Torn Apart

by Ken Wharton

  However, one thing is very certain: the paramilitaries are still there, on both sides. For example, a resident of the Turf Lodge or the Falls Road with a local problem of vandalism or theft is hardly likely to call the Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI); they are far more likely to speak to their local Sinn Féin representative, who will send the ‘boys’ around to administer a punishment beating or even the obscene ritual of a kneecapping to the alleged offenders. In the tribal areas, the law of the jungle applies, as evidenced by the alarming statistics in relation to punishment beatings emerging from Northern Ireland.

  On 19 January 2018, the PSNI were called to the Nationalist Whiterock Drive in Belfast following reports that a gang of masked men had kicked their way into a house, beating and shooting a male resident. The Belfast Telegraph reported: ‘The 24-year-old was shot in both knees and both ankles in a back yard after a number of males in black clothing broke into the house and hit him with a hammer. He has been left with potentially life-threatening injuries.’ The PSNI described the attack as ‘... brutal and callous’.* On 15 March 2018, the Guardian reported an incident in which a Catholic mother took her son to local gunmen to be shot. The O’Donnell family from Londonderry may be said to be ‘dissident Republicans’ (DRs) who do not believe in the GFA nor in the Sinn Féin politicians who signed up for it. They remain ‘at war’ with the British, refusing to acknowledge the PSNI as keepers of the law. Instead, when Majella O’Donnell discovered that her son was a drug dealer, she marched him around to a pre-arranged safe house where representatives of one of the DR groups – RIRA, CIRA or Óglaigh na hÉireann – were waiting. As anticipated, the young man was shot behind both knees, effectively destroying both patellas, which left him in agony and permanently disabled. Sinéad O’Shea, in the Guardian, refers to a ‘shadow justice system’ where intermediaries negotiate on behalf of locally accused criminals; the DR leaders appear intent upon administering their own brand of justice. Those who are most at risk are paedophiles, petty criminals, wife-beaters (provided, of course, that they are not members of any dissident organisation) and drug dealers. There is a certain amount of hypocrisy here, as most of the drugs sold on these sink estates are sold by the paramilitaries.

  Guilty of anti-social crimes. Another victim of a PIRA punishment gang.

  Violent death is never far away, and in April 2015, Kevin McGuigan, a former PIRA member who had morphed into a violent criminal gang leader, shot and killed the top Short Strand and Markets areas commander, Jock Davison (46). Just four months later, on 12 August, the Provisional IRA ambushed McGuigan near his home in the Short Strand, shooting him dead, claiming that the killing was in revenge for the death of Davison. There have been several unsolved murders in Republican areas of both Belfast and Londonderry that the PSNI consider the results of score-settling, drug deals turned sour or even the forcing of rival gangs to cease trading. In the hard-line Republican areas, the gunman is still king.

  In April 2018, two men suspected of sex offences as well as other antisocial behaviour were seized by dissident Republicans in Mullaghbawn, Co. Armagh.* They were severely beaten with iron bars, covered in paint, and tarred and feathered before being dumped in the village close to a Republican memorial. They were wanted for offences including breach of licence and warrants. Convicted child rapist James White and paedophile Alexis Guesto, also known as Jason Lydiard, were being hunted by police when they are believed to have been discovered by a gang of DRs.**

  There is an obvious and growing unease among the Protestant Unionist and Loyalist (PUL) people who still represent the majority in Northern Ireland, at the seemingly irrevocable growth of Sinn Féin and their influence far beyond the boundaries of Ulster. There are many examples of post-Troubles ‘truth and reconciliation’ that they find unpalatable: for example, the naming of a children’s playground after a man suspected of killing Protestant workmen in the Kingsmills massacre. There were further examples, such as the now disgraced Sinn Féin politician who poked fun at the Kingsmills dead by balancing a Kingsmill-branded loaf on his head on the anniversary, plus the revelation that a convicted PIRA bomber, Robert McClenaghan, had been permitted to join the Victims’ and Survivors’ Forum. What exacerbated this situation were his boasts in the 2011 documentary When the War Ends that he was ‘... immensely proud ...’ to join the IRA, and described the daily bombing of Belfast city centre as ‘... just became part of your job or part of your day after a while’.

