By Tom Kelly, Irish News US | “I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride. But something touched me deep inside the day the music died… And as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight the day the music died… And the three men I admire the most: the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, They caught the last train for the coast the day the music died”.
Of course, when Don McLean wrote the lyrics of American Pie, it was in honor of his hero Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash on February 3 1959 alongside two other rock and roll legends, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.
As I watched the dignified 50th anniversary commemoration of the Miami Showband massacre, those lyrics came to mind because in the early hours of July 31 1975, the music stopped for bands throughout Ireland.
It was a savage, premeditated, gross murder spree. Not all of those involved have ever spent a day in court.
It was coordinated through a web of collusion which takes us to the core of the deep state in the UK: UVF to RUC to UDR and the Security Services.
Subsequent inadequate investigations by the police back then – including not even speaking to known suspects and the disgraceful destruction of a murder weapon – highlight only too well why ex-RUC members are not appropriate for legacy investigations or truth recovery in 2025.
The 1970s were a gruesome period. A past which is within touch.
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That’s why, despite the clear intentions of some bitter keyboard marionettes to march us back to the future, we as a (flawed) society have a united message to would-be protagonists and paramilitaries: There will be no reverse gear back to the evilness of a period when some fought their wars but not in our name.
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Go here to read more about these events that many do not know about:
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From Wikipedia: The Miami Showband killings (also called the Miami Showband massacre) was an attack on July 31, 1975 by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group. It took place on the A1 road at Buskhill in County Down, Northern Ireland. Five people were killed, including three members of The Miami Showband, who were one of Ireland’s most popular cabaret bands.
The band was traveling home to Dublin late at night after a performance in Banbridge. Halfway to Newry, their minibus was stopped at what appeared to be a military checkpoint where gunmen in British Army uniforms ordered them to line up by the roadside. At least four of the gunmen were soldiers from the British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), and all were members of the UVF. Two of the gunmen, both soldiers, died when a time bomb they were hiding on the minibus exploded prematurely. The other gunmen then started shooting the dazed band members, killing three and wounding two. It has been suggested that the bomb was meant to explode en route, so that the victim band members would appear to be Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb smugglers and stricter security measures would be established at the border.
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The massacre dealt a blow to Northern Ireland’s live music scene, which had brought young Catholics and Protestants together. In a report published in the Sunday Mirror in 1999, Colin Wills called the Miami Showband attack “one of the worst atrocities in the 30-year history of the Troubles”. The Irish Times diarist Frank McNally summed up the massacre as “an incident that encapsulated all the madness of the time”.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Showband_killings