seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA


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The Walker’s Bar Attack

The Walker’s Bar attack, also known as the Store Bar shooting, is a mass shooting which takes place on June 25, 1976, at Walker’s Bar on Lyle Hill Road in TemplepatrickCounty Antrim, in Northern Ireland. It is carried out by the South Armagh Republican Action Force (SARAF). The attack, in which three people are killed, is one of several “tit for tat” mass shootings that take place during The Troubles in mid-1976.

Three weeks after the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) undertakes a gun attack on the Chlorane Bar in Belfast, a Republican Action Force group attacks Walker’s Bar in County Antrim.

At the time of the attack, a Friday evening, a cabaret show is taking place, and the bar contains approximately forty people. The attackers spray the pub with an ArmaLite AR-15 assault rifle. While some sources suggest that a grenade is thrown into the bar before the attackers escape, contemporary news sources state that a bomb is left behind.

Three people are killed and approximately six are injured. Those killed, all Protestant civilians from the same extended family, included Ruby Kidd (28), Francis Walker (17) and Joseph McBride (56).

The “West Belfast Republican Action Force” subsequently claims responsibility for the shooting, stating that it was “carried out in retaliation” for the Chlorane Bar attack earlier in June 1976.

A week after the gun attack in Templepatrick, the UVF carries out a gun attack on a Catholic-owned pub, the Ramble Inn. While described as a “reprisal” for the Walker’s bar attack, five of the six people killed in the Ramble Inn attack are Protestants, while the other victim is Catholic. Considered a failure or “own goal” by the UVF, the attack is carried out because the bar owners are Catholics and the gunmen expect that the patrons would mainly be Catholic.