  In July 2018, during the compilation of this book, Sinn Féin announced that Gerry Adams was to be ‘Guest of Honour’ at Loughmacrory in Co. Tyrone to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the deaths of the Harte brothers and Brian Mullin. The reader will recall that the three PIRA men, widely suspected of the Ballygawley coach bombing in August 1988, were ambushed and killed by the SAS at Lone Bog Road, Cloughfin, a few weeks later.*** Shelley Gilfillan, whose uncle Hugh ‘Lexie’ Cummings was murdered nearby by the IRA in 1982, said that the dinner dance was ‘... rubbing salt in the wounds ...’ and was akin to ‘... dancing on victims’ graves. It just beggars belief. The victims left behind are living out the sentence day in, day out. Our relatives aren’t there anymore, and the murderers are left walking the street.’**** Her brother was also shot and killed by the Provisionals in 1971.

  For many of the PUL people, perhaps the final straw came in May 2018 when Orfhlaith Begley, Sinn Féin MP for West Tyrone, proclaimed the ten dead Republicans who starved themselves to death in 1981 as ‘heroes’. These were men, after all, who were convicted of crimes such as murder, bombing and kidnap. She said, ‘The sacrifice and courage of the 1981 hunger strikers has inspired me to continue on the journey for Irish freedom. The hunger strikers and everything they represent continue to be an inspiration to us all. They are the people who set the moral compass for the rest of us to aspire to today.’*****

  In response, Democratic Unionist Party MLA Tom Buchanan called her words ‘... totally disgraceful’. He continued: ‘Sinn Féin tried hard to give the impression that it was reaching out to Unionists and was less hostile to the Unionist community. But actions speak louder than words. We can clearly see how insincere Sinn Féin’s hand of friendship was, with Orfhlaith Begley’s attendance at an event which glorified murderers.’

  The Sinn Féin MP had proclaimed that she wished to reach out to the Unionist people, and if this was her intention, her speech at Dromore, Co. Down, failed spectacularly. The PUL have long memories of PIRA terrorist activity – as indeed have the Catholic/Nationalist people of the Dublin/Monaghan bombing and the Shankill Butchers. With this in mind, they see the eight PIRA and two INLA hunger-strikers who died as little more than convicted terrorists; they cannot see beyond the ‘terrorist’ epithet, and who can blame them for their suspicion of anything that Sinn Féin does or says?

  In May 2018, Loyalist anger and suspicions were further raised when a Republican dissident group known as Saoradh* began a campaign outside a children’s playground in Newry to ‘honour’ a dead hunger striker – a man alleged to have been part of a PIRA murder gang that killed ten Protestant workmen at Kingsmills. The DRs gathered to ‘... pay tribute to one of Ireland’s bravest’. The massacre that took place in January 1976 is deeply etched into the Protestant psyche, and too recent for the actions of Saoradh not to continue to give rise to deepened suspicion and claims of insensitivity on the part of Republicans.

  What further adds to the division and resentment among the Loyalist populace is the ‘witch hunt’ that was current at the time of writing against former soldiers in relation to the Troubles. Two former paratroopers, now in their late 60s, are currently being prosecuted for the death of OIRA gunman Joe McCann in the Markets area of Belfast in April 1972. McCann was widely believed to have shot dead Royal Green Jacket NCO Robert ‘Bob’ Bankier earlier that year close to Cromac Square in the same area where he himself was shot and killed.

  Additionally, another former soldier who was 74 at the time of writing, Dennis Hutchings, is awaiting pro
secution for the death of Belfast man John Pat Cunningham in Benburb, Co. Tyrone, in 1974. As the matter is, at the time of writing, sub judice, the author’s feelings must remain restrained. Former soldiers, as well as the Protestant community in Northern Ireland, regard these moves as little more than persecution. At the last count, there were still more than 1,600 unsolved murders that occurred during the Troubles, mostly linked to PIRA, INLA and OIRA, as well as to Loyalist paramilitaries such as the UVF, UFF and Red Hand Commando. There are, of course, the 169 ‘letters of comfort’ that were handed out by the 1997–2001 and 2001–05 Blair Administration to the OTRs, all of which add fuel to the fire of Protestant distrust and sense of being discriminated against. There is a PUL mindset that Sinn Féin and other Irish Republicans are being treated with kid gloves in order to keep them in the fold, so to speak, while soldiers who were simply doing their job at the behest of the British Government have been criminalised.

