seat. Just as soon as we got into the car, the driver’s door was opened and I heard a number of bangs. Jim slumped over me. I thought immediately it was shots and I curled up in the car. After Jim slumped over me the shooting continued, and I was shot on the top of both legs. I did not see who fired the shots and I did not see any other person at the car. The way Jim fell across me obstructed my view.’3
Hanna was shot in the chest and abdomen by two men armed with a pair of Walther 9mm pistols. One of the men opened the driver’s side door before both gunmen emptied their magazines into their victim. Twelve rounds were fired in total, hitting Hanna nine times in the chest and torso. Journalists later claimed that he was shot point blank in the head, which was not the case.4 The gunmen blended back into the shadows from where they had come to kill Jim Hanna.
Having heard the shots and the woman’s screams, up to a dozen local people rushed over to the vehicle to see if they could help. A doorman from the club lifted Jim Hanna’s lifeless body out of the vehicle and carried the victim back into the club where a bar steward telephoned an ambulance. The attack had taken place in a dimly lit street when most residents had retired to bed for the night. The doctor who examined Hanna on his arrival at the casualty department of the Royal Victoria Hospital pronounced him dead at 12:40 a.m. In his post-mortem, pathologist Dr John Press found twenty-one entrance and exit wounds in Hanna’s body, right arm and right thigh.5 It had all the hallmarks of a deliberate, planned assassination that was devoid of mercy. By opting to shoot their victim at such close range, the gunmen made sure he would not survive the attack. Hanna had to go, they reasoned, and this was the most effective way to ensure that it happened. Nothing had arisen in the club that night to indicate that Hanna was in any immediate danger. He had not found himself entangled in any heated arguments, nor did he have any visible enemies. His murder remained a mystery to many people on the Shankill.
The assassination didn’t come as a surprise to some of those in the UVF’s inner circles, for Hanna had courted controversy in recent months by soft-pedalling on calls from the rank and file to further escalate the organisation’s terror campaign. As the group’s overall military commander, this was an unfathomable position for Hanna to adopt, the group’s younger hardliners believed.
It later emerged that Jim Hanna had also met with an Official IRA leader in the Europa Hotel in central Belfast, widely regarded in the 1970s as the ‘most bombed hotel in Europe’. Robert Fisk of the London Times, who first broke the story, claimed that the UVF and Official IRA shared common ground on the political front, and wished to see an end to sectarian killing.6 Internal discord ensued, with one hooded UVF leader promptly emerging from the shadows to quash rumours of any talks. ‘We need a political front to counter the propaganda of the Provisional alliance, the British government and the Faulkner–Fine Gael Pact,’ the UVF spokesman told those journalists gathered at a hastily convened press conference. When questioned about his organisation’s position on a united Ireland, the UVF leader reiterated the group’s total opposition to any moves in this direction.7 The UVF followed up an impromptu media appearance with a written statement, carried in its journal Combat, denying that it had ever ‘at any time discussed political or military policy with either the Official or Provisional Wings of the Irish Republican Movement’. For the UVF, ‘Irish Republicanism and Ulster patriotism are poles apart and can never come together in common policy decisions.’8
The truth was that Hanna had been one of two senior UVF Brigade Staff members who had also met secretly with the Provisional IRA in Lough Sheelin in County Cavan. The other person who had attended the meeting was Billy Mitchell, the commander of the powerful UVF battalion in East Antrim. The meetings had been brokered by journalist, Kevin Myers. There to meet the two UVF men were Dáithí Ó Conaill and Brian Keenan. ‘Keenan was militarily the most important man in the IRA, then and over the coming decades. His presence made this a very high-powered delegation indeed,’ recalled Myers. It was to be the first and only meeting between these sworn enemies. In Mitchell’s eyes, ‘we genuinely wanted a political voice. The very fact that the UVF had met with the Officials and the Provos at the highest level indicates that they wanted to think about bringing the conflict to an end. Unfortunately, it was too much too soon,’ he later admitted.9
