Thanks to those of you who showed an interest in the last excerpt I posted last week. I'm now posting a more comprehensive piece (just under 7000 words) which forms the basis of a potential chapter for a new book. Some elements are from Tartan Gangs, but there is a whole lot more context and detail on machinations within militant loyalism during 1970; particularly John McKeague's creation of and then drawn out and bitter divorce from the UDA. I hope you enjoy it, and I'd welcome any feedback.
John McKeague, 1969
The beginning of 1970 was relatively calm after the tumult of 1969. Political agitation still clouded the atmosphere but this was preferable to the shock of the violence of the previous summer. In the shadows and out of sight of the general public however both loyalists and republicans were moving toward militancy. Throughout late 1969 the republican movement had been in the midst of bitter discussions about the way forward. The Dublin leadership of the IRA had been caught by surprise by the events of August 1969. Ed Moloney has described how Cathal Goulding and others in the Dublin section of the IRA with ‘… its faith in the theory of working-class unity [was] unfazed by the growing sectarian reality on the streets [and] had failed to prepare for the eruption.’ [Voices from the Grave, p.44] Republicans in the interface areas of North and West Belfast were still smarting from the events of the previous summer and a growing cadre of young militants were beginning to be directed by sectarian impulse rather than radical Marxism. They were supported by some of the older men of the 1940s and 1956-62 campaigns who had become disenchanted by Goulding’s political outlook.
In December 1969 the differences came to a head and a new organisation, the Provisional IRA, was born. Self-identifying as a phoenix rising from the symbolic ashes of the fires of August 1969 this new group would get off to a stuttering start, but within six months it would establish itself as the predominant militant faction of Irish republicanism. Its leaders, including the first Belfast commander Billy McKee, were all republican veterans with a strong lineage in the political tradition through family and community. The young militants they attracted joined in response to the immediacy of contemporary events, often with little regard for ideology. Brendan Hughes later described his rank-and-file contemporaries in the nascent PIRA at this time:
…most of us at that time did not have a great deal of political ideology. It wasn’t until later that we really began to learn what Republicanism meant. We were motivated by the fact that Catholic homes and streets had been burned down, [that] Catholics had been forced out of their homes. People like me, who joined what was later called the Provisional IRA, were the people who had been rioting for over a year, who burned lorries, who had come under fire from the Shankill Road, who had seen people shot. They had been fighting with petrol bombs and stones and whatever else they could lay their hands on. These were the people who were defending the areas, the people who were defending the Catholic Church, who were defending against the B Specials. They were like I was, the night [-] fired his Thompson over the head of the Loyalist mob from the roof of St Comgall’s school; they would have been – reactionary might be the wrong word – but I mean, that would be close enough. The older Republicans, like McKee, MacAirt and the rest, saw all this as an opportunity for another war against England. The British were now on the streets, and this was an opportunity to take them on – on our terms, on Republican terms, on the Irish people’s terms. But, at the same time, for a lot of us, it was a big adventure. [Voices from the Grave, pp.47-48]
The events of 1969 had also given loyalists the impetus to start organising. The narrative of needing to defend one’s community as outlined by Hughes was mirrored on the loyalist side of the argument. The UVF, which appeared to have been strangled at birth in 1966 with the imprisonment of Spence and his comrades, was busy infiltrating Tara in early 1970. Under the command of Bo McClelland members of the UVF joined William McGrath’s esoteric doomsday army and plundered it for intelligence and weapons. So secretive was this penetration of Tara that many people in loyalist areas of Belfast fully believed that the UVF had disappeared. Billy Hutchinson, then a 14-year-old who was beginning to get involved in street disorder after Linfield games, remembers dismissing the UVF as mere ‘writing on the wall.’
Billy Hutchinson, early 1970s
The PIRA that Brendan Hughes had become a member of during this period was disorganised and scrambling for weapons and direction to such an extent that Ed Moloney has observed that to ‘… describe the politics and motivation of its founder members as undeveloped and unsophisticated would be an understatement.’ If this was the case then the loyalist organisations were being run like a huckster’s shop in comparison. A startling array of individuals with very few doctrinal differences were beginning to split off into rival groupings.
Organising was done on a street by street basis as people sought to defend themselves at a micro level. An attempt was made to bring some sort of cohesion to the militant loyalist response in March 1970 when the various defence associations which had sprung up in Protestant working class Belfast coalesced into a new organisation calling itself the Ulster Defence Association.
