by Ken Wharton
A survivor – Joe ‘N’ – told the author in 2014:
I remember it was Grand National day and because the bar was packed, we couldn’t get a seat downstairs so instead, went up to the bar on the 1st floor and got seated in a cubicle. I can’t remember if we had been served our drinks or not, when suddenly I got blown off my feet and landed behind the bar. I was stunned and bleeding badly from a hand wound, but I got up and looked at where my friends were. Three of them were dangling at the edge of the cubicle; the other 4 had disappeared into the lounge below when the floor collapsed, with the force of the explosion. I then made my way out and remember being in an ambulance getting aid but got out and went back into the bar to help the wounded. I helped carry out an old man who was still sitting in a chair covered in dust; I thought he was dead until he spoke. Apart from me, one of my mates had a broken leg and another a broken arm, but we were the lucky ones; 5 others were killed and 60 odd injured. Of them I only knew Billy Andrews; incidentally a relative of his, Alexander Andrews, had been killed in another pub bombing less than a hundred yards away from this one.
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?
In 1975, Loyalists were again involved in one of the most infamous attacks of the Troubles, when they killed several members of the popular inter-sectarian pop group the Miami Showband. The Miami Showband massacre took place between Loughbrickland and Buskhill, Co. Down, close to the Irish border. The band – a very popular cabaret act at music venues on both sides of the border and on both sides of the sectarian divide – was driving to Dublin in the early hours of the morning of 31 July. The band was returning home to Dublin after a performance at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, near Newry.
The band’s five members were travelling along with their instruments and other musical paraphernalia in their minibus, when they were signalled to stop by what appeared to be British soldiers at an Army VCP, waving the by now easily recognisable red torch. Gunmen, dressed in British Army uniforms, ordered them out of their van, instructing them to line up by the roadside. The gang included at least two, but possibly five, rogue members of the UDR – Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville are known conclusively to have infiltrated the regiment. They were all wearing stolen uniforms. Boyle and Somerville then clambered aboard the minibus with an explosive device, which was timed to explode after the vehicle had crossed the border – some 11 miles or so away – thus throwing suspicion on the band members, whom the Loyalists could accuse of gun-running for the Provisionals.
However, the device exploded prematurely, killing the two UDR men* instantly, wrecking the minibus. The resulting explosion threw both the musicians and the UVF gang to the ground. Francis O’Toole (29), the lead singer with the band and famous for his good looks, was shot by one of the UVF gang, causing him to slump to the ground on his back. The gunman shot him a further twenty-one times, including four times in the face while he lay defenceless. Two of the other band members were also hit. Anthony Geraghty (23) was shot four times in the back, and Brian McCoy (33) nine times; both died at the scene. Another member of the group – Stephen Travers – was hit by a dum-dum** bullet; although seriously injured, he survived; the other member, Des McAlea, was blown over by the blast, but remained hidden to the murder gang and he received no further injuries.
In his excellent co-written book, Travers recalls:
I suddenly felt all the tension drain out of me. All that was going through my head was, I’m probably not going to feel this. It is going to be quick. At that moment, a voice from the road shouted: ‘Come on, these bastards are dead. I got them with dum-dums.’ The footsteps stopped. Then there was what seemed like an eternal silence. Then he began to walk slowly away from me.*
The two UDR soldiers turned UVF bombers, Somerville and Boyle, were killed instantly and their bodies were mutilated; their identifications were established only by scientific procedure. Both men were decapitated and dismembered; one limbless torso was completely charred. Stephen Travers later saw a photograph of one of the dead men and said, ‘He didn’t have any head; just a black torso; no head, legs or arms.’ A severed arm with the tattoo ‘UVF Portadown’ was later found a hundred yards from the scene. In 1976 three members of the UDR were sentenced to prison for their part in the attack. They received life sentences but were later released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. The three UDR members were: James Somerville, Thomas Crozier and James McDowell.
Three months later, on 11 August, a murder gang from the UFF burst into the Belfast Ropeworks, a factory on the Albertbridge Road, as the night-shift workers prepared for a long night. The gunmen forced the eight workmen on duty to stand in a line by a wall. John Hunter (57), a Catholic father of four, was singled out, before being shot twice in the head; incredibly, he was still alive but dreadfully injured. He was rushed to the RVH, where he died in the early hours of the 12th.
Twenty-four hours later, the Provisionals again ventured on to the Shankill Road to attack the Bayardo bar. The bar had no known Loyalist paramilitary connections, although one of the dead drinkers was a UVF member, with the attack being viewed as an overtly sectarian action by the supposedly ‘non-sectarian’ Provisional IRA. A PIRA murder gang, including Brendan ‘Bic’ McFarlane,** Seamus Clarke and Peter ‘Skeet’ Hamilton, arrived at the bar just before closing time on Wednesday, 13 August, scarcely fourteen days after the Miami incident. McFarlane was the leader of the gang, later the co-ordinator behind the 1981 hunger strike inside HMP Maze; he remained in the car. Clarke and Hamilton walked over to the entrance, where Samuel Gunning (55) was chatting to the doorman, William Gracey (63); the gunmen opened fire with an Armalite, killing both middle-aged Protestants instantly. The pair ran into the crowded bar, dropping a small bag containing 10lb (4.5kg) of explosives in the doorway, before escaping to where McFarlane was waiting. Some of the panicked drinkers tried to leap over the bag but it exploded just seconds later, fatally wounding three people and bringing the building down on top of them. Hugh Harris (21), a member of the UVF, and Joanne McDowell (29) died in the rubble, buried under tons of debris; they suffocated to death from the crushing pressure. Linda Boyle (17) was pulled out alive, but dreadfully injured; she died in hospital on the 20th.