  In attempting to remain objective, it is difficult to imagine an acquiescence among the Catholic and Nationalist population if, for example, the notorious leader of the UFF’s ‘C’ Company, Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair, was suddenly voted into Stormont – which at the time of writing is still in political mothballs – as an MLA, or leader of the Belfast City Council. Would they – the Catholics – be happy to know that a children’s playground in the Shankill area was named after vicious serial killer Lenny Murphy, or that Stephen ‘Top Gun’ McKeag, a man who killed more than twenty innocent Catholics, was going to have a snooker hall named in his memory? This author believes that the Troubles should never be forgotten and there are events that cannot easily be forgiven; the crimes by both sides run very deeply and have been etched indelibly into the very psyche of the people who served – the Army and RUC – as well as the innocents who suffered at the hands of terror. However, there comes a time when Northern Irish society must move on, and daily insensitivities such as the aforementioned examples are not helping in the peace process.

  A Loyalist told me, less than a year before this book was due for publication:

  It’s almost as though the bombings, the abductions, the murders of off-duty personnel and the punishment beatings never happened. When Sinn Féin/PIRA try to re-write history and re-tell the story of the Troubles, they portray themselves as victims who just want peace and the eventual reunification of Ireland. When they are selling themselves as a ‘respectable political party’ they forget very conveniently the way that they massacred innocent Protestant workmen at Kingsmills and Teebane, they forget breaking into off-duty personnel’s homes and shooting them dead whilst they played with their children on their knees, and they forget planting bombs in crowded cafés and blowing the arms and legs off young people as they enjoyed a cup of coffee. Tell me something: this party of ‘peace’ and the future: what can they say to the families of the people killed in the Birmingham pub bombings or the family of Kenny Newell who was tortured so much that his face was left contorted in agony when they found his dead body in South Armagh?

  Was it the ‘war to end all wars’, as Edwardian society thought in those halcyon, patriotic days during the summer of 1914, as hundreds of thousands of young men from Britain’s towns, cities and villages flocked to take the King’s Shilling to fight the ‘evil Hun’? Has the bloodshed and murder and daily bombings finally ended? Have Sinn Féin/PIRA finally recognised that they can no longer drive the British into the sea; indeed, are they now concentrating on rewriting history so that they come through this post-Troubles period as ‘top dog’? Have they no longer any intention of a charm offensive designed to bring the Unionists around to their way of thinking about a united Ireland? These unanswered questions that gravely concern the PUL are causing further resentment and jeopardise a future reconciliation between the two antagonists.

  In April 2018, twenty years after the signing of the GFA – a treaty that promised peace and prosperity to a country ravaged by almost thirty years of violence – the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) re-entered the political stage with their first major announcement for some years. The organisation, which comprised elements of the UFF, UVF, LVF and Red Hand Commando, had announced, back in the late 1990s that they had ordered a complete halt to all their ‘military’ activities. This proposed demilitarisation, which included decommissioning of their arms and explosives, was the price they were prepared to pay in return for Prime Minister Blair’s acquiescence to the terms that they ‘put on the table’ during the Mo Mowlam talks.* They had demanded the release of all Loyalist paramilitary prisoners, including the infamous Michael Stone who had committed several sectarian murders as well as carrying out a gun and grenade attack at Milltown Cemetery during the funerals of the three PIRA members killed by the SAS in Gibraltar in March 1988.