Raw emotion was the guiding force for the early militant factions which emerged from within loyalism and republicanism in 1969 and 1970. The PIRA, although facing a formidable rival in the form of the Official IRA, could appeal to potential followers on the basis that they would use the gun to defend their communities from any future loyalist encroachment. The OIRA might have wished to see the political project to unite the working class of both creeds and none flourish, but the enmities which had grown between working class Catholics and Protestants over the previous twenty-four months were already too deeply ingrained and ‘defence’ was the word on everyone’s lips. In the event of a civil war each camp would need defence from the rival community.
Provisional republicans promised their followers they would never again allow an incursion such as Bombay Street. Loyalist vigilantes and the UVF saw themselves as a necessity in the face of republican aggression and a lack of an efficiently armed security force apparatus. John McKeague knew this better than most and his spell on remand in Crumlin Road gaol did little to dampen his enthusiasm to be the leader of militant loyalism in 1970.
***
McKeague along with Owens, Mallon, Elwood and Gracey had been acquitted of explosives charges late on the evening of 20 February. A roar went up in the public gallery of Crumlin Road courthouse at around 9.00 p.m. when the verdict was read out by Justice Jones. A section of the crowd began to sing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ and ‘Derry’s Walls’. McKeague was lifted shoulder high by his supporters and chaired down the steps of the courthouse and onto the Shankill Road where a celebration was held. As McKeague jubilantly waved to those beneath him Mallon and Owens were being returned to prison to face further explosives charges. Almost immediately after his release McKeague went back to work on his militant project. Now out from the shadow of Paisley, he sought to lead his own organisation.
The SDA was still in existence and was continuing to attract a variety of new members, but it wasn’t the only vigilante group in Belfast or indeed the Shankill area at the time. The WDA was beginning to gain a reputation in the Woodvale area and it was decided in March that a central defence association should be created to bring together all the vigilante groups in Ulster. The organisation, a conglomerate of disparate groupings, was led by three joint chairmen: John McKeague, Ted Williams and Jim Ferson. They decided on a name - Ulster Defence Association. While Williams and Ferson maintained relatively low profiles, McKeague was manna to the local press and rarely passed up an opportunity to speak to any journalist that was interested in hearing his opinions.
In the month that the UDA was formed Ken Nixon of the News Letter conducted a comprehensive and in-depth interview with McKeague in which he described him as ‘… having the face of an ascetic; his eyes are tough pale blue and his voice is soft in conversation, hardening to a flinty edge when explaining his personal version of Ulster politics.’ [12 Mar. 1970, p.4] Despite having spent a number of months in Crumlin Road gaol McKeague was keen to pick up where he had left off in 1969. Not content with forming the UDA and leading the SDA he had recently announced his intention of standing in the upcoming South Antrim by-election.
Although the conversation inevitably turned to McKeague’s relationship with Paisley and the manner in which it had abruptly ended, Nixon managed to glean some other fascinating insights into a man who although very much visible and outspoken was still proving to be an enigmatic public figure a year after he had first gained a reputation as a militant loyalist.
Nixon conversed with McKeague in the flat that she shared with his mother. Throughout the interview Isabella McKeague sat in the presence of the two men. John McKeague talked openly for the first time about his family and in particular his father. When asked about Terence O’Neill McKeague was adamant that the former prime minister had been the ‘chief force in the disruption of Northern Ireland.’ Despite retaining ire for O’Neill and his liberalism and ecumenism McKeague told Nixon that he was annoyed by Ian Paisley’s verbal attack on Harry West, the Unionist M.P. for Enniskillen, after his recent attendance at the funeral of the veteran nationalist Cahir Healy.
Nixon was clearly confounded by the contradictions that came to the fore during the interview and could not reconcile the sectarian rabble-rousing which characterised much of McKeague’s public persona with the soft-spoken man he engaged with: 'The fire in the grate threw out a comforting warmth. The firelight glanced off brass ornaments, the wintry sunlight highlighted the spines of the books in Mr. McKeague’s bookcase – well-used paperbacks at the top uniform titles from “The Companion Book Club,” a handsome and almost new double-volume edition of Shakespeare, novels and religious commentaries.’ Nixon commented, ‘It seemed too cosy a lair for a man who has been accused of aggressive actions, whose public face has been categorised as stubborn and even dangerous.’