Miami Showband massacre. A Ford Escort, one of the cars used by Loyalist gunmen, is left abandoned near the murder scene.
The very popular and cross-sectarian Miami Showband.
Memorial remembering the victims of an IRA bomb blast at the Bayardo Bar in August 1975.
As the PIRA murder gang drove away, one of the gunmen opened fire on a group of women and children waiting at a nearby taxi rank; fortunately, there were no injuries. Shortly afterwards, the car was stopped at an Army VCP on Cliftonville Road and the killers were arrested; all received life sentences but were released early. The Provisionals have always tried to justify the attack on the bar as it was a ‘known meeting place’ of the UVF; while it is true that the Ulster flag was flown, the bar had, at the very most, very tenuous paramilitary connections. There are unsubstantiated reports that Lenny Murphy and the Shankill Butchers often met there, with some claims that he had been drinking there only minutes before the PIRA attack.
The next ‘retaliation’ came just a week later at a Catholic pub in Armagh City, when the UVF launched a copycat attack on McGleenan’s Bar. On 22 August 1975 a UVF gang burst into the bar on Upper English Street. One gunman opened fire while another threw an explosive device with a very short fuse, which exploded before they had even reached the getaway car. The building collapsed immediately
, burying the dead and injured. Those killed were: John McGleenan (45) and Patrick Hughes (30). Thomas Morris (22) was fatally injured, dying five days later.
To understand the Loyalist mindset, and to get a better illustration of what made them repeatedly out-sicken the Provisionals, I asked a friend from that side of the sectarian divide to write down the rationale and raison d’etre of what it meant to be a Loyalist. We shall call him ‘Billy’:
I understand the things you wrote, and they are correct, though not always the ‘full’ story. There’s a reason why it was called ‘the dirty war’. Closer examination will show you that things were not always black and white. I left the Army in the 80s but worked with them on the streets. There were so many stories going around, that if I believed everything that I heard, then I would believe that the Glenanne gang were not only UVF/RUC, but also UDA and Brit INT. I heard that the Dublin/Monaghan bombs were Republican bombs, re-timed by the British army and delivered by the UVF. I also heard that Robert Nairac used his ID card to good effect and that he knew the Glenanne lot very well. I also heard that several other ‘hits’ were done by Loyalists, on the request of British INT, including some innocents. You need to ‘get inside’ of why certain actions took place, and who really asked for them.
This author is adamant in his opinion that people such as Murphy, Adair, McKeag, McFerran and the other Loyalist killers were as psychopathic as McGlinchey, Meehan, Begley and Steenson. My books will consistently condemn sectarian killers irrespective of which side of the religious barrier they came from. Furthermore, Captain Robert Nairac of the Grenadier Guards, who was killed by the IRA on or about 15 May 1977, has been accused of many acts that border on piracy over the early years of the Troubles. These accusations are without substantiation and, like many, are levelled without a single shred of evidence.
‘Billy’:
Lenny Murphy wasn’t a Loyalist; just a psycho, and had he been born in Manchester or London, he’d have done the same things; he just used the troubles as an excuse. I never have, nor would ever, target anyone because of their faith/creed or colour, and even though I am a Loyalist, I also know there’s a lot of dickheads who also call themselves Loyalists. However, there are also good men who fought because they could see no other way. We saw young soldiers coming to Ulster with their hands tied, and when one of them pulled you over and said: ‘Hey mate, do me a favour: see this prick; can you ‘see’ to him?’ We were only too glad to be able to do so.
I also ‘heard’ that Brit intel would target an innocent RC in the middle of a Republican area, and set him up with Loyalists, just to show the rest that the IRA were not the police force of the country and couldn’t protect them. I love my country, and my Army, but they were the dirtiest of them all; the difference is, that I understand why, and wouldn’t want to give the Republicans ammo to use against them. The greatest shame about my country is the innocents and their talent which was lost to the paramilitaries, in one way or another.
One other thing: don’t ever give Adair the compliment of being called a psycho; he was a bully, a user, and a coward, and the only person he ever ‘done’, was a disabled young lad* who was being held captive by his team, and they had to clean up after him. He did more harm than good for Ulster. What I can do for you, is help you understand why certain things happened the way they did, and it might surprise you who and why was behind it. One stupid cow wrote a book on the Glenanne gang, and the book was crap, but the author is married to an IRA/SF tosser. She mentioned that Nairac ‘might’ have been seen in a car near an ‘event.’** Nairac wasn’t near the show band, but from what I have heard, he didn’t stay on one side of the border either and was close to the Jackal. She [the writer] was only going on gossip, and all that she wanted was to write a book which would be a stick to beat the Brits with. It has become a ‘Republican book’ to be dismissed and thrown in the bin, which is a shame to those who suffered.
