Speaking following the event Carla Lockhart MP said:

“It was a solemn privilege to attend the 40th anniversary service for William Heenan a man who was murdered by the IRA 40 years ago simply because he was a Protestant. William was ethnically targeted and killed in cold blood. He was entirely innocent.

Sunday’s service was an act of remembrance which stood in stark contrast to the events taking place elsewhere, where Michelle O’Neill was unveiling a statue of Bobby Sands, glorifying a movement responsible for atrocities such as the murder of William Heenan.

That contrast could not be starker: one gathering remembered a victim of terrorism, the other celebrated a perpetrator of it.

William’s son, Sammy Heenan, continues to carry the pain of that loss with enormous dignity and resilience. His voice, and the voices of so many innocent victims, must never be drowned out by those who seek to sanitise or rewrite the brutal truth of our past.

I want to thank SEFF for consistently standing for truth, justice, and dignity, and for honouring the memory of those innocent victims.”