As so often can be the case appearances are deceptive and McKeague was constantly liaising with his supporters in east and south Belfast, the Shankill, Bangor and north Antrim to build a militant force. During the same period, across the city in north and west Belfast, the new PIRA was seeking an opportunity to prove itself as defenders of the working class Catholic areas from which it had emerged. Enmities simmered at the Woodvale and Ardoyne interface throughout the spring and into early summer.
As the evenings stretched anger and suspicion would come to a head and create an atmosphere in which the PIRA could boost its reputation among the beleaguered republican communities of Belfast. In turn McKeague’s desire to lead a militant loyalist organisation would be galvanized by the ire of young men who were eager to fight fire with fire. Ed Moloney has observed that ‘Much more than mother’s milk, an ideological fixation or words spoken on television, the anger-making experience of aggressive violence was by far the most compelling recruiting tool during the Troubles. The urge to hit back, to balance the scales, was a powerful, almost irresistible force…’ [VFTG, P.318] The lull which characterised the early months of 1970 was over and the storm was about to begin with devastating and deadly implications for the future of Northern Ireland.
***
Harold Wilson called a general election for 18 June. Despite his administration badly misjudged support of the United States campaign in Vietnam and suffering EEC membership rejection Wilson was confident that his party held enough of a margin of support to defeat the Conservatives. In Northern Ireland Ian Paisley had two months previously tasted electoral victory when he won the Bannside by-election which had been triggered by Terence O’Neill’s elevation to the House of Lords.
While there no public acknowledgement of Paisley’s success by McKeague it is likely that his former mentor’s ascent from the landscape of street protest to the backbenches of Westminster caused a degree of resentment. McKeague viewed the June election as a means of joining Paisley on the political scene in London. On 28 April he announced his intention to stand as an independent unionist candidate for North Belfast, a seat whose incumbent was the Unionist solicitor Stratton Mills. Although he was to all intents and purposes a liberal unionist Mills had campaigned in the USA to counter pro-Irish nationalist fundraising and what he perceived to be the one-sided narrative being peddled by Bernadette Devlin.
McKeague’s politics were still very much those of the backstreets. Although he was always busy protesting at various enemies of Ulster, it might be said that his spell on remand had caused him to become complacent and he found himself lagging behind the Paisley brand which was increasing in popularity. McKeague appealed to his potential voter base by repeating the cries of ’69: that Ulster had been sold out and left defenceless by Harold Wilson and that any future Prime Minister whether it be Wilson or his adversary Ted Heath ‘must get clear … that the Protestant people of this Province will have no more appeasement.’ [Loyalist News, 23 May 1970]
In addition to the constitutional anxieties facing loyalists, the people of the Shankill were becoming increasingly intolerant of their lot in day-to-day life. A Sunday News feature in February 1970 had described the Shankill Road, ‘hub of Loyalist Ulster’ as comprising of ‘Row upon row of dreary homes devoid of all the accepted basic facilities; acres of waste ground littered with rubble and the broken bricks of houses recently demolished; unemployed men lounging at street corners and outside public houses and bookies’ shops; and nowhere the youth clubs, community centres and recreation halls that discourage teenagers from roaming the streets.’ [Sunday News, 8 Feb. 1970, p.9]
The politics of the Shankill were described as a paradox: ‘militant supporters of the Tory Unionist party the majority of the people are still socialist in outlook – strong members of trade unions looking for higher wages and better homes.’ The mood though was toxic with people feeling let down by the vote-seeking Unionists, the ‘frustration in the bubbling pot … boiling over into the uncontrollable violence.’
Frank Quigley, a former Belfast City councillor who had resigned his seat for Woodvale in 1969 in protest at the Hunt Report had unsuccessfully lobbied for better leisure facilities on the Shankill. He explained that the traditional ill-feeling between the Shankill and the Falls had not been eased ‘when the people of the Shankill, surrounded as they are with out of date homes, saw the Housing Trust building modern spacious homes in Divis Street and going out of their way to make sure that the people of the area were not moved somewhere else.’ Quigley would later be sentenced to two years imprisonment after being convicted of arms dealing.
