IRA Sectarian Murder Gang Member Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane’s Bayardo Bar Bombing

Before he joined the IRA in the early 1970s, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane was a junior seminarian [a trainee Catholic priest] for 2 years in a college in Carrog, North Wales from 1966 to 1968.

Bik left that calling for an IRA vocation that demanded a dedication to commit mass murder – sectarian mass murder that would not shirk at civilian targets, and preferably Protestant/Loyalist civilians.

I met Bik in Crumlin Road gaol in mid August of 1975 just after his arrest – the summer of 1975 having been one of the worst summers of sectarian atrocities in Belfast.

Bik had been arrested 20 minutes after the Bayardo Bar bomb and gun attack when he was stopped at a British army checkpoint on Alliance Avenue.

A soldier noticed the car’s rear window blown out [by the force of the earlier bomb] and a bullet hole in the roof of the car.

A number of spent .223 and 9mm bullet casings were visible on the rear seat and floor.

Both rear windows had been fully wound down.

At the later trial, witnesses identified Peter ‘Skeet’ Hamilton as the IRA man who threw the smoking bomb into the bar.

Hamilton would have required two hands to light the fuse on the bomb and then throw it into the bar.

Seamus Clarke was therefore the Armalite-firing gunman who shot and killed two older men outside the bar – and who continued to shoot at civilians afterwards on Agnes Street as they were driving away.

Miraculously, none of the second volley of sectarian IRA bullets hit any Protestant civilians.

Seamus Clarke was the younger brother of well-known IRA volunteer Terence ‘Cleeky’ Clarke who spent most of the 1970s in prison for IRA activities, mostly involving attempted escapes from custody and assaults on prison officers.

Brendan McFarlane evidently held and fired the 9mm pistol rounds from the car – at the trial, evidence showed that one shoulder and arm of his jacket had yielded ample evidence of gunfire residue.

Before being stopped at the army checkpoint, Bik had dropped off his two comrades with the Armalite rifle and the pistol and they got away.

Hamilton and Clarke were arrested later after their fingerprints were found in the car – which had been stolen only a short time before the sectarian attack.

[In November, three months after the bombing, the Armalite rifle used in the Bayardo Bar attack was discovered in the New Lodge area when a girl IRA volunteer was shot in the leg and seriously wounded.

The accidental shooting brought police to a house where they found the Armalite and over 215 rounds of .223 ammunition thrown over the rear wall after the IRA girl courier was accidentally shot by another IRA volunteer.

Forensic evidence linked the Armalite to the Bayardo Bar attack three months earlier.]

Crumlin Road Gaol – Summer 1975

News of the Bayardo Bar bomb and gun attack had created a real nervousness in the gaol – it was a sectarian attack that killed 4 Protestant civilians immediately, with a 5th Protestant civilian – a girl of 17 – dying in hospital shortly thereafter.

Northern Ireland was definitely on the brink of something approaching the risk of a civil war or a spiralling series of sectarian atrocities that might even involve the gaol being attacked where many arrested IRA prisoners were concentrated on a single wing – ‘A’ wing.

The Belfast Brigade of the IRA had ramped up its murders of Protestant civilians as its 1975 “ceasefire” [what was left of its ceasefire] fell apart – tellings its volunteers if they were captured to claim either to be “freelancers” or else members of the non-existent “Catholic Action Force” – one of the ridiculous names the Belfast Brigade used to deny its responsibility for a catalogue of sectarian murders.

Bik’s First Bayardo Bomb Attack – “Catholic Action Force”

Bik’s first attack on the Bayardo Bar had occurred 8 weeks earlier on June 18, this time using a motorbike.

One IRA volunteer fired shots into the bar while the other then planted the smoking bomb in the doorway – the shots missed and the bomb was hurled into the road by a man in the pub, where it exploded without killing anyone.

After this earlier IRA attack on the Bayardo Bar, it would have been madness for any loyalist paramilitary to use the bar for a long time when it was clearly on the IRA’s target list.

Which would explain why the Bik’s second attack killed so many civilians…

This first IRA attack on the Bayardo Bar was falsely claimed by the IRA using the title of an entirely fake organisation, the “Catholic Action Force”.

