Although it has never been proven who exactly recruited Spence and the others into the UVF, the faceless men responsible had inadvertently created a Frankenstein’s monster they could neither hope to lead nor control – as events would soon prove.
2
HELL SLAP IT INTO THEM
Shots were fired of plenty, some say even twenty,
Were fired that warm June night in Malvern Street,
Three taigs lay on the ground, and a fourth was wisely bound,
From a fate the others thought they’d never meet.
Anon, Ambush (1966)
Conway Bar, West Belfast, Evening, 27 May 1966
‘I am going to get it tonight. I’m going to get a hiding,’ said the heavyset man sat at the bar. John Patrick Scullion, a twenty-eight-year-old labourer from Oranmore Street in Belfast, was out for a few drinks on a Friday evening after work. He was employed at the textile machine manufacturers James Mackie and Sons on the Springfield Road. It was said of Scullion that he was a man of intemperate habits. Described by his workmates as a ‘good comrade’, he was a popular figure on the factory floor. A large man of eighteen stone, Scullion had earlier dressed in a smart dark suit, white shirt and sensible tie when he decided to pay a visit to his local bar near the bottom of the Springfield Road. As he sank pint after pint of Double X Guinness, Scullion would become increasingly distraught. The landlord of the pub, Frank Kelly, knew Scullion well, and was keenly aware that he could be prone to bouts of paranoid delusion the more alcohol he drank. Kelly later recalled how Scullion would frequently talk about how he expected to die before his thirtieth birthday.
As Kelly called last orders at the bar, Scullion rose from the stool he had been perched on for much of the evening, staggered across to the toilets to relieve himself, before leaving for the home he shared with his aunt Alice. Minutes later, he was spotted by eyewitnesses stumbling in a southerly direction, down the Springfield Road, then hanging a left along an entry near the junction of Falls Road and Clonard Street.
As Scullion made his way onto Clonard Street, he burst into song, drawing the attention of a small number of people still out and about. It wasn’t long before he tripped and fell over. Watching him hit the road with a hefty thump, four local men rushed over to help him up. A local police officer on the beat also caught a glimpse of Scullion as he fell. He had even contemplated arresting him on the charge of being drunk and disorderly, though resisted the temptation and, reassuring himself that Scullion would continue on his way, let the matter drop. A few moments later Scullion turned from Clonard Street onto Oranmore Street, where he was spotted by two young girls. It was 11:30 p.m. when the girls registered the drunk man shuffling across the street. Seconds later, they heard two loud bangs pierce the still, night air. One of the girls thought it was the sound of gunfire, while the other believed it was a car backfiring in the direction of Oranmore Street. As they ventured along the pavement, a car came racing out of Oranmore Street, before turning left into Clonard Gardens and then right into Waterville Street, a few yards from Bombay Street. The vehicle accelerated onto Cupar Way and slipped away into the heart of the Shankill. Moments later, it vanished. As the car passed the girls, they recalled how the occupants stared straight at them, their faces those of strangers. Inside the vehicle were several young men, one of whom had blonde hair.
Oblivious to the injuries he had sustained by the gunshots, John Scullion continued on home. As he reached the front door, he paused for a moment while he fumbled in his pockets for his keys. After finding the right key, he thrust it into the lock. He staggered into the hall and slammed the door behind him. A few minutes later he slouched into an armchair in the living room noisily exhaling breath as he did so. His aunt, who had been asleep upstairs, woke to the sounds of her nephew’s groans. Just as Alice Scullion came to her bedroom door, she was met by John who had forced himself upstairs, before collapsing at her feet. ‘When he left me after tea, John was in good form’, she later said. ‘He was not injured in any way.’ Realising her nephew had indeed been injured in some way, she promptly telephoned an ambulance and John was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital, a short distance from his home. Two weeks later John Patrick Scullion died from the wounds he received that night; wounds which doctors mistakenly attributed to him having been stabbed in an altercation. The reality had been much more serious. John Scullion had been deliberately shot by an organisation calling itself the UVF.
It would not be long before the UVF was stalking the streets again. On Sunday, 5 June 1966, James Doherty, a middle-aged lorry driver, was sleeping at home in Abbotts Drive when his son-in-law John McChrystal called, to see him about an incident that had happened just before dawn. When both men arrived to McChrystal’s home at Innis Avenue in Rathcoole estate, they found that the living room window had been shattered by what appeared to be a gunshot. As the bullet entered his home, it narrowly missed McChrystal’s head, striking the wall above the settee where he was resting.1 McChrystal was a machinist at a local industrial plant who, some loyalists alleged, had expressed republican sympathies.2
***
Most UVF members in 1966 were working men in their late teens, 20s and 30s. Only a tiny number, like Hugh McClean, were older. They were typically recruited on the basis of their reputations as hard men. Some were singled out for their service history. The added bonus of having experienced military men in the ranks, Spence believed, meant that they could handle themselves and handle weapons, if armed conflict with republicans ever broke out. The reality was that few of them had ever fired a shot in anger. As a consequence, it was usually personal grievances, mixed with hefty doses of alcohol, which played a key role in their decision to target specific individuals. In many cases, it gave them much-needed ‘Dutch courage’ to pull the trigger on fellow human beings.3 The fact that the gunman who pulled the trigger in the drive-by shooting of John Scullion aimed low at his target is evidence of the difficulty most UVF men at this time had in killing, and probably explains why the vast majority of attacks were on property, not people. This single factor would prove crucial for RUC detectives investigating subsequent UVF attacks.
Despite Spence and several others having been sworn in by high-powered faceless men, instructions from the top of the chain of command appeared to be in short supply. Essentially, the new UVF became self-tasking insofar as Spence acted as the officer in command, who selected targets and authorised action against those suspected of being ‘republicans’ or holding ‘republican sympathies’. In most cases, Spence and the Shankill UVF were manufacturing these enemies out of their own paranoia, which made them see an IRA man under every bed. The reality of the situation was somewhat different, but it did not deter the UVF from declaring war on the IRA and its enemies on 21 May 1966. They were ‘heavily armed Protestants dedicated to this cause’ read the statement they released to the press.4
In order to give the organisation a semblance of military bearing, Spence revised the oath he had taken at Pomeroy. New recruits were now to give an undertaking that they would never ‘betray a comrade or give any information to whomsoever which could prove detrimental to my Cause’. Furthermore, they had to pledge: ‘if I fail in my obligations I shall truly deserve the just deserts befalling me’.5 For Spence, the UVF was a ‘very secretive’ organisation; everything was ‘on a kind of need-to-know basis’.6 Harry Johnston, a twenty-six-year-old electrician’s mate from Argyll Street on the Shankill, recalled the circumstances leading to his own swearing-in ceremony at the time:
I joined the Ulster Volunteer Force. It was in the Standard Bar on the Shankill Road. Gusty Spence asked me to join on Monday, 13 June, and he informed me that he was a member. Spence asked me to join in the presence of Harry Millar and Sammy Robinson. Spence told me that this was an organisation to protect Ulster and Protestants. I agreed to join and, by arrangement, I went to a meeting of the Ulster Volunteer Force in an