McKeague election poster from Loyalist News, May 1970
McKeague must have considered himself to have a very good chance of being elected given the tempestuous climate of Protestant Ulster. With his graft on the streets in August 1969 it was surely an inevitability that those who supported him would descend on the ballot box in huge numbers and unseat the more liberal Mills. Unfortunately for him he was to learn a lesson that would be meted out to many future loyalist political candidates who had the whiff of cordite around them: Protestants have never supported militants turned politicians in large numbers and McKeague’s recent court case and spell on remand in Crumlin Road gaol would prove fatal to his political aspirations.
A stinging rebuke in the mould of the UCDC statement of the previous August appeared in the press mere weeks after McKeague had announced his campaign. This time it was from one of the defence associations which McKeague, Williams and Ferson supposedly had joint authority over. Williams, however, was chair of the Donegall Road Defence Committee which published the following statement on 21 May announcing that the DRDC had decided to:
Disassociate the DRDC from John McKeague and the Shankill Road Defence Association. Mr McKeague, we feel, has tried to involve the defence associations in general and the DRDC in particular with his intention to run for North Belfast in the forthcoming general election. The DRDC is non-political and will not be drawn into any political arena.
The secretary of the DRDC was a young man named Billy Dickson. Dickson was heavily involved in Ian Paisley’s Protestant Unionist Party and thus was not disinterested in the political progress of McKeague. [Bruce, The Red Hand] For the DRDC to state that it was non-political was a glaring falsehood and the hand of Paisley could be seen in the stance adopted by the organisation and its members. Only a matter of weeks prior to the statement being issued DRDC had organised a parade from Selby Street which proceeded along Donegall Road and onto a loyalist rally outside Sandy Row Orange Hall. The meeting which was held on Saturday 25 April was addressed by invited speakers: Ian Paisley and Rev. John Wylie; ironically the same billing for the rally in Ballymoney four years previously where McKeague had been converted to Free Presbyterianism.
The DRDC stated that the parade and rally were being held to highlight local demands for three soccer pitches, a running track, a recreation hall, small lots of ground in the Donegall Road area to be made into parks for senior citizens and for the RUC station at Roden Street to be made fully operational for the protection of the area. [News Letter, 25 Apr. 1970, p.2] The organisers had declared that the parades would continue on a monthly basis to protest ‘against injustices to Protestants.’ [News Letter, 17 Apr. 1970, p.24]
In the end the DRDC’s distancing process from McKeague was academic. On 18 June his political campaign culminated in a paltry 441 votes, equivalent to a 0.7% share of the overall vote in north Belfast. Stratton Mills won 28,668 votes and retained the seat. Intriguingly the Rev. William Beattie, a Paisleyite and Protestant Unionist Party candidate won a not insignificant 11,173 votes. Given the prevailing political instability and disenchantment with Westminster security policy there was potential for a protest candidate, but with McKeague and Beattie splitting the vote the Unionist Party was the overall winner in North Belfast.
The result came as a shock to McKeague who must have felt certain that he would have gained considerable support even if he didn’t win the seat. It was a morale-sapping humiliation and he later complained ‘I could go out into the street and crack my fingers and within minutes I could muster hundreds of men about me ready to obey my command. But yet when I stood in an election I lost my deposit. Apparently these men accepted me as a leader on the streets but not as a political leader. I couldn’t believe my ears the night the results were announced.’ [News Letter, 6 Jun. 1975, p.4] A fortnight later events would converge to provide an upswing in McKeague’s fortunes. While his political ambitions had been dashed and the side sniping from pro-Paisleyite voices in the defence associations had increased a new cadre of young loyalists were about to come to the fore. They would view McKeague as the militant leader that Ulster required in its time of crisis.
***
On Saturday 27 June the annual ‘mini-Twelfth’ parade organised by District Number 9 of the Orange Order took place intending to follow a planned route from West Belfast Orange Hall down the Shankill Road following through to Argyle Street, Cupar Street, Lawnbrook Avenue, back to the main Shankill Road, down Mayo Street to the Springfield Road, Springmartin Road, Ballygomartin Road, Woodvale Road and back to the West Belfast Orange Hall for dispersal. Memories of August 1969 were still fresh in the minds of aggrieved nationalist residents of the Springfield Road and the nearby Clonard area where loyalists had burned out houses in Bombay Street.
