href="#u2404c528-8485-5570-92c3-b73502eb7c6c">Index
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Given the nature of the events described in this book it has been necessary for ethical, legal and security reasons to anonymise several of the interviewees who have assisted me. The major armed conflict in Northern Ireland may have subsided but the threat of violence has not gone away. Various journalists and academics – and those who have talked to them – have discovered, to their personal and professional cost, the consequences of engaging in research on paramilitary violence. By their very nature, the acts committed by these groups were illegal, whether that is accepted in some quarters, or not. And in liberal democracies, like the United Kingdom, law enforcement agencies have a duty to investigate whenever there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that a crime has been committed. As a series of proscribed acts, terrorism remains unlawful. With no statute of limitations on murder, and no mechanism for ‘dealing with the past’, people involved in these acts are still liable to be prosecuted in ongoing or future investigations.
I would like to thank those journalists, academics, police officers, solicitors and other legal professionals who took the time to explain the law to me and to discuss the many pitfalls of researching political violence in Northern Ireland. As I have consistently said in public, it is vital that when historians interview eyewitnesses – and perhaps even participants – to the events under scrutiny, we ensure we first do no harm. To that end, I made it clear to my interviewees that they must not incriminate themselves or others (unless allegations made were against those now deceased) in specified unlawful acts. My aim, however, is to narrate the most accurate story possible despite these limitations.
In a book of this nature and size, some minor inaccuracies have inevitably crept into the text and I would like to thank those who have pointed these out to me. I wish to apology for any distress or inconvenience caused.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
John Bingham Born []in 1953, Bingham joined the UVF sometime in the early 1970s. He was assassinated by the Provisional IRA at his home on 14 September 1986 in disputed circumstances. Bingham was the commander of the 1st Belfast Battalion of the UVF when he died.
‘The Craftsman’ Born in the late 1940s, he is believed to have served as the UVF’s second-in-command and Director of Operations. Rumoured to have joined the organisation on Easter Tuesday 1966, he became a founding member of the UVF’s C Company in the Shankill, subsequently rising to the Brigade Staff in the late 1970s. He led the UVF’s talks with the Irish government in the early 1990s.
David Ervine Born in 1953, Ervine joined the East Belfast UVF in 1972. He was arrested and imprisoned for the possession of explosives in 1974. After his release from prison in 1980, he became a shopkeeper and joined the PUP, running, unsuccessfully, for the Belfast Pottinger ward on the city council in 1985. He subsequently became the party’s spokesperson and later its leader. Ervine was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum in 1997 and the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, serving as an MLA for East Belfast until his death in January 2007.
Billy Greer Born in 1943, Greer joined the UVF in 1968. He became the commander of the East Antrim UVF in the mid-1970s. When the East Antrim and North Belfast battalions of the UVF were merged in the 1990s, he became deputy to Rab Warnock until 2004 when he resigned his position. He was elected to the University Ward of Newtownabbey Borough Council in 1997, serving until 2001. He died in July 2006.
Gary Haggarty Born in 1970, he allegedly joined the UVF in the early 1990s and rose to prominence within its North Belfast Battalion. He took over command of the East Antrim and North Belfast UVF in 2004, replacing Rab Warnock. He was arrested in 2010 for the murder of John Harbinson in 1997 and became an assisting offender. Gary Haggarty was convicted of over 200 terrorist-related offences and handed down five life sentences.
Jim Hanna Born in 1948, Hanna was a leading member of the UVF’s Brigade Staff when he was killed in April 1974. Reports suggested that he was the group’s Director of Operations or its Chief of Staff. He was also rumoured to have worked for British Intelligence, which would explain why his name never appeared on the organisation’s official Roll of Honour when it was issued in 2006.
Billy Hutchinson Born in 1955, Hutchinson was a member of the West Belfast UVF when he was arrested and imprisoned for his involvement in a double murder. Inside Long Kesh he became close to Gusty Spence, holding the appointment of Adjutant. Upon his release, Hutchinson became involved with the cross-community group SICDP (later Interaction Belfast) on the Upper Springfield Road. He later worked for the Mount Vernon Community Association. He was an MLA from 1998 until 2003 and a City Councillor from 1997 until 2005. He became PUP leader in 2011 and was re-elected to Belfast City Council in 2014.
Trevor King Born in 1953, King joined the UVF at sixteen. Aged eighteen, he took part in the ‘Battle of Springmartin’ estate in 1972. A legend within the UVF, he took over as commander of the UVF’s 1st Belfast Battalion after the assassination of John Bingham in 1986, overseeing the complete restructuring of the Belfast military teams in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Known as ‘Kingo’ to his friends, he was shot by the INLA on 16 June 1994 and died just over three weeks later.
Frenchie Marchant Born in 1948, Marchant was a leading member of the UVF’s 1st Belfast Battalion on the Shankill Road. Implicated in the supergrass trials in the early 1980s, he was assassinated by the IRA on 28 April 1987 as he stood outside the PUP’s offices on the Shankill Road.
William Irvine Mitchell Born in 1939, Mitchell was part of the conspiracy which gave birth to the modern UVF. A member of TARA in the late 1960s, he later joined the UVF and became the commander of its East Antrim Battalion in 1970. Mitchell was appointed to the UVF’s Brigade Staff in the mid-1970s. Arrested and imprisoned for his role in the killing of two UDA members, Mitchell served fourteen years in prison. He was released in 1990 and subsequently became involved in the PUP. A leading strategist for the PUP, he died in July 2006.
Lenny Murphy Born in 1952, he was a prominent member of the West Belfast UVF. A commander in the organisation’s notorious Brown Bear ‘team’, he was implicated in dozens of murders and attempted murders in the first half of the 1970s and in the months after his release from a six-year spell in prison in 1982. He was assassinated by the Provisional IRA in November of the same year.
Hugh Smyth was born in 1939. A long-time member of the Orange Order, he became a spokesperson for the UVF in the 1970s and was a founding member of the PUP in 1977–8. He served for forty-one years on Belfast City Council. He became the city’s Deputy Lord Mayor in 1983 and 1993, and was eventually appointed Lord Mayor in 1994–5. Awarded an OBE for his services to the community in 1996, he died in 2014.
Gusty Spence Born in 1933, Spence joined the Royal Ulster Rifles in the mid-1950s, seeing action in Cyprus during the EOKA Emergency. He was sworn into the UVF in 1965 and led its Shankill unit until his arrest in 1966. He escaped briefly in 1972 and went on the run, helping to restructure the organisation. He was released from prison in 1984, becoming involved with the PUP until his retirement from politics in the late 1990s. He died in September 2011.
‘The Pipe’ Born sometime in the 1940s, he is believed to have joined the UVF in the late 1960s. By the 1970s he is thought to have risen to the position of UVF military commander, subsequently taking over as the group’s Chief of Staff sometime in the mid-1970s. An articulate and tough individual, he has been a key architect of the UVF’s long transition from war to peace.
Rab Warnock Born in 1948, Warnock joined the UVF in the 1970s and was imprisoned in Long Kesh in the middle of that decade. A tough and streetwise individual, he was the Officer Commanding of Compound 19 in Long Kesh. Sometime after his release from prison, he rose up the ranks to become the overall commander of the East Antrim and North Belfast UVF. He died in December 2012.
Billy Wright Born in 1960, Wright joined the Mid Ulster UVF in 1975 and was imprisoned for terrorist-related offences in 1977. After his release in the early 1980s, he underwent a brief conversion to Christianity. By the late 1980s he had risen to prominence to assume overall command of the Mid Ulster UVF when its long-serving commander, Robin Jackson, stepped