SEFF remembers Resident Magistrate Martin McBirney, from a Protestant faith background was murdered 46 yrs ago, 16/9/74 by PIRA.
He was shot dead in the kitchen of his Belfast home, in front of his family. That same day Judge Rory Conaghan was also murdered.
Following the ...

..murders of Justices Conaghan & McBirney, PIRA's Army Council’s mouthpiece - the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau in Dublin - declared that they were murdered because they were “willing agents of a most corrupt, rotten & evil judicial system”.
Martin McBirney was a prominent...

.. member of the NI Labour Party.
Martin had married an RC &, while a barrister, had acted for the defence in civil rights’ cases & had represented socialist activist Eamon McCann.
He had, among other things, jailed the late Rev. Ian Paisley who is also former First Minister. ..

..The Provisional IRA’s statement went on to mistakenly refer to the murder victims as ‘High Court judges’.
They weren’t High Court judges, but were in fact Resident Magistrates.
The McBirney family’s grief was compounded when Frances Cooke, Mrs. McBirney’s sister-in-law, died...

..of a heart attack after hearing the news of Martin’s murder.
SEFF’s thoughts and prayers are with the McBirney family today and every day.