LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

in Loyalist districts. Many young Loyalists saw the UDA as a replacement for the B Specials, a part-time paramilitary force that was abolished in 1969, and offered their support by the truckload. The UDA was distinctly working class and organised along military lines. When I joined, in 1972, it had a membership of forty thousand.

      The UDA has had a varied history and its thirty-year existence is littered with violence, strong-arm tactics in support of Loyalist protests and journeys into political thinking. Tommy Herron was an architect of all of these things, especially the Loyalist street protests. He told me he got a kick out of watching thousands of men assembling in combat gear and making themselves ready for action. In 1972 thousands of UDA men, many wearing masks, marched through Belfast city centre. I was one of them. Herron was one of the chief organisers. As I walked with my fellow Loyalists I felt I was living up to the solemn promise I’d recently made. I was making a difference. I was making a contribution. I was a defender of my community and here was the proof: my combat uniform and mask and a triumphant march through the streets of my city.

      Herron was once again at the helm in July 1972, when plans to erect barricades between the Springfield Road and Shankill Road led to eight thousand UDA men, in full uniform and carrying iron bars, confronting three hundred members of the security forces. It was an ugly situation, the Protestant community turning on its police force. Herron regarded the offensive as a spectacular example of the speed and efficiency that an ‘army’ could be assembled at short notice. It was his intention to build on this in the months to come but his murder changed everything.

      He particularly hated the Welsh Guards because they called all of us ‘Paddies’. He always encouraged us to get a riot going with them. Herron had a master plan for his young recruits: you get caught, you get sent to prison and you then get to finish the rest of your training in the ‘University of Terror’ – Long Kesh.

      In my new role as a UDA volunteer many things were expected of me, including the procurement of funds and weapons. That meant I stole cars and took part in robberies. Three weeks before my seventeenth birthday I appeared before a resident Magistrate at Newtownards Petty Sessions. I was found guilty of handling stolen goods from two robberies and was given a twelve-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay compensation. My new life had begun.

      No sooner had I walked from Newtownards Court when my superiors ordered me to steal weapons and ammunition from a sports shop in Comber, County Down. An accomplice stole a car; we broke into the shop after dark and took three shotguns and several thousand rounds of ammunition. I only got caught because my sidekick, high on adrenalin after the robbery, couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He bragged about the robbery to his girlfriend, she told her father, who was a policeman, and he was lifted and questioned. He even squealed on me. I got lifted and was charged. He went to court and got a suspended sentence. I went to court, Saintfield Petty Sessions, in June 1972, and was charged with possession of firearms and ammunition. I pleaded guilty.

      Judge Martin McBirney asked me why I stole guns and bullets and I told him I needed to sell them to make a few quid to pay a debt. I didn’t tell him I was a member of the UDA and had been ordered to steal the guns by my superiors because they were needed for war. I was sentenced to six months in prison. Judge McBirney ordered prison because I was under licence from my last court appearance. He died very shortly afterwards when a Provo unit burst into his home and shot him dead as he ate breakfast with his wife.

      My first experience of jail was the Women’s Prison in Armagh. I was on remand before being moved to Long Kesh, and shared a cell with two Republicans. I was the only Loyalist prisoner there. One of my cellmates, Fish, was doing time for a sniper attack using an M1 carbine on the Army sangar at Ardoyne. The three of us even played football together in the yard. The other two knew I was a Protestant because my cell card had my name and religion written on it, but I told them I was in for theft and they left me alone. Given my age, I should have been sent to Millisle Young Offenders Centre, but the police knew I was a bad boy and had me sent to the Kesh.

      There I remember entering one of the large Nissen huts, which held up to forty prisoners. It was a mixed unit and we were kept in these ‘holding’ areas while we waited to be claimed by our organisations. There were groups of mostly young lads huddled together. In those days new prisoners were not immediately claimed by their groups. Each of us had to be assessed by men on the inside who passed messages to men on the outside to make sure we were who we said we were and not Special Branch plants. A network of coded messages confirmed our identities. While we waited for confirmation, Loyalists and Republicans lived together in the same huts. It was survival, but strangely there were never any cases of one side assaulting the other.

      Within four weeks of entering Long Kesh I was accepted by the UDA leadership and moved to the Loyalist compounds. I was just a young lad and here I was doing my six months alongside men doing big time for murder and attempted murder. I never met Gusty Spence, but I did hear plenty about him. I did see him once, though, striding through the prison in a three-piece suit carrying a briefcase and accompanied by two prison officials. I thought he was one of the prison directors until someone put me straight. Spence, a UVF volunteer, was overall commander of the Loyalist internees and serving twenty years for the murder of Peter Ward. He was a strict disciplinarian and ran the University of Terror along military lines. Spence was deeply resented by the UDA prisoners. We saw him as hijacking the whole Loyalist cause.

      I served four months before I was released. Those four months turned me into a man – a cliché but true. I learnt things in the Kesh I couldn’t have learnt outside, and they complemented my training under Tommy Herron. The first thing I learnt was that I was militarily enthusiastic but naive. I spent my four months listening and learning from those who had practical skills I could use on my release. Through these men I learnt about active service. I learnt about explosives from bomb makers. I learnt patience by simply helping veteran Loyalist John Havern with his leatherwork. I learnt about my own history and also the history of my enemies. I now had clarity, determination and focus. I was back on the streets of East Belfast in October 1972 ready for action.

      I was only out of prison three months when I was back behind bars. I needed a getaway car and was charged with ‘taking and driving away a motor vehicle’ and fined two hundred pounds. After refusing to pay the fine I was given a three-month sentence. I deliberately made the decision to go to jail rather than pay. I needed time away from the paramilitaries. I needed to step back. A teenager called Michael Wilson had been shot dead. He was Tommy Herron’s young brother-in-law and I had alarm bells ringing very loudly in my head.

      Michael Wilson was ambushed as he slept in the house he shared with his sister, Hillary, and Herron. He was actually sleeping in Herron’s bed at the time because after an attack by a group of nationalists on the Short Strand his arm and shoulder were in plaster and his single bed was too small for the cast. Swapping bedrooms cost him his life. Two gunmen appeared at the Herrons’ front door in Ravenswood Crescent, asked for Tommy and were told by his wife he wasn’t in. Refusing to take no for an answer, they pushed their way into the hall and again asked for Tommy. His panic-stricken wife said he was out. One gunman held her in the front hall, put a gun to her head and the other rushed upstairs. He shot the sleeping Michael Wilson in the mistaken belief he was Herron. I was on an errand to the local shop and as I returned to the house saw the two men making their escape. One even got on a passing bus. The police were on the scene in seconds. Hillary was standing in the front garden screaming her head off. The children were running around the garden in a panic and a policeman was trying to catch them. The police wouldn’t let me into the house.

      The death of the eighteen-year-old Wilson devastated Herron. Afterwards he went around in a daze. There was speculation that he knew about the killing and even organised it, but I know this to be untrue. The rumour was started by Loyalists in South Belfast who couldn’t wait to dance on Herron’s grave. Before Wilson was even buried, those same men had already hatched a plan to kill Herron himself. I asked him if he wanted retaliation against the IRA for the death of Wilson. I told him it was easily organised. He said just one thing to me: ‘Wrong side, kid.’

      Herron now became a stranger to me; he wasn’t the man I’d known. He told me he was resigned to his own death and knew it was only a matter of time before his brother-in-law’s killers

Скачать книгу