50 years on from Belfast pub attack: The schoolboy UVF bomber’s path from hate to hope

Society must learn from stories like that of UVF killer who realised dehumanising the ‘other side’ was a road to ruin

The aftermath of the Rose and Crown bar attack in 1974

Suzanne Breen

A month after 16-year-old Ron McMurray bombed the Rose and Crown bar in Belfast’s lower Ormeau, killing six people, he sat his O-levels.

“I wasn’t old enough to legally drink or vote. I was a Grange Hill terrorist,” he told me.