Dealing with the Past

Contributions by:

Willie Frazer:  Ulster loyalist activist and founder and leader of the pressure group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR). He was also a leader of the Love Ulster campaign, and more recently, the Belfast City Hall flag protests. Frazer has contested several elections in County Armagh.  He ran as an Ulster Independence Movement candidate in the 1996 Forum Elections and the 1998 Assembly elections, and as an independent in the 2003 Assembly elections and a council by-election. He was not elected.

Alan McBride: Alan is the Director of the WAVE Trauma Centre, a grass roots charity offering care and support to people bereaved, injured or traumatised as a result of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. His wife Sharon and father-in-law Desmond Frizzell were killed in the Shankill Road bombing carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 23 October 1993.

Raymond McCord: A victims rights campaigne, he became involved in the issue of victims rights after his son, Raymond McCord Jr., was killed by the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in 1997. In 2008 he made history by becoming the first Unionist to address the annual Sinn Féin Ard Fheis. Wearing his father’s Orange Order sash at the event he denounced the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) for ignoring evidence of collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries. An opponent of plans for the UK to leave the European Union, he argued that the move would jeopardise stability in Northern Ireland and hit funding for post-Troubles projects, launched a legal challenge against the proposed move in the aftermath of the referendum.

Robert McClenaghan: On 4th December 1971 Robert’s grandfather, Philip Garry, was killed in the McGurk’s Bar bombing. He was a 73-year-old school lollipop man and was the oldest of the 15 men, women and children killed at McGurk’s. Robert joined the IRA in 1974 at the age of 17. He served time in gaol, convicted of bomb offences.