Although it was something of an open secret that Jim Hanna had ‘friends in military intelligence’ at the time,10 the reality was that if he was also an agent he was almost certainly working to put the UVF out of business. After his death, Fisk suggested that because of his moderate tendencies, Hanna may have strongly opposed a plan hatched by UVF hardliners to bomb Irish towns south of the border.11 Hanna’s liberal outlook, combined with reports that he had met with both wings of the IRA, provided the excuse Young Turks within UVF ranks needed to justify his execution. Hanna’s wife was in no doubt who had killed her husband, ‘You know Billy Marchant?’ she asked Myers. ‘Well, Marchant killed Jim.’12
At the time, the UVF strongly rejected the rumours it had played any role in Hanna’s death. ‘The Ulster Volunteer Force Brigade Headquarters Staff view with contempt the erroneous suggestions made by the Security Forces against the UVF regarding the murder of Mr James Hanna at Mansfield Street on Sunday evening 31st March 1974,’ read a statement issued by the organisation after his death. The denial was designed to refute rumours that Hanna had been executed after an internal ‘Court of Inquiry’ found he had compromised weapons and explosives in the same place where he had died. In signing off, the UVF vowed to bring his killers to justice. In reality, the UVF Brigade Staff was under repeated internal strain, ever since it announced its ceasefire on 18 November 1973. By eliminating Hanna, UVF hardliners believed they were removing the final obstacle for a return to their organisation’s military campaign. These men were soon disappointed when, a few days later, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees, de-proscribed the UVF and Provisional IRA.13 The UVF Brigade Staff’s flirtation with politics, rather than militarism, appeared to be working.
***
Dublin City centre, Evening, Friday 17 May 1974
Thirty-five-year-old Ann O’Neill was out shopping with her family when the first car bomb exploded at 5:28 p.m. in Parnell Street. It killed her husband Edward outright, and badly injured her son, Edward Junior, who was hit by flying shrapnel. So severe were young Edward’s injuries that the surgeon who performed skin grafts on his face could see the bridge of his nose protruding through what was left of his skin. His face had literally been blown off by the force of the blast, and shards of metal and glass had become lodged deep in his tiny body. One young girl was decapitated by flying debris. It was impossible for either the emergency services or the other civilians who went to her aid to know who she was. Eleven people were killed, including two infant children. Elsewhere in the city, on Talbot Street, another bomb exploded at 5:30 p.m., killing thirteen people, one of whom had been pregnant.’ At the same time, a third bomb exploded in South Leinster Street, killing two women. The bombs had exploded with such force that the blasts had knocked people over like skittles. Men, women and children were thrown along streets, into doorways and against walls like rag dolls. A mother walking her baby in a pram was thrown violently into the air. People screamed in sheer terror. Shock set in, and some people were literally frozen to the spot. Twenty-six people were killed in Dublin, and another 253 injured. It was the worst terrorist atrocity in the city since the Anglo-Irish War of Independence. Just over two hours later, in Monaghan, some seventy miles away, another car bomb detonated outside a Protestant-owned pub, killing seven people.
That the bombs were placed with such military precision immediately raised questions over who could have perpetrated the attacks.14 No group admitted responsibility at the time, though the finger of blame was pointed at loyalist paramilitaries. It was not long before allegations of ‘collusion’ between the terrorists and British state agencies were raised. They were based largely on the public confession of John Weir, who was jailed for his part in atrocities perpetrated by the so-called ‘Glennane Gang’, a group of part-time and reserve RUC officers who, in their guise as UVF members, murdered dozens of people in the Mid Ulster area.15
It has since been established by an Irish government inquiry into the bombings that the UVF was responsible, and that its members from Belfast and Mid Ulster carried out the – fastidiously planned and well-executed operation. ‘The loyalist groups who carried out the bombings in Dublin were capable