  It is a fact that the organisations under the umbrella of the CLMC did hand in ‘some’ weapons and in due course all their prisoners were released, including some of the most violent murderers in the history of the UK. However, for all their promises to ‘disappear’, they simply ‘morphed’ into criminality, bringing violence and misery to the residents of PUL areas. They became major players in the drug industry, controlling the price and availability of addictive substances, continuing their parody of Republican paramilitary post-Troubles activity in the extortion of local businesses. Just as companies in Nationalist areas were paying ‘protection money’ to the new IRA groupings, so too were their Protestant counterparts. One unnamed Loyalist told the author: ‘What about the poor bastard shop-keepers in the interface areas; did they have to pay both sides?’

  Therefore, twenty years later, a spokesman for the CLMC, accompanied by a willing, acquiescent Protestant clergyman, speaking at a hastily arranged press conference, announced ‘again’ that they were going to put an end to criminal activity in ‘their’ areas; they promised to expel any members suspected of criminal behaviour. This startling admission begged the question: why, twenty years after their initial promises and assurances, were they repeating the same words, the same jargon? In the perhaps distorted view of many Loyalists, the British Government remain so fixated on the spectre of another Manchester or City of London ‘spectacular’ that they will buy into whatever both Loyalist and Republicans camps tell them. The accusation is that government will allow them as much latitude as they demand, pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into Ulster to keep the ‘peace’. Money has continued to be invested into so-called community groups that are little more than a front for the UVF/UFF on one side and Sinn Féin activists on the other. Disconcertingly, a 2016 PSNI investigation showed that the Provisional IRA still had an intact Army Council; this leadership group still had the final say in any activities or announcements for Sinn Féin. Moreover, it stated that PIRA still existed, with the other dissidents (DRs) been responsible for the murder of five members of the security forces and a prison officer in the post-Troubles era. In short, they – the Republicans – were practising and profiting from the very same criminal activities in which their Loyalist counterparts were engaged. There are areas in West Belfast, Londonderry and Lurgan that are almost totally under the control of the respective paramilitaries; in those parts of Northern Ireland, they represent ‘law and order’, not the PSNI.

  Professor Paul Nolan, Queen’s University, Belfast,** conducted a study of post-Troubles Ulster, reporting in April 2018 that there had been 158 murders by paramilitaries in the twenty years of what some call ‘the whitewash’ of the GFA. The study showed that Republicans were responsible for seventy-four of these, Loyalists for seventy-one, with the remaining thirteen being committed by indeterminable organisations. Most of the murders were the result of settling old scores, encroachment into another gang’s criminal territory or the killing of informers. He further stated that fewer than 2 per cent of these paramilitary murders had led to convictions in court. He noted that the largest single loss of life occurred when twenty-nine people were killed by DRs in Omagh on 15 August 1998. His research showed that a mere eleven peopl
e have been convicted of murder in the twenty years since the GFA.

  He went on to say:

  This is despite the fact that in almost every case the PSNI and the Gardaí feel confident they know the identities of the perpetrators. Securing a conviction is a different matter. Witnesses are simply too afraid to give evidence in court, and so even in those rare cases where a prosecution succeeds, the convictions tend to be of those on the periphery of the case, not the trigger men or the leaders of the murder gangs.

  I asked a close friend, former soldier and committed Loyalist for his thoughts on the GFA as Northern Ireland enters its third decade of ‘peace’. I asked him if the agreement had achieved its objectives. He told me:

  My answer is no; the paramilitaries still rule their Kingdoms; the police are afraid to rock the boat and the Judiciary are a joke with some of the sentences given out to those that were caught; some of their leniency is unbelievable. The whole thing has been swept under the carpet, you will on the British mainland or the USA or Australia never hear of the nearly daily punishment beatings/shootings or that British Army Bomb teams are dealing with devices practically every couple of days, somewhere in Northern Ireland. So, when you hear Tony Blair or Bill Clinton on TV, saying how great things are now, whilst things are not like the 70s or 80s, all you have to do is scratch below the surface and it’s all there, ready to explode again if things don’t go the right way for one side or the other! Unfortunately, the Irish Government, the Pan-Nationalist Front of Sinn Féin/PIRA, SDLP and the Alliance Party, aided and abetted by the EU are using Brexit and the Border as a big issue once again to browbeat the PUL and the British Government into making more concessions, as if they haven’t given enough of those already.