A loyalist plot to paint the Miami Showband as transporting explosives would have impacted Irish people across the world, a survivor of the atrocity has said.
Stephen Travers said he is not only relieved to have survived the atrocity, but also that the plot did not succeed.
Mr Travers, along with fellow bandmate and survivor Des Lee, revisited the roadside close to Newry where they had come under attack 50 years ago for a commemoration on Thursday.
The band’s minibus had been stopped by loyalist terrorists operating a fake army checkpoint as they drove to Dublin following a gig in Banbridge on July 31, 1975.
They were ordered out of the bus, and an attempt was made to place a bomb on board, but that device exploded prematurely and killed two of the attackers.
Gunmen then opened fire on the band members, killing singer Fran O’Toole, guitarist Tony Geraghty and trumpeter Brian McCoy.
Mr Travers said the sight he saw on the road was “horrendous”, and that watching current scenes from Gaza makes him feel guilty as he made a plea for the violence to stop.
He said he had mixed emotions being back at the site 50 years later.
“I remember when the killing and the shooting and the screaming all stopped and we were fairly certain they had gone away, and Des managed to get up on to the road, I remember looking up at the sky, there was a half-moon, and thinking to myself, what has just happened here,” he said.
“We were under the impression for a while that we were caught in some sort of cross-fire, but over the years we have discovered it was a plan that was in operation, we believe, for two years.
“When I consider the awful things that I saw, I was here for almost an hour crawling around between the bodies of our lads and the body parts of the unfortunate men who blew themselves up. Those memories will stay with me forever.
“The simple plan was to frame us. Had this operation gone successfully, had we been framed as terrorists, our families would have been destroyed.”
He referred to the Maguire Seven, who were falsely accused of handling explosives in connection with the Guildford pub bombings in 1974 and whose names were not cleared until their convictions were quashed in 1991.
“I’m sure lots of you saw Fran’s (O’Toole) father when he tried to follow his son into the grave in various clips on the television – can you just imagine bringing that man into a police station and questioning him as to what he knew about his terrorist son,” Mr Travers said.
“This is the tragedy. It’s not just us that this thing was aimed at – it was a brilliant plan, had it worked. Every single Irish passport holder across the world would have been suspect and dragged into this. had it worked.
“So today when I’m asked how I feel about this, it is of mixed emotion, one is of great relief that I’m alive, and that Des is alive after 50 years, but there is another relief that the Irish people were saved the ignominy of being dragged into police stations whether they were crossing the border of Germany into Switzerland, or whether they were crossing from Canada into America.”