Otherwise, the Belfast Brigade of the IRA ordered its volunteer murderers to claim to be “freelancers” if they were captured after any sectarian murders of civilians – this is what IRA volunteer Robert ‘Cheeser’ Crawford did four days after the first Bayardo Bar attack when he shot and killed two innocent young Protestant civilian friends on Westland Road.

When Crawford was arrested, he falsely claimed to have acted as a “freelancer” – but was immediately received into Crumlin Road’s IRA wing where I – acting as the Intelligence Officer on the wing – debriefed him as an IRA volunteer and sent his details out to the Belfast Brigade.

Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane – Sectarian IRA Mass Murderer

Sitting in the canteen of ‘A’ Wing of Crumlin Road Gaol, I and some others engaged Bik in conversation about the sectarian nature of his bomb and gun attack which had resulted in the deaths of 5 Protestant civilians.

I told Bik that after I had challenged the IRA’s Belfast Brigade in a smuggled ‘comm’ a few weeks earlier about Robert ‘Cheeser’ Crawford’s admitted sectarian murders of two entirely innocent Protestants, the IRA’s Cumann na mBan Chief of Staff Maura Drumm [and also the only woman on the IRA’s Army Council at that time] had come into Crumlin Road prison on a ‘special visit’ and ordered me to ‘stand down’ from my position as Intelligence Officer in the prison – this dismissal from my position [and my assumption of a position as a ‘suspended volunteer’] was the result merely of asking if the IRA’s Belfast Brigade was murdering innocent Protestants.

Bik was entirely nonchalant about his 5 Protestant civilian deaths – his only argument was that while he didn’t like the “job”, it “had to be done”.

A number of the prisoners on ‘A’ Wing were not in agreement with the sectarian murder campaign being run by the Belfast Brigade in the names of fake groups such as the “Catholic Action Force”.

Being from Derry/Londonderry, I had already two members of my immediate family married to Derry Protestants with a third about to marry another Derry Protestant – there was much less sectarianism in Derry at the time.

I thought then that the IRA would surely later disassociate itself from the Belfast Brigade’s sectarian murderers of innocent Protestants – that Bik would become an isolated character in Long Kesh after his conviction and sentence.

There are claims in some books and TV programs that back then IRA leader Gerry Adams was expressing exasperation at the Belfast Brigade’s sectarian murders from his bunk bed in Long Kesh prison – these claims were and remain entirely false.

Adams had the authority in Long Kesh and later outside prison to isolate the IRA’s sectarian murder gangs and make an example of them by standing them down and declaring them to be ‘suspended volunteers’ – as had happened to me in Crumlin Road gaol merely for asking the Belfast Brigade if it was murdering innocent Protestants.

But no – Bik went on to become the IRA’s Commanding Officer in the H-Blocks.

Seamus Clarke’s older IRA Volunteer brother, Terence ‘Cleeky’ Clarke, was later appointed by Gerry Adams to take control of Adams’ personal security and act as his driver.

Terence ‘Cleeky’ Clarke had been named as one of the IRA’s 1972 sectarian murderers of the two young Orr brothers – completely innocent Protestant murder victims – although Terence was never charged or convicted of those murders.

The Belfast Brigade of the IRA – and indeed the entire IRA organisation nationally – never distanced itself in any way from the years of sectarian murders of innocent Protestant civilians.

Nor has Sinn Féin condemned the IRA’s sectarian murder gangs – indeed, Sinn Féin leaders have praised the IRA’s sectarian murderers in life and in death.

But there is none to challenge either the IRA’s leadership or Sinn Féin about its celebration of sectarian mass murder and murderers – the Catholic church’s Northern Ireland leaders above all want amiable influence with Sinn Féin to protect Catholic schools and will never upset the apple cart by criticising the IRA’s past deeds – that might lead to fewer “bums on seats” in depleted congregations resulting in poorer co££ections – and we can’t have that…

Best to keep silent about the IRA’s past and hope it goes away…

After all, failing any Roman Catholic Confessions of any sins by the IRA’s sectarian mass murderers, the secret amnesty negotiated by the British and Irish governments with the IRA’s Army Council took care of all that.

Indeed, there’s always at least one Catholic priest ready to offer Masses for the IRA’s heroic Active Service Unit Volunteers aka the IRA’s “patriot dead” – unrepentant mass murderers all of them…