosive devices packed into milk churns, which had been surrounded with metal objects designed to cause maximum damage.

Nine people — including three children — lost their lives, and dozens more were injured when the bombs exploded.

No warning had reached Claudy when the first bomb detonated.

The families and survivors gathering in the village tomorrow do so after spending 50 years without a single person ever having been convicted in connection with the attack.

The IRA is widely believed to have been responsible, but denied having carried it out in the immediate aftermath and refused to accept responsibility throughout the decades.

Both the Northern Ireland Office and the police were found to have engaged in a “collusive act” with the Catholic Church when a priest, the late Father James Chesney, was suspected of involvement.

A report into the Claudy bombing, published in 2010, found that a car that had been travelling in the direction of Claudy stopped at the village of Feeny. A passenger got out and entered a telephone box, which was later found to be out of order.

The local telephone exchange had been out of order due to an earlier IRA attack.

Instead, shop assistants in a shop in Dungiven were asked to inform police that there were three bombs in Claudy.

By the time police in Claudy got the information, the first of the three bombs had exploded.

Within the space of 15 minutes, all three had gone off.

The first car bomb, in a Ford Cortina parked outside McElhinney’s bar on Main Street, exploded at around 10.15am. Three people were killed instantly.

Elizabeth McElhinney, a 59-year-old retired nurse who worked in the bar, was attending to a petrol pump.

Joseph McCloskey, a 39-year-old father-of-seven who worked in a factory, was also nearby when the bomb went off.

And Kathryn Eakin, a nine-year-old girl, was cleaning windows at her family’s shop.

A further three people would suffer serious injuries in the initial blast and die in the days that would follow.

Rose McLaughlin was a 52-year-old mother-of-eight who ran a local cafe.

Arthur Hone was a 38-year-old father-of-two who worked for an insurance company.

Joseph Connolly was 15-years-old and had been hoping to meet with an employment officer about starting his first job.

A device in a Mini Traveller, also parked on Main Street, was spotted and the area was cleared.

Sadly, some of those who were told to move out of harm’s way would move towards Church Street, where another car bomb was ready to explode.

About fifteen minutes after the first explosion, the remaining two bombs went off in short sequence.

A bomb left in a Morris Mini Van outside the Beaufort Hotel would claim a further three lives.

James McClelland was a 65-year-old who was just a few weeks from retirement from his job as a street cleaner. David Miller was a 60-year-old father-of-three who worked for the local council. William Temple, a 16-year-old who was a milkman’s helper, also lost his life.

The brother of the youngest victim of the Claudy bombing, eight-year-old Kathryn Eakin, has described how the horror and pain of losing a child remained with his late parents for the rest of their lives.

Mark Eakin, who was just a few years older than his sister at the time of the bombing, had been in the family-owned shop tidying up with Kathryn when the first bomb went off on Main Street.

He said: “Dad and mum never had the same love of life again. They had their good days and their bad days, but there were more bad days than good. My mother died in August 2008. She had always blamed herself for Kathryn’s death as she had taken us away from Castlerock. Dad died six months later. They were angry about the bomb until their dying days.

“I have always wanted answers, but none of us got the answers we needed.”

A cross-community service is due to take place at the Claudy bomb memorial in the village at 3pm tomorrow.

Organised with the help of the South East Fermanagh Foundation victims’ group, the service will be followed by the launch of a publication to mark the anniversary, and an art project by children from two local schools in the Diamond Centre.