Talk:Mountainview Tavern attack

To rename article to cover all the sectarian killings of the 5 April 1975 in Belfast ?
I reinstated the mention of the McLaughlin Bar attack on the same day. Two Catholics were killed in a bomb attack on McLaughlin’s Bar in the New Lodge area of Belfast, carried out by the "Protestant Action Force". The Mountainview attack then seems to be a sectarian revenge attack by the "Catholic Action Force". Seems strange to have an article on Tweedledee but not Tweedledum.

I see FDW777 deleted the reference to the McLaughlin attack, saying "removed irrelevant information from lead".

There was also another sectarian attack later that night, in which one elderly Catholic was murdered as he walked home in the Ardoyne.

I suggest that the article be renamed the "McLaughlin Bar and Mountainview Tavern attacks" or "Belfast sectarian attacks of the 5 April 1975". TGcoa (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Firstly read WP:LEAD. Since the prior bombing, or the alleged subsequent death doesn't appear in the article, it doesn't appear in the lead. As stated when originally removed, there is no reference that confirms the elderly man was shot later. Belfast Child is not a reliable reference, and it doesn't even confirm the latter bombing was in retaliation for the former, that is entirely your own assumption.


 * Regarding the Aftermath section. Tdv123 has a long and disruptive history of creating such sections using nothing other than data. Since this, this and this make no mention whatsoever of anything useful, it is WP:SYNTHESIS to create such a section and claim any kind of connection. FDW777 (talk) 22:04, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

so there is maximum transparency for other editors, I would prefer to continue the discussion here rather than by email, if that's acceptable to you? FDW777 (talk) 07:34, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

So this article continue to omit a major event of a sectarian nature that happened a few hours earlier in close proximity. I think that would suggest blatant sectarian bias to most readers. It would be like someone on the 2021 Gaza conflict taking out all reference to the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, requiring one article on Israel's attacks on Gaza and requiring another article to be written at some point on Hamas' attacks on Israel.

I accept that you deleted all my edits because you say you there was no detail about the McLaughlin Bar attack in the article. Fair enough. I accept that you did this because you require there to be detail in the body of the article and not at all because you are biased yourself.

Also, and more generally, I think it is useful and appropriate to give more detail about the other sectarian attacks at the time, to help put the McLaughlin Bar and Mountainview attacks n perspective, but effectively this is more debatable.

I'm not incentivised to make any edits on this subject in Wikipedia in English when they are deleted (I edit copiously on Wikipedia but don't usually edit much in English). Let this article in English in its present form stand as a monument to sectarian bias, the very sectarian hatred that led to these attacks and more later on. TGcoa (talk) 12:28, 22 May 2021 (UTC)


 * What I'm in favour of including are events that are discussed as related events by references. What I'm in favour of exclusding are events that happened at the same time but are not discussed as related events by references. CAIN's chronology and deaths index are great for finding events that happened at the same time, but are generally useless for determining whether events are related to each other. FDW777 (talk) 10:30, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Time to update the article to cover all the sectarian killings on 5 April 1975
I understand that the only reason not to mention the deadly bombing by Protestants on a Catholic pub a few hours beforehand etc is that there is no evidence of a link, While I have found evidence. So I suggest revising the article, putting in a lot more references, and renaming it to 'Sectarian attacks of 5 April 1975 in Belfast' Here is a quote from   'Torn apart: fifty years of the Troubles, 1969-2019'  by Wharton, Ken We have previously considered the less than innocent version of ‘tit for tat’, to which we will now return. At 15.00 hours on 5 April 1975, Grand National Day in the UK, the UVF planted several explosives inside a gas cylinder (guaranteed to cause a lethal storm of razor-sharp shrapnel) outside the Catholic-frequented McLaughlin’s bar on the New Lodge Road. It was always likely to be a busy day, as many members of the racing fraternity are Irish, from North and South, with many thousands crossing the Irish Sea to Aintree, Liverpool, for the annual steeplechase event known as the Grand National. No warning was given, with the subsequent blast killing Kevin Kane (18) and his friend, Michael Coyle (20); seven more people were badly injured, with one man losing both legs. Three hours later, the Mountainview Tavern on the Shankill Road was the target of the Provisionals; ...  As surely as night follows day, just a few hours later, UVF gunmen shot a Catholic dead in a random sectarian shooting; Thomas Robinson (61) was walking home with his wife along Stratford Gardens in the Ardoyne when masked men, who had been waiting in Etna Drive, walked over to the couple, deliberately shooting him in the head. Forty-eight hours later, the UVF killed another innocent Catholic, Gerald McLaughlin (20), as he went to work in Antrim. Tit for tat? Retaliation or first strike? Which came first: the chicken or the egg?