LITMIR.BIZ

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South Africa laying the railway along the Gold Coast. A photograph of Thomas Stone taken while he was in South Africa as an employee of the British government shows him holding Jacko, his pet baboon. This picture took pride of place in the living room and I was fascinated by the stories my mother would tell about Jacko.

      After Thomas Stone finished working abroad he returned to England with his German wife Augusta, Jacko and two live alligators. He disembarked from the boat with the two alligators on leads and Jacko by the hand. The newspaper cuttings from 1936 show him, his massive collection of tribal war spears and his prized juju. Jacko is sitting on his knee. The baboon lived as an additional member of the family. When I was growing up my mother told me stories about life with her grandparents. Jacko was house-trained and lived indoors. He slept indoors and ate with the family. My mother, who paid regular visits to her grandparents as a little girl, said she was terrified of Jacko because he was so big. Eventually my great-grandfather had to kill him, after coming home from work to find his wife cowering in the corner of the kitchen, being attacked by Jacko, who was now fully grown. My great-grandfather and the baboon fought hand to hand: Jacko was strangled and my great-grandfather was covered in bites. The alligators are now in the Museum of Birmingham.

      Also on the wall of our home was a framed parchment dated 28 September 1912 which was signed by James ‘Soldier’ Moore, my other great-grandfather. He served with the Royal Irish Fusiliers. ‘Soldier’ Moore had put his signature, in his own blood, to a solemn covenant to resist British Home Rule for Ireland. My mother was very proud of that parchment. My family were good, working-class Loyalists who were loyal to the Crown, loyal to their Queen, loyal to their identity and loyal to their British nationality.

      As well as my elder brother and two elder sisters, I have two sisters who are younger than me, Sharon and Shirley. One of the first rules of our family, taught to each of us in turn by my mother, was ‘Family Comes First’. Years later, when I joined the UDA, I broke that golden family rule. I didn’t put my family first and my illegal paramilitary activities became the focus of my entire life. My brother was shy and scholarly as a boy. John loved studying and is now a master draughtsman. He is a quiet family man living in the UK and, although he has never passed judgement on my past life, he often says he doesn’t understand how and why I got involved.

      As a teenager John was a member of a rock group called Richmond Hill. He was the lead singer of the five-piece group and they played support to the Irish rock acts Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher and Horslips. Although he was a quiet lad he had an amazing Joe Cocker-type voice and the band regularly gigged at Dublin’s Baggot Inn. I used to scam my way on to their van whenever I got the chance.

      Nowadays my sister Rosemary is a florist, while Colleen is a full-time wife and mother, Sharon an auxiliary nurse and Shirley a care attendant. Although the tables are turned and they now look after me, when we were young I took it upon myself to look after them and protect them from young lads on our estate.

      My father worked long hours to keep the family together. As a steelworker at the Harland & Wolff shipyard, he had followed in his own father’s footsteps. He was proud to be working class. He was a union man all his life and in his younger days represented boilermen, first as a convenor and then as a shop steward. My mother never left the family home for thirteen years and I mean just that: she never stepped beyond the front door. She didn’t even go to the shops herself. Each of us, me included, did the shopping for her on our designated days. Her day, for all those thirteen years, was getting my father to work, getting us ready for school, cleaning, washing, cooking, getting us ready for bed, getting dinner ready for Dad and falling into bed herself. Her day was multiple trips from kitchen to backyard and backyard to kitchen. I don’t think she really sat down during all that time. My parents had a long and loving marriage until death separated them in 2001. My lasting memory of the two of them together is Dad buying Mum a new winter coat and taking her into the city for a meal.

      My school years – I went to a primary school which was right opposite my home – were not the happiest of my life. I preferred schoolyard games to sitting behind a desk and doing my lessons. It was at primary school that I got the nickname Flint, and it stayed with me until I became a Loyalist volunteer in my teens.

      One teacher ensured I would leave school with little education and a dislike bordering on hatred for teachers and educators. Bordering the Braniel estate was a middle-class estate called Glenview and children from there also attended Braniel Primary. This teacher was a snob: he held a senior position of responsibility but believed working-class kids had no right to education. He ran his school with an iron fist.

      I had one encounter with this teacher that shaped the rest of my school life. When I was eight he slapped me in the face, causing my nose to bleed profusely. He beat me because I took a fit of the giggles in the playground when we were lining up to go back into class. I have never forgotten or forgiven the incident. After lunch the bell would ring to tell us it was time for lessons to begin. He had a ritual: you lined up in pairs, took the hand of the boy or girl standing beside you and filed into your classroom. I had a friend called Thomas ‘Daz’ Dizell. The bell rang and we lined up. I see this teacher striding up and down the lines of children and I take Daz’s hand. He laughs, pulls his hand away and sticks his tongue out at me. I start to laugh and the teacher spots us. He walks over to where we are standing and tells us to wait outside his classroom. I am scared because he has a reputation and has been known to beat boys.

      In the classroom, Daz is slapped on the palms of his hands with a ruler and ordered back to class. I know I’m next. The teacher walks towards me and I feel a heavy thud on my face that knocks me off my feet. He had hit me with the back of his hand and his knuckles had rammed so hard into my nose it burst a blood vessel. I have always had a weak nose and if I blew it too hard the blood would gush out and take ages to stop. I could see the blood dripping on to the floor and could feel it sliding down the back of my throat. I bolted under his desk, with blood pouring out of my nose, terrified I would get another slap. He screamed and shouted at me. Another teacher – a lady – heard the noise and rushed in. He left, slamming the door behind him, and she put me in a chair, saying just the one thing: ‘You made him do that by being bold.’ She never cleaned my face or tried to stop the bleeding. I was told to take off all my clothes and I began to cry, asking for my mother. The teacher left me sitting there in my socks and underpants, told me not to move until she came back and locked the door. I could hear her footsteps as she walked up the corridor.

      The bleeding had stopped and had dried in my nose and on my face. The teacher eventually came back carrying a plastic bag containing my clothes. She emptied the bag on the floor and placed my trousers, shirt and jumper on a radiator to dry, but it was spring and the heating wasn’t switched on. ‘You stay here until the end of school, you tell your mother you fell and banged your face,’ she said. ‘You have sisters here and we can expel all of you.’ Once the final bell went, she came back and told me to get dressed. I put on my damp clothes and went home.

      My mother was furious with me and wanted to know what happened. I lied and told her I fell in the playground and hurt my nose. I convinced her I’d had an accident. I put on a brave face when I should have told her what that teacher had done. After that, he never let me out of his sight. He asked other teachers to make me sit at the seat nearest the door and he would watch my movements. I was constantly waiting for the next blow or the next punch. I learnt a lesson that day: never tell a secret. I could have told Mum that a teacher had hit me but I didn’t. I chose to stay quiet and keep it to myself. Ironically, it is a lesson that was to stay with me in the years to come, when I was operating as a paramilitary. As an eight-year-old I learnt to never spill the beans and never betray anyone.

      From that day I have always had a problem with authority figures. When I left my primary school, I enrolled in Lisnasharragh Secondary. My sister Rosemary was already a pupil there and was in the same class as George Best, the football legend. He was head boy and Rosemary had a massive crush on him; in fact all the girls in Lisnasharragh had a soft spot for Best. He had moved from Grosvenor Grammar School and Rosemary told me that years later, at a school reunion party organised by the Democratic Unionist Party councillor Kim Morton, the former headmaster reminisced about George Best and my name also came up in the conversation. Then he said to her, ‘Lisnasharragh had one famous pupil

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