The first time that I ever saw me Ma cry was the day of the murder of the 3 Scots soldiers. When Blair came to power, suddenly everything got reversed. The people who had been doing the Brits’ dirty work were now the bad boys, and IRA/SF were flavour of the month. Things in Ulster were far from black and white, and again, people have to remember, that less soldiers died each year in Ulster doing their job, than playing soldiers on exercise outside Ulster.
‘Billy’ holds certain views to which this author does not subscribe, but his comments are included to show the Loyalist mentality. His uncle was killed by a PIRA bomb in the Times Bar on 5 June 1976, thus colouring his views; he continues:
Firstly, you have got to understand that Loyalists talk a good game, and this isn’t because they are all gob. They really want the backlash to start, and they want it to start now; they are ready, willing, craving for the fight, the battle, till the death, to die for Ulster. They won’t because they are brought up to obey and respect the law: The Queen’s uniform, so to do all these things is against their conscience, no matter how much they want to. Remember, Catholics move as the church tells them, but the Orange Order was formed as an umbrella group for all shades of Protestants, because, depending on what church you went to, every Prod carries a different conscience, and so, a different breaking point or willingness of what actions he should take, or support. A Loyalist is a person loyal to Queen and country, that’s simple enough, and they will fight to the death anyone who wishes to take this from them. Eire isn’t scared of confronting 100,000 Orangemen, but they don’t want 100 UFF/UVF anywhere near, so for all of their badness, had we not had the paramilitaries, Ulster would now be under the tricolour.
This author has strived over the course of his writing to reaffirm that his opprobrium is not reserved exclusively for the paramilitaries of the Republican side and condemns with an equal ferocity the Loyalists also. It was only a few years back that I was warned never to enter the Mountainview Tavern on the Shankill Road again if I wished to keep my throat intact. It was only recently that a good friend and I were discussing my views on Loyalist paramilitaries and was told in chilling manner: ‘The boys are aware of you and the things that you are writing about them!’
I have also been at pains to point out that I do not subscribe to the apocryphal argument that the Protestants caused the rifts, with the Catholics merely fighting back against injustice. That is far too simplistic; indeed, it is dangerously simplistic. There were faults on both sides, post-partition; on the one hand, the Catholics sought out the presence of members of their religion based on safety in numbers; on the other, the Protestants saw this necessity as part of the great conspiracy of undermining the fledgling state of Ulster. While the Roman Catholic Church, it is true, was prepared to preach the love of Jesus, it was equally prepared to preach the Gospel of ‘non-co-operation’ from the same pulpit. Consequently, the Protestants became locked in a siege mentality with a permanent suspicion of their Catholic neighbours. The RCs, on the other hand, were obsessed with their image as ‘second-class citizens’ and became, in their own eyes, underdogs.
As the decade of the 1960s wore on, both sides hardened their attitudes to the other, with militancy and protest being the order of the day. The emergence of the largely Catholic NICRA heartened one side but deepened suspicions on the other. There were undoubtedly civil rights issues that required addressing, but the violent overreactions of some Protestants – the Burntollet ambush being a prime example – led to a recrudescence of the by then dormant IRA. They may have been in a state of military hibernation, but one facet of this organisation that remained permanently awake was their opportunism. Attacks – real or imaginary – on Catholic communities were the signal for the re-emergence of militant Republicanism. The grumblings and complaints among Catholic ‘barrack room lawyers’ in drinking dens such as The Bogside Inn in Londonderry and the Grave Diggers Arms in Belfast soon turned into more forcible arguments and an eventual call to arms.
The rise of the Provisional IRA and a converse decline of the Official IRA in the early 1970s le
d to one of the bloodiest periods in Irish history. The Protestant backlash, if indeed there was one, simply exacerbated the killings as sectarian murder became the hallmark of the vicious fighting that blighted almost four decades of the country of Northern Ireland. Like their counterparts in the Irish Republican Army, the men and women of the Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Ulster Volunteer Force had always been there; dormant perhaps, full of talk and no action perhaps, but they were there. The paramilitaries of both sides were simply waiting for the spark that may or may not come; in 1968/69 that spark appeared and lit the fire that became known as ‘the Troubles’.
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** Site of the bombing of McGurk’s Bar.
*** Dublin/Monaghan bombing the previous day.
* Pig in the Middle, Desmond Hamill (Methuen Books, 1985) pp.100–01.
* Watching the Door: Cheating Death in 70s Belfast, Kevin Myers (Atlantic Books, 2008).p.176.
** www.newsletter.co.uk/news/daughter-s-appeal-over-1973-stabbing-1-1887629.
* Pronounced ‘rah’, it referred to the Irish Republican Army without the necessity to clarify as ‘Irish’.
** Certain surnames were almost exclusively Catholic; names such as Murphy (with the notable and infamous exception of Lenny Murphy who ran the Shankill Butchers, responsible for the deaths of twenty-nine innocent Catholics), O’Callaghan, Sullivan, etc.