None Shall Divide Us - Michael Stone

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but then given me free rein to initially liaise and work with him. Bingham was a pigeon fancier and our first meeting was conducted in the pigeon shed at the back of his home in Ballysillan. He wanted to exchange ideas with me. As we chatted we discovered we had a mutual interest in dogs and operationally our work had crossed over in previous years. We had a lot in common. He asked me to be present at a meeting scheduled for the following week. He added that it was important for me to meet this group of people. I agreed. I wanted to work with this man.

      One weekday morning Bingham took me to a house on the outskirts of Belfast. As we travelled there he told me I had to make a presentation to three educated, wealthy, right-wing, German businessmen. They had travelled from Munich and were interested in the Loyalist cause. I had no time to prepare. I had to speak off the cuff. Bingham briefed me further, saying they had considerable funds at their disposal and were prepared to funnel the cash in our direction if we said the magic combination of words. The funding would be ours if we could give them harrowing first-hand accounts of our war with the IRA. It was my job to convince these men that Loyalist paramilitaries were a good investment.

      We arrived at the designated place and the Germans were already waiting for us. I was initially taken aback by them. They had word-perfect English and were intelligent and articulate. I told them about Republican violence. I told them about Harry Beggs being blown to bits in the electricity showroom where he worked. I told them about his sister Doreen and her two kids, mutilated by a no-warning blast in the Abercorn restaurant. I told them about indiscriminate bombs and bullets and the targeting of our police force. They listened. They never spoke, except to say thank you. My presentation must have worked. The money was donated.

      Three weeks later John Bingham, Sammy Cinnamond and I made another journey. It was a to a secret location on the outskirts of Belfast nicknamed ‘The Farm’. By the time we arrived two Israeli visitors were already present. It was the second part of a two-tier deal first negotiated with the Germans. The two men were members of the elite Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and, like the three German businessmen, wanted to help us. They told us that if we could supply the cash, they would supply the munitions. Already the funding had been confirmed and received from the Germans and we could now choose and pay for what we needed.

      Bingham wanted me to go to Israel and link up with the two Mossad men to complete the deal. I told him I couldn’t make the journey because I didn’t have a passport. He opened the small case he was carrying. ‘Which nationality do you want to be?’ he said, and showed me seven passports with the official seals and stamps from the country of origin. There were two British, one Irish, two German and two from the Middle East. Bingham said he wanted to go but couldn’t because MI5 were watching him. I declined the trip to Israel. If MI5 were watching Bingham, then I would be putting myself in the spotlight if I went in his place. He also tried to tempt me with a shorter trip, saying he needed someone to go to Brussels. I told him I was a military man and my job was working as an operative, on the road on active service. I said intelligence and research were not what I wanted to do.

      To be honest, I was now getting involved in a different league and I felt out of my depth. I had seconded myself to the Red Hand in order to stay anonymous, not parade myself in front of the security and intelligence agencies. When I told Bingham that both of the trips were out of the question, he accepted my decision with no further questions. He made the journey to Israel himself. It was both a fact-finding mission and the final part of the arms deal. Bingham was so well organised that he was even furnished with ‘end-user’ certificates to help him get the munitions through customs.

      Years later, after I was released from prison, an Israeli journalist interviewed me about the Peace Process. The reporter, a man in his sixties, said he knew me and that we had met previously. I shook my head and told him he must be mistaken because I didn’t know any Israeli journalists. He whispered in my ear, ‘I was one of the two men you met in the 1970s to discuss weapons.’

      John Bingham was a humble man. He wasn’t into the trappings of power and wealth, unlike many of the Loyalists holding rank at the time. Bingham was intelligent and astute. He lived in a working-class area and drove a clapped-out old banger. He liked to walk in the Black Mountain with his mother’s Labrador and I would occasionally join him for walks, taking my pitbull terrier, Buster, with me. It was during one of these walks that the security forces photographed us. I didn’t know about the picture until my arrest and the snap of us walking our dogs was shown to me by detectives.

      I was coming up to twenty-three when the IRA bombed the La Mon House Hotel in February 1978. I was horrified at the slaughter of innocent people caused by the blast, which came without warning. The La Mon bombing was an important step in a journey that would eventually lead me to the Republican Plot at Milltown cemetery, almost ten years later, with grenades around my waist and a Browning in my hand. Twelve people were killed. Seven of the dead were women and there were three married couples among the toll. All the victims were attending the annual dinner dance of the Irish Collie Club. The hotel was packed with four hundred people enjoying a Friday night out when the place was turned into a fireball after the IRA attached cans of petrol to the window grilles. The device, set to go off in fifty-eight minutes, was designed to sweep through the room like a flame-thrower. As it went off, it blew out the window and sprayed the room with blazing petrol, which had been mixed with sugar to make sure it stuck to whatever it touched. The people inside didn’t have a chance. Some stumbled out of the hotel or jumped out of the windows with their hair, skin and clothes on fire. Those who didn’t survive shrivelled in the intense heat, so that their bodies looked like tiny children. It took two hours for six units of the fire brigade to bring the blaze under control. They were removing the bodies when I arrived on the scene.

      I had been ordered to La Mon by my Red Hand superiors to see what I could do to help the emergency services. As I walked through the car park and saw the sad procession as firemen carried body after body from the charred and smoking building, I realised there was nothing I could do to help the living or the dead. Tarpaulin covered the dead. I wanted to see the carnage for myself. I don’t know how I managed to get past the RUC patrol and through the cordoned-off area, but suddenly I was standing by a row of covered bodies. I gently pulled back one cover and quickly replaced it. It was a horrific sight. What I saw in those five seconds has stayed with me for the rest of my life. I can only describe it as looking like a lump of charred wood. I couldn’t tell what gender the person was, there were no limbs and what was left of the face was a mouth wide open in a silent scream. I wondered what sort of person would do this to a human being. I could feel anger rising in the pit of my stomach. I wanted revenge. I wanted retribution of a similar kind. I was burning with rage and hatred for the people who had done this. I wanted the Republican community to pay dearly for this atrocity. I knew then that picking off a Catholic here or a nationalist there wasn’t revenge. It had to be retaliation in kind, something with a massive body count and deaths in double figures. Republicans had brought war to our doorstep. I wanted to bring war to their doorsteps and I could find people to help me.

      I spoke to Sammy Cinnamond and he advised me to sit tight, but I didn’t agree with him. I told him about the charred remains of the young men and women. I told him La Mon was a sectarian strike and as Loyalists we were duty-bound to retaliate. He cautioned me to be patient and to not sink to the same depths as the IRA because that wasn’t ‘our style’.

      Weeks went by. There was the sickening cycle of tit-for-tat shootings but nothing to match the horror of La Mon. In truth, the Red Hand was frightened of the public consequences of a big strike on the Republican community. In the late 1970s IRA bombs were going off at an alarming rate. I was frightened for my family and friends. When you left your home you ran the serious risk of getting injured or killed. I didn’t want loved ones to live like this. The IRA had to be stopped. I saw the Provos as rabid dogs, and in civilised countries rabid dogs are destroyed on the spot. I didn’t see my government or the authorities doing anything to stop these evil dogs of war. I thought back to when I was sixteen and had promised to defend my community in its hour of need.

      My community was crying out for help. It was time for me to honour my promise.

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