As the parade reached the corner of Mayo Street the first stages of trouble occurred when a group of Protestant teenagers walking a number of yards ahead of the main parade turned on to the Springfield Road ‘where a large crowd of Catholics were standing behind a thin line of police and troops. Immediately the crowd appeared the Catholics started singing “The Soldiers Song” and the Protestant youths, many of them waving Union Jacks and Orange emblems replied with boos, jeers and two stones.’ Bottles were thrown and the Catholic crowd ‘pushed aside the police and troops and engaged the Loyalists in hand-to-hand fighting.’ The situation quickly deteriorated further as a petrol bomb was thrown at a bakery on the Springfield Road and fighting continued for up to an hour before police and troops dispersed the clashing factions by firing tear gas canisters into the crowds.
Unaware of the trouble that had broken out on the Springfield Road side of the Shankill a resident of the Woodvale area had gone to meet three friends, including a 28-year-old local man named William Kincaid. The group of four made their way to Leopold Street to visit another friend. Finding the house empty they decided to make their way to the Shankill Road to watch the bands passing. ‘We followed the procession down the Shankill and then we cut off a street off the Shankill. The reason we cut off was we followed a girls’ band into this street.’ Almost as soon as the witness had turned into the street the members of the girls’ band starting running back the way they had come. ‘There were other people running as well towards the Shankill. A lot of people were shouting and screaming. We saw a lot of stones and bottles coming into Disraeli Street. We ran up Disraeli Street towards the Crumlin Road end. The missiles were coming out of Hooker Street end.’
The crowd that had gathered at the top of Disraeli Street pushed a green Maine lemonade van across the street as a barricade. ‘The next thing I heard was shooting coming from the corner of Hooker Street … Everybody was running about to get out of the way.’ According to the witness William Kincaid ran to the corner of Disraeli Street and the Crumlin Road to bring some local children away from the line of fire. As he raced back into Disraeli Street and behind the lemonade van Kincaid was shot.
Ronnie McCullough was walking with Prince Albert Temperance lodge. He later discovered that a man named Tommy Reid who was known to his family and had been watching the parade had been hit on the head with a piece of cast iron grating thrown by republicans. Reid would die from his injuries a number of days later on 3 July. McCullough recalls that
…the rumours spread of heavy gunfire on the Crumlin Road, where other Orange Lodges were under attack from republicanism. I and several other of my friends made our way quickly to the Crumlin Road; Disraeli Street, Palmer Street, Chief Street, Leopold Street which interfaced with republican Ardoyne on the other side of the road. By the time that I had reached the Crumlin Road with my friends there were a lot of gunshot casualties.
Martin Meehan, a leading member of the Ardoyne PIRA stated that loyalists fired first. Loyalists contest this version of events with Ronnie McCullough adamant that there was a reaction from loyalists to republican fire. He also remembers how woefully inadequate the loyalist arsenal was at the time as he watched ‘…one loyalist firing a handgun in the direction of Ardoyne, but it would have been totally ineffective from the range that he was firing at. Otherwise there was heavy gunfire coming from the nationalist side toward the Orange contingent. It seemed to me that it was an organised IRA ambush.’
Tommy Reid’s eldest son Alan supports the contention that republicans were awaiting the opportunity to attack the Orangemen. Describing the ‘battleground’ which had erupted near Mayo Street and Springfield Road he remembers seeing that a man had been felled and on approaching to offer assistance discovered that it was his own father: ‘An ambulance arrived and took us to what appeared to be a Community Hall in Colinward Street in the republican part of the Springfield Road. This along with the fact that the ambulance belonged to the Order of Malta demonstrated that the nationalist community were well prepared for the events of that day.’ Gerry Adams later wrote in his memoirs that ‘In this instance the IRA were ready and waiting and in the ensuing gun battle three loyalists were killed.’
Most people were taken aback by the sudden intensity of the violence. Although there had been sporadic rioting since August 1969 there had been no gunshot fatalities since the Shankill troubles of October. For some older residents of the city minds were inevitably cast back to the 1920s. 45 Commando Royal Marines had recently been deployed in the city and were experiencing their first taste of street disorder. One young soldier who received a cut to his face during the trouble on the Crumlin Road was overheard saying to his comrades ‘Two hours ago they were giving us tea, now they’re trying to kill us.’ [Belfast News Letter, 27 Jun. 1970, p.1]
Rumour and conjecture regarding the events in north and west Belfast reached east Belfast as evening drew in. As the bands from that part of the city made their way back past the Short Strand missiles were thrown and insults were hurled. At pub closing time, 10.00 p.m., the bars on the Newtownards Road began to empty in tandem as they did every Saturday night; the Popular, Britannia, Lynches, McMahons White Star, Standard, Scotch Row and the Belvoir. An Irish tricolour was unfurled at the contested Seaforde Street. Republican gunmen in the grounds of St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in the Short Strand opened up on dispersing crowds in the Lower Newtownards Road. Local men Jimmy McCurrie and Robert Neill were both killed and things would never again be the same in East Belfast.
