Moving the goalposts: Loughinisland, a World Cup massacre and the price of truth |
As the eyes of the sporting world turn once again to the United States for the World Cup, the global media is full of colour, noise and escapism. But for the people of Co Down – and for the families of Loughinisland – a World Cup in America will always stir something far heavier.
Behind the international football spectacle lies the reality of how successive British governments have spent decades actively blocking truth and justice for victims of state collusion.
On 18 June 1994, the Heights Bar in Loughinisland was packed with locals watching Jack Charlton’s Ireland side pull off a famous 1–0 win over Italy at Giants Stadium.
Our small, rural community was united in joy until two UVF gunmen in boiler suits and balaclavas sprayed the room with bullets, shooting eleven men in the back as they watched the screen.
Former Antrim football captain to stand for Sinn Féin in Lagan Valley
Documents detailing the theft of a British army gun used to kill 11 Catholics withheld from major murder probes
Adrian Rogan, Malcolm Jenkinson, Barney Green, Daniel McCreanor, Patrick O’Hare and Eamon Byrne were murdered.
The VZ‑58 assault rifle used that night came from the notorious 1987 loyalist arms shipment - a deadly cache imported through Israeli and apartheid South African channels, allowed to reach loyalist paramilitaries under the watch of British intelligence.
This shipment was not intended solely for traditional proscribed loyalist organisations; it was a joint enterprise, financed and divided between the UVF, the UDA and Ulster Resistance.
Formed in the Ulster Hall in November 1986, Ulster Resistance was brought into existence by mainstream unionist politicians. It emerged from a platform dominated by senior DUP figures – including Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Sammy Wilson – who famously donned the organisation’s trademark red berets. Although these political........