Pat McVeigh: ‘Maybe now we can clear my father’s name and let him rest in peace’

On the morning of May 13th, 1972, Patrick McVeigh should have been on his way to work; instead, his family was learning of his death.

“My daddy was a good, hard-working man who thought plenty about his children and his wife,” says his daughter Pat McVeigh. “He worked in Harland and Wolff from when he was 14 years old, he was there for 30 years.

“He should have been in work that morning at eight o’clock, but he was shot after midnight, on his way home.”

The 44-year-old father of six was killed by members of the undercover British army unit known as the Military Reaction Force (MRF), who fired on him from a car with a sub-machine gun as he stood with members of the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association on a street corner in west Belfast.

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On Thursday, prosecutors in Northern Ireland decided that a former soldier, Soldier F, will be prosecuted for Mr McVeigh’s murder and the attempted murder of four others wounded in the same incident.

Soldier F and three others - Soldiers B, C and D – will also face prosecution for the attempted murder of two people during a separate shooting incident in Slievegallion Drive on May 12th.

The police investigation was triggered by a BBC Panorama documentary in 2013, in which former members of the MRF said they had been tasked with “hunting down” IRA members in Belfast and admitted killing unarmed civilians.

“It’s a very emotional day for us,” says Ms McVeigh. “I can’t tell you how delighted we are that maybe this is the last stand, and at our ages now, we can clear my father’s name and let him rest in peace.”

The eldest of six children, Ms McVeigh was 20 years old when her father was killed, and her youngest sister was just eight.

“My father was totally innocent, as were the other victims” [shot that night],” she says. “We have fought for 35 years, my family and I, to clear my father’s name of what those soldiers said, that they were gunmen – they weren’t gunmen.

“We couldn’t replace my father, but we have to clear his name, and that’s been the driving force for us, to have the truth come out.”

The case will now proceed to court and is not affected by the UK government’s controversial Legacy Act, which will end most Troubles-era criminal and civil cases and inquests.

“It’s right that they are charging these men,” says Ms McVeigh. “If you murdered somebody, it doesn’t matter whether it’s 10 or 50 or 100 years ago, you should be made accountable for your actions.

“The Legacy Act is wrong – people should be made accountable for murder. I think they just don’t want to admit that they allowed plain clothes soldiers to drive around shooting people, just picking people out, innocent people, victims.

“Nothing is to bring my father back, but we have to do something to clear his name, so I’m happy today that at least we might get into court and have our day where we can have our say.

“They took my father’s life. He was a good man, he should have lived for another 50 years, but we were robbed of a father, and a good one at that.”

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