Former Stormont minister John Taylor is facing criticism after he appeared to question the innocence of 15 Catholics killed in the McGurk’s Bar atrocity.
Mr Taylor, also known as Lord Kilclooney, made the remarks on social media platform X in recent days.
Fifteen civilians, including two children, were killed when the UVF detonated a bomb in the North Queen Street bar, in north Belfast, in December 1971.
Security forces claims that the IRA was to blame were later shown not to be true.
Mr Taylor, who was a Stormont minister at the time of the atrocity, wrongly said it was an IRA bomb that exploded prematurely.
During an exchange on X this week the former Ulster Unionist MP again appeared to cast doubt over the innocence of the victims.
The former politician was responding to a post by an account entitled Séamus Bryson’s Attic Trapdoor that referenced the “innocent people murdered in the McGurk’s”, and also urged him to apologise for previous remarks made.
In response the Mr Taylor said: “You claim they were innocent.”
The following day another post by the same account again referenced the “innocents of the McGurk’s atrocity” to which Mr Taylor replied “you clearly do not understand the word ‘innocent’.”
Mr Taylor’s remarks came after McGurk’s Bar campaigner Sam Irvine, who lost his mother Kitty in the attack, was laid to rest last weekend.
His nephew Ciaran MacAirt was critical of Mr Taylor’s remarks.
“John Taylor has yet to account properly for the disinformation he parroted in the aftermath of the McGurk’s Bar massacre,” he said.
“This most recent slur occurs just weeks before the 53rd anniversary of the mass murder and cover-up, and just days after the burial of another McGurk’s Bar campaigner.”
Mr MacAirt said Mr Taylor’s comments will hurt relatives.
“His baseless slurs will do nothing but hurt the families once again at a particularly difficult time for them,” he said.
In 2018 Mr Taylor was criticised for claiming McGurk’s Bar was a “drinking hole for IRA sympathisers” who have run a “political campaign to place the blame on the UVF”.
A year earlier he refused to apologise when challenged online by a McGurk’s Bar relative over declaring the atrocity was an IRA ‘own goal’.
Other social media remarks have also caused controversy including his description of former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar as “the Indian”, and a claim that unionists and nationalists are not political equals.