Ripples from the events at the Whiterock parade and St. Matthew’s would be far-reaching. In the East of the city a local man from the Woodstock Road named Jim Magee and others conferred with their network of loyalist contacts on the other side of Belfast in the Shankill where the UVF had been established. A loose and disparate group of these men came together throughout the latter half of 1970, Magee recalling: ‘the lesson that we learned was that was never going to happen again to us; there was an organisation, UVF, based on the old style UVF of 1912, and that’s when I introduced and formed the UVF in east Belfast for the protection of the people.’
Magee, then aged 27, was considered to be one of the older men in the area and in turn people looked to him for guidance. His interpretation of the events around St. Matthew’s was that the Provisionals had carefully planned an ambush on his community in order to define itself as the protectors of the Catholic people. The events of August 1969 and Bombay Street were still fresh in the minds of many understandably embittered republicans. ‘What they decided was they had to have a ‘win’ situation, and in order to have a ‘win’ situation … this wasn’t a case of ‘we’re gonna try and have a win’ [it was] ‘we’re gonna have a win … we’re gonna pick the battleground, we’re gonna pick the time, we’re gonna pick the place’’’ said Magee. [Interview with Jim Magee, 7 March 2014]
Jim Magee, back row second from left with moustache; John McKeague (centre) with dark jacket and poppy - ULCCC, mid-1970s
Although they didn’t know it at the time, Magee and other loyalists would later discover that the Provisionals in the Short Strand fell under the same battalion command as Ardoyne. When this fact transpired loyalists couldn’t regard the events of the 27 June as anything other than a well-planned and co-ordinated attack by the new republican paramilitary organisation. A booklet later compiled by a republican history group in east Belfast inadvertently gave credence to the loyalist narrative articulated by Jim Magee that the nascent Provisionals were looking for a way to garner support which had slipped away from militant republicanism in 1969. Lagan Enclave, published by the Ballymacarrett Research Group in 1997, describes events in a manner which far from being a spontaneous defensive manoeuvre positions the Provisional’s course of action that evening as having been long in the planning.
When the IRA formed up that night in Lowry Street just off Seaforde Street it was the first time since the 1920s that the IRA had paraded before going into action. There were around thirty men that night which comprised of Brigade Staff Officers, local volunteers and volunteers from the Falls. Supporting them were Fianna who acted as runners ferrying ammunition and messages between the various positions taken up around Seaforde Street and the Church.
Across the city, in the Oldpark district of north Belfast, Ronnie McCullough the young Orangeman who had turned 18 the previous month had also decided that loyalists now needed to be more proactive. William ‘Plum’ Smith, a friend of McCullough, was among a group of about thirty young men who had been at the junction of Mayo Street and the Springfield Road accompanying the bands when a ‘salvo of missiles’ was thrown at the parade by nationalists, hitting and injuring those gathered.
The impression left on Smith and McCullough by the attacks and fatalities was deep and lasting. McCullough remembers meeting that as events unfolded across the city that evening, ‘I and several other friends decided that we would meet in a house in the Oldpark Road – it happened to be my mother’s house in Rosevale Street – we discussed the situation of what had happened.’ It was decided that action would have to be taken: ‘We would need to do something about it otherwise it could happen again and again and we would need to make a stand. We basically decided we would form an organisation, and we would ultimately train and arm and recruit to prevent similar circumstances happening again.’
McCullough and the young men in his company from the Shankill and Oldpark areas crowded into the parlour room of his mother’s house and heatedly debated the events of that day. Feeling hamstrung by the implementation of the Hunt Report and increasingly alarmed by the violent actions of republicans the need for paramilitary action was established. The discussions which had taken place in the autumn of 1969 among McCullough and his friends were revisited and the birth certificate of an unnamed grouping which would later become the Red Hand Commando was verbally agreed:
In effect we agreed on two founding principles for this proposed organisation. The first founding principle we agreed on was that we would fight to remain British, and we would not be forced into an all-Ireland republic from republican activities; and secondly that we would fight to defend the Protestant people, or loyalist people – our communities – from republican aggression.
