Statement by Cusher Councillor and TUV party Chairman Keith Ratcliffe
“The findings of the Police Ombudsman’s report into the Kingsmill Massacre have laid bare fundamental and deeply troubling failings in the original investigation. The report makes it clear that the resources allocated to the case were wholly insufficient. It identifies a failure to arrest and interview key suspects, and a failure to pursue clear ballistic links that might have brought justice much closer.
“These are not minor oversights. They raise serious and unavoidable questions about the decisions made at the time—questions that should have been asked decades ago, and which now demand answers.
“But amidst the investigative failures, we must keep our focus on one unchanging truth: it was not the security services or the state that committed this atrocity. It was a gang of cowardly Provisional IRA terrorists — driven by bloodlust and by a deep, unrestrained hatred for their Protestant neighbours.
“The report also firmly puts to rest any suggestion of collusion. And tellingly, the one group that has contributed nothing to the investigation — at any stage and on any level — are Republicans. Even now, they continue to maintain the fiction that this was not an IRA massacre, despite the mountain of evidence proving otherwise.
“Yet it is Sinn Féin, the political wing of the very movement that committed these murders, who presume to lecture the rest of us on truth and justice.
“It is a mark of how far we have strayed from moral clarity that Northern Ireland has a First Minister who cannot even bring herself to condemn the IRA’s campaign of terror. More than that — she has publicly glorified it, as recently as this past Easter.
“How can anyone who justifies such acts — who believes they were “necessary” — be considered fit for public office, let alone the highest office in our land?
“This report must not mark the end of the matter. It should ignite a renewed focus on accountability. If failings occurred at the time — and clearly they did — then what can now be done to bring justice and closure for the families?
“Are any of those who should have been questioned still alive? What about the leadership of the IRA who presided over and sanctioned this slaughter? Will they finally be held to account?
“These questions are obvious —yet they are rarely asked. Too often, we have been conditioned by the so-called “process” to accept that justice for victims of republican violence is simply off the table.
“That must change.
“It is the moral duty of any society to pursue justice — not selectively, not politically, but consistently. And that duty remains unfinished.
“My thoughts remain with all those affected by the horror that unfolded at Kingsmill in 1976. Your pain has never been forgotten. Your questions remain valid. And your demand for truth and justice must never be silenced.”