positions on Brigade Staff and, at any given time, whoever was in charge, it would have been a minority view in terms of the politics, whether it be left-wing or right-wing, actually dictated what happened on the streets. In ’73 you would have had a more left-wing sort of regime. I remember in ’73, they called a ceasefire to try and allow the whole thing of the power-sharing executive at Stormont to actually formulate a government. Now, what brought that down was a number of things. But the UVF did ... try and allow … politics to actually grow. All those things came about because of the politics of the leadership of the UVF.27
For much of 1973, there was a feeling within the UVF that a turn towards politics meant ‘going soft’. Several prolific gunmen in the Shankill UVF believed that force, not politics, was the only thing their enemy understood. In leadership terms, this was a period of ‘great flux’ for the UVF.28 The carnage unleashed on ‘Bloody Friday’ still weighed heavily in the minds of the UVF’s newest recruits a year after the events of that day. They were determined to hit back, even if they had no idea why they were doing so.
In late 1973, a Mini Cooper made its way through Belfast city centre with five men onboard. They were all packed tightly into the car. The three men in the rear passenger seats sat with a large gas canister bomb at their feet. They were loyalist paramilitaries from the UVF on their way to mount an attack on a Catholic bar, when they were promptly halted at an army checkpoint. The soldiers at the checkpoint raised their rifles, pulling them tightly into their shoulders as they took up firing positions. At great personal risk, an NCO stepped forward and put out his hand, indicating to the driver to stop. He then ordered the men out of the vehicle, and radioed for RUC backup. ‘Rucksac required at my location. Over,’ he spoke clearly into the transmitter. A few minutes later two RUC officers arrived at the scene, greeted by a fairly typical sight of terrorist suspects spread-eagled against a wall, with the soldiers training their rifles on the men. One of the policemen ordered one of the young suspects to turn around to face him. As he did so, the suspect whispered something to him. ‘What’s that,’ asked the stern-looking police officer. ‘Here mate,’ the man repeated. ‘You distract the army and we’ll make a run for it.’ The policeman stared back at him with a sense of amusement. ‘The young loyalist really believed I was on his side,’ said the officer. ‘Right,’ answered the RUC man. ‘I’ve a better idea. I’ll distract the army, you make a run for it, and I’ll shoot you.’ The loyalist was confused. A member of his police force was talking about shooting him. It didn’t make sense. ‘Sure we’re all on the same side,’ said the loyalist. ‘No we’re not,’ replied the officer, a Protestant. ‘I’m law and order. You’re a law breaker.’
The young loyalist’s confusion was shared by many other working-class Protestants who were by now feeling marginalised. British politicians had spoken to the IRA on two separate occasions in March and July 1972, the army seemed to be tolerating IRA patrols, even after Operation Motorman, and the police were now turning against loyalists. Young men flocking to paramilitary groups began to feel out of sorts with the world. In their anger and frustration, they responded by wrecking their own areas. ‘Most of the major public order disturbances I was involved in then were in Protestant areas,’ recalled a former RUC officer based in Whiteabbey at the time. ‘It was just stupid. I often asked them did they not think it was stupid to wreck their own areas? They never offered me an answer.’29 In lieu of answers on why they were doing what they were doing, loyalist paramilitary groups continued to swell with disaffected young men like these.
In political terms, unionism was divided. The Ulster Unionist Party had been dealt a body blow by the transference of powers to Whitehall. A Northern Ireland Office had been established in London and at Stormont, which would administer British rule directly. The new Secretary of State, William Whitelaw, held talks in October and November 1973 aimed at resolving the continuing crisis. A conference was called in at the Civil Service college at Sunningdale in December to plot a course for Northern Ireland’s constitutional future, which would lead to an Agreement to establish a powersharing executive at Stormont. For many moderate unionists, led by Brian Faulkner, a cross-community government, with strong representation from the SDLP, was just about tolerable. But what they couldn’t accept was the greater say that Dublin would have in their own internal affairs.30
The UDA’s ‘supreme commander’, Andy Tyrie, and other paramilitary chiefs believed that a power-sharing executive with a ‘Council of Ireland’ attached to it would leave Protestants further exposed. What terrified Tyrie was what he saw as the effectiveness of SDLP Ministers, and the relative inexperience of their Unionist counterparts. So, he set about conspiring with Glen Barr, a UDA spokesman from the Waterside area of Londonderry, and trade unionist Harry Murray from Belfast, to set up a coordinating committee for what was to emerge as the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC). Its first meeting was held in the Seagoe Hotel in Portadown, in December 1973. Tyrie was right to be sceptical. Ulster loyalism was not served well by its politicians. Brian Faulkner had failed to carry the majority of his party with him, while Bill Craig talked tough in large fascistic rallies in Ormeau Park about the need to ‘liquidate the enemy’. In truth, like his main political rival Ian Paisley, Craig liked to hedge his bets.
On 28 February 1974, a Westminster election was held that would remove the Conservative Party from power, and replace it with Harold Wilson’s Labour Party, the man who had talked to the IRA in March 1972. By now political events had shifted. The major political concerns in mainland UK were primarily economic ones, with the miners’ strike carrying Labour into Downing Street. In Northern Ireland, leading shop stewards in Ulster’s industrial heartland of Belfast watched with considerable interest. Could a similar tactic be used to bring attention to their opposition to the Sunningdale Agreement, and its proposal to give the Dublin government a say in the constitutional affairs of a region of the United Kingdom? Loyalist paramilitaries and Protestant trade unionists certainly believed it was possible, and so they formed the UWC. However, it was the UDA and not the UVF that would remain at the forefront of these political developments in the Spring of 1974. UVF spokesman Ken Gibson and two other members of the RHC were certainly sitting around the table with the others who made up the thirteen-man UWC coordinating committee. It met at UDA headquarters in East Belfast, and is perhaps the reason why the UVF continued to equivocate on the plans for strike action. Gibson would later say that they were merely there as ‘observers’, which led Andy Tyrie to believe that UVF support for a strike was ‘still only conditional’.31
5
TALKING AND KILLING
From Portadown to Shankill Road,
From Larne to Drumahoe,
Where volunteers do organise,
Says he, ‘You’ll find Big Jim,’
Says he, ‘You’ll find Big Jim.’
UVF Poem (1974)
Loyalist Club, Shankill Road, Belfast, 31 March 1974
The ‘Royals’ pop group were on stage performing a few of their well-known cover songs as part of the weekly Sunday night cabaret show. The Loyalist Club was fairly crowded. Downstairs, it was standing room only for most of the evening. There were another fifty people in the upstairs lounge, where club stewards served hamburgers from a small kitchen to those anxious to line their stomach after a few hours of heavy drinking. Bar staff hurriedly pulled draught pints of Guinness as men and women mingled at the bar. Some were impatient, and had been waiting a while to be served. ‘Twenty Embassy please mate,’ said the tall man with red hair, as he joked with the barman.1 Twenty-seven-year-old Jim Hanna, nicknamed ‘red setter’, was a married man with one child. He was a self-employed heating and plumbing engineer, and part-time bar steward. He was also the UVF’s Director of Operations, making him responsible for targeting the group’s enemies. Hanna had arrived at the club shortly after 7:30 p.m. in the company of a female friend.2
Hanna spent most of the evening in the club chatting to people and enjoying a few drinks. At midnight, Hanna and his female friend left the Loyalist Club through the gates of the delivery yard towards Jim’s car, a fawn-coloured Morris Marina 1.8 saloon, which he left parked under a street light outside St Michael’s Church in Mansfield Street. ‘We walked to Jim’s car and he unlocked