In the aftermath of this initial agreement Ronnie McCullough and the cabal of young men who had met to discuss the formation of an armed organisation to defend their communities from republican aggression met once again. At this stage there were very few weapons in the loyalist armoury with Plum Smith recalling that the group’s ‘…first trawl of weapons looked like something from a WWI museum with bolt action Steyr and Torino rifles, shot guns, a few hand guns and very little ammunition.’
Despite the poor arsenal described by Smith there was in fact growing concern among the authorities that weapons were in loyalist hands. On Monday 29 June, as Protestants continued to bristle at the preceding weekend’s events, the army attempted to search the Brussels Street lodgings of a 23-year-old lorry driver named David Payne. An interested crowd gathered on the pavement outside the house and the soldiers, joined by police, stood their ground for over an hour despite the hostile atmosphere. ‘They came up about 12 o’clock when I was in bed. My brother was in the house too’, Payne later said. ‘I looked out of the window and they said they were here to search the premises. I asked them for a warrant and they said to come down. I asked them to send it up, but they wouldn’t.’ Payne, a former paratrooper, was in no mood to permit the soldiers entry and appeared at a window of the house brandishing a ceremonial sword from his Orange Lodge.
Pointing the sword out the window Payne told the security forces that they ‘would get that’ if they tried to force an entry and suggested that they would be better off directing their resources at the Provisionals in East Belfast. ‘There are no guns in this house and I have never shot a gun in my life. It was a protest that the troops weren’t searching the proper areas, like chapels and in Seaforde Street.’ [Belfast Telegraph, 30 Jun. 1970, p.1]
Payne had become something of a minor celebrity two years previously when he saved a woman’s life while returning from an Orange parade in Glasgow which had taken place on Saturday 6 July 1968. Payne, then the Deputy Worshipful Master of Old Boyne Island Heroes was chief marshal on the chartered Isle of Man steamer Tynwald which was about to leave Ardrossan on the Ayrshire coast on the morning of 7 July. Among the 900 passengers on board were around 200 Orangemen from five lodges and twenty bands. Margaret Scott, aged 44, had been standing at the quay where the boat was moored. Scott lost her footing and plunged into the water, sustaining head and leg injuries. According to a newspaper report Payne ‘immediately jumped in and held the woman up until a rope was thrown down to him. He tied the rope around her and both of them were hauled up to safety.’ [Belfast News Letter, 8 Jul. 1968, p.2]
Payne’s altercation with the police and army would not be his last contribution to the increasing trouble in Northern Ireland and north and west Belfast in particular.
Davy Payne
***
As the days passed through July and August 1970 the young loyalists who had met in the parlour room in Rosevale Street on 27 June began to recognise John McKeague’s potential as a leader. They knew that they needed a figurehead and somebody with connections that would enable them to procure arms. They shared McKeague’s vitriolic hatred of republicanism. Ronnie McCullough remembers that he and his friends ‘…decided to link up with a group which had shown itself in flash-point areas as being defensive – the Shankill Defence Association…’ The young loyalists approached McKeague in order to ‘pursue discussions as to how they could strengthen their position, arm themselves greater and possibly merge with the Shankill Defence Association in the formation of a new organisation.’ Having suffered various setbacks throughout May and June McKeague was galvanized by the enthusiasm he encountered among McCullough and his fellow young loyalists:
Whenever it was put to John McKeague what the aims of this new group were, and what their objectives were [he] fully endorsed them and encouraged them to link in with those people who were already members of the Shankill Defence Association and felt the same way. It ended up that numbers of Shankill Defence Association became close to this new grouping, and in actual fact they all amalgamated and formed one grouping which was later to become the Red Hand Commando.
Ronnie McCullough, Frankie Curry and Plum Smith in Long Kesh - early 1970s
McKeague had various contacts with access to firearms. McKeague also knew people in the Woodvale area who were involved in the local defence association. Utilising this network, the new group trained in small arms in a room above a Credit Union building in Woodvale and also travelled to premises in Chadolly Street, east Belfast where they were trained in unarmed combat by an ex-marine commando in the British Army. Despite the initial cohort numbering less than 20 men the organisation soon gained momentum after its alliance with McKeague and the SDA. The process of a ‘secret army’ attracting new recruits in was, in McCullough’s words, much like a ‘spider casting a web; each one man spoke to other men – maybe one or two – and in a short space of time the numbers of men grew, greatly.’
