Among this cadre of UVF men, what McKittrick called the ‘tougher and brighter element in the seceding group’, was Mitchell. The UVF would allow him to fulfil his deep-seated desire to fight by force of arms for God and Ulster.
3
LIQUIDATING THE ENEMY
‘WE ARE LOYALISTS, WE ARE QUEEN’S MEN. Our enemies are the forces of Romanism and Communism, which must be destroyed.’
UVF Recruiting Circular (1971)1
Belfast, the capital city of Northern Ireland, grew from a small market town in the seventeenth century to become one of the major hubs for trade and industry in the British Empire by the late nineteenth century. One hundred years later its twin staple industries of shipbuilding and textile manufacturing had been joined by another, aeronautical engineering, which employed several thousand people, primarily in the east of the city. The large yellow cranes of Samson and Goliath at Harland and Wolff Shipyard, symbols of Belfast’s industrial heritage, towered high above the skyline, but were becoming increasingly exposed to the push and pull of global capitalism, now in the process of transferring its centre of gravity from North America and Western Europe to markets in the Far East. Belfast relied disproportionately on a sizeable subvention from the British taxpayer to keep its heavy industries afloat, its public services running efficiently and its social security and welfare payments pouring in amidst this transformation in its economic fortunes. At the dawn of the seventh decade of the twentieth century, this once dominant industrial city was beginning to decline.
Although Belfast had a reasonably healthy economic base when the troubles broke out in the late 1960s, it was a system which overlay a sectarian distribution of jobs. The workforce in the staple industries was divided between the majority Protestant and the minority Catholic communities. Up until 1972, such division was not always reflected in political terms, along unionist–nationalist lines on the shop floor. Sectarianism had waxed and waned since the formation of the local state in the early 1920s. By the late 1950s and early 1960s most working-class people were more interested in earning a crust and providing for their families than they were in the constitutional question. As a direct consequence, a third political labour tradition began to flourish, going on to command 100,000 votes in both the 1964 and 1970 Westminster elections.2
Higher rates of employment and the availability of disposable income may have ensured the dampening of sectarian tensions, but it wasn’t the only reason. Paddy Devlin, a Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) politician who represented the Falls constituency in the Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont in East Belfast, observed that for ‘the first time in forty years there was a spirit of compromise in the air. People from the two communities were more prepared than ever to live together in harmony, and the old shibboleths that had for so long been sources of division were being closely questioned.’3 There was nothing inevitable about the outbreak of the troubles and, with the exception of a residual amount of loyalist and republican militancy, all signs pointed towards a relatively settled population. Even those who came from areas that would later become staunchly republican, like West Belfast, acknowledged how, in the 1960s, they were ‘conditioned towards accepting Northern Ireland and playing a part in it, rather than towards resisting it or begrudging it’.4
With the escalation of intercommunal tensions in 1969, people began to pull apart more noticeably. In the inner-city slums of Belfast, residential segregation gave birth to a patchwork quilt of sharp sectarian division between Catholics and Protestants. Street corners suddenly demarcated rigid psychological and territorial boundaries, as communities intersected along increasingly fraught tribal lines. Housing estates became the exclusive preserve of one side, or the other. Built in the 1950s, Rathcoole, on the outskirts of North Belfast, grew exponentially as sectarian confrontation escalated. Those Protestants displaced from their homes in Ballymurphy, Suffolk and other areas of Belfast flooded the estate as it became more and more Protestant in religious composition. As a direct consequence, Catholics began to move out into the areas vacated by Protestants in increasing numbers. Some of those individuals forcibly ejected from their childhood homes in Rathcoole, such as Bobby Sands, Freddie Scappaticci and Jim Gibney, left with embittered memories of sectarian intimidation. Like others, who also subsequently joined paramilitary organisations, they would point to their direct experience of intimidation and threats as a principal motivating factor in explaining their drift towards political violence.5
By the early 1970s, the garish pebble-dashed council houses in these new estates on the periphery of Belfast enveloped the tiny red-brick terrace houses of the old city. Both would sit in stark contrast alongside larger, more imposing, bungalows and semi-detached homes of the greater Belfast area. The commanding, undulating glens of Antrim, sat flush against Belfast Lough, where the Irish Sea disappeared into the Lagan River Valley. On the surface, the arteries of trade and industry gave Northern Ireland the appearance of a modern, outward-looking society. To the people who lived in increasingly ghettoised areas though, a different story was emerging, as the air became chokingly thick with the nauseating waft of bigotry and intolerance. It was amidst Belfast’s changing demographics that sectarian violence was reborn.
***
Shankill Road, West Belfast, Evening, 4 December 1971
Christmas decorations began to spring up along the Shankill Road as people prepared for the festive season. There was a chill in the air, but the weather was more wet and windy than wintry. Robert James Campbell, known as Jimmy to his friends, joined the UVF in the summer of 1971. On 4 December, he was summoned to a meeting with his superior officer in a bar off the Shankill Road, where he was told to accompany two other men on an operation and not to return until ‘the job’ was done. Accepting the task without knowing the full picture of what he was about to become involved in, as many other UVF men did at the time, Campbell walked outside and climbed into the back seat of a car. He sat quietly as the driver moved off towards the city centre. After a few moments, he broke the silence by informing his companions that they were ‘going to do a bar in North Queen Street’. The full significance of the task which lay before them had still not sunk in by the time the men reached their intended target, just under a mile from where their journey began.
As they sat in the vehicle alongside the pavement opposite McGurk’s Bar, the men caught a glimpse of the silhouettes of patrons moving around inside the premises. Men and women were busy enjoying themselves. The party was in full swing. Outside, the UVF men watched their prey. Calmly, deliberately, they checked every move, noted every outbreak of laughter, registered the happy revelry going on inside. Allowing the engine to tick over for a few minutes, the driver slowly slipped the car into gear and drove off around the block, before returning to the street, this time pulling up just outside the side door of the bar. One of the men picked up a taped parcel at his feet and climbed out of the car. He walked with purpose across to the bar door, before slipping inside to deposit his device in the narrow hallway. ‘That’s it’, he shouted as he hurriedly returned to the car. The men drove off down a side street and onto York Street. The driver accelerated, not too sharply, for he didn’t want to draw the attention of any passing Army patrols. As the UVF men rounded the corner a huge explosion sent their pulses racing. As calmly as he could, the driver pulled up at the kerbside and turned off the ignition. The doors opened and the men got out, making their way towards Donegal Street, where they were collected by another vehicle and driven the short distance to an Orange Hall on the Shankill.
Campbell was first to appear from the vehicle, walking inside the hall to the small bar where he reported back to the man who had sent him out on the bombing mission only half an hour earlier.6 His commander appeared pleased with the result. The two men enjoyed a drink together before calling it a night.7 Both men rounded off the evening with mixed emotions. In the eyes of the UVF commander, a blow had been struck against the enemy. Campbell was much more sanguine. He took no pleasure from his actions that evening, or on any other. He was later described by Gusty Spence as someone who was ‘non-sectarian, someone who not only worked happily alongside Catholics, but associated with them through his membership of the Grosvenor Homing Pigeon Society’, which was situated off the Falls Road. Campbell had joined the UVF in the aftermath of sectarian rioting in Penrith Street, near Dover Street, on the Shankill.8 A few months later he was participating in the first major armed attack by the UVF.