As social and political discontent increasingly coloured day to day life in Northern Ireland the leading members of the nascent Red Hand found that football crowds, dominated as they were by young men from Belfast’s Protestant working class, provided a large potential recruiting base for the fledgling organisation. Ronnie McCullough and other Red Hand members realised at an early stage that they would have to try and attract recruits from beyond the Shankill, its outlying estates and the Oldpark area: ‘…through the normal activities of going to football matches etcetera we spread our wings to further afield…’ recalling:
…our ventures into the football matches was usually done in groups. We would meet outside the Crown Snooker Hall on a Saturday and walk to Windsor Park one week, and the following week we would make our way to the Oval perhaps, or to another football ground; Crusaders or whatever. In so doing you would meet with people, discuss the situation and…if they were of like mind you would introduce the possibility of, “Why don’t you join with us and what we’re doing?”
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The summer ended with McKeague consolidating his position on the leadership of the UDA. At a meeting hosted in the SDA office at 2a Wilton Street on Monday 31 August which was attended by representatives of the seventeen branches of the organisation McKeague and his familiar sidekicks Jim Ferson and Ted Williams were elected as the three ruling chairmen for the year ahead. Despite being in a position of strength as the summer turned to autumn McKeague was about to face another tumultuous period in his quest to unite militant loyalism.
At the end of November, the DRDC placed a notice in the News Letter stating that it disassociated itself from the UDA and wished to be called the Donegall Road Action Group. [News Letter, 30 Nov. 1970, p.6] Rumours later persisted that the DRDC had removed itself from the UDA brand due to embarrassment over McKeague’s sexuality.
The break with McKeague appears to have had its origins in a meeting which was held underneath the imposing red brick bridge running over Tates Avenue, a thoroughfare connecting the Lisburn Road with the Village area. One of those present told me that McKeague expressed views at the meeting which were regarded as ‘fantasy’ by the other men present.
Although this person didn’t elaborate what those views specifically entailed, it would seem likely that McKeague was advancing his ideas for a cohesive militant loyalist force. With his peripatetic reputation it seems that some of the locals regarded McKeague as a liability. A young loyalist from the Village called Bobby Rodgers would join the RHC in late 1971 and has this to say about McKeague: ‘He may have been more aware of what may happen than a lot of other people. John was an intelligent man; he wasn’t ruthless. Some people know what needs to be done in certain circumstances, and don’t forget – this was all new to people. People were ad-libbing.’
Another factor in McKeague being frozen out by certain groups was undoubtedly people’s loyalty to Ian Paisley. A fortnight after the DRDC statement was released to the News Letter Billy Dickson was rebuked by the incumbent chairperson of the Action Group, Agnes Davis. In a signed letter published in the Loyalist News Davis, writing on behalf of the Action Group, apologised to McKeague, declaring that the statement in the News Letter had been ‘published unknown to myself or any of my members … such a statement would not have been passed by the group.’
Davis laid the blame at Dickson’s door: ‘We believe this was a personal statement of Mr. Dickson in retaliation for something published in the ‘Loyalist News’ about Mr. Paisley.’ Davis further assured McKeague that Dickson would answer to the group at its next meeting, scheduled for 10 December. [Loyalist News, 12 Dec. 1970]
There was also a growing resentment emanating from quarters closer to McKeague’s Shankill powerbase. The physically imposing WDA leader Charles Harding-Smith had taken a strong dislike to McKeague. During a meeting of the defence associations in a premises in the Woodvale area around this time Harding-Smith singled McKeague out for a verbal rousting.
Attempting to intimidate the SDA chief, Harding-Smith insisted that McKeague must have been worried for his safety, aware that if any trouble kicked off, he was outnumbered and in comparatively hostile territory. McKeague, knowing that he had backing in the room from his young foot soldiers, was unflustered, confidently telling Harding-Smith that if he had been afraid, he wouldn’t have made the effort of turning up. He attended a number of subsequent meetings during which time Harding-Smith maintained an aggressive attitude toward McKeague, a man whose face he felt didn’t fit in the rapidly proliferating militant loyalist culture. Such degrees of petty difference would continue to dog militant loyalism throughout the 1970s.