present were Augustus Spence, Rocky Burns, Eddie McCullough, William Johnston [unreadable] and a man called ‘Bertie’ from about Berlin Street. McCullough, William Johnston, Bertie and myself were sworn in by Spence, and we took an oath to protect Ulster and Protestants against the IRA and Cumann na hBan. The object of the Ulster Volunteer Force was to keep the IRA in their place and they were classed as our enemies.7
To reinforce the seriousness of the oath they were taking, Spence slapped each of the recruits on the face and pinched their thumbs. ‘You will have to sign this oath in your own blood,’ he barked at them. 5/- was the weekly subscription, or ‘dues’, which members were forced to pay, and would be used to buy arms. In all, the initiation lasted for an hour and a half, and included a general talk about the organisation and its aims. The group next met in the Standard Bar a few days later on Saturday 18 June. ‘We talked in general and the affairs of the UVF were not discussed,’ Johnston said. The UVF would also meet regularly in the Standard Bar every Thursday night. Spence told the manager that they were forming a social club to send money to loyalists in Glasgow. All the men would then socialise together until closing time.
Those men who formed the nucleus of the Shankill Road UVF at the time were also office bearers and members of the Orange Order’s Prince Albert Lodge, which sat in the Whiterock area. The Orange Order remained strong in places like the Shankill. Lodge meetings were an occasion to meet like-minded people.8 One of those men who spent time in the company of Spence and the others was twenty-six-year-old Hughie Smyth.
Smyth grew up in a working-class home on the Shankill Road. His father, Jimmy, worked in McGladdery’s and Parkview, two brickworks in West Belfast. Like most working-class men who worked as labourers, his shifts were long. For twelve hours a day, five days a week and then seven hours on a Saturday, Jimmy worked tirelessly to put food on the table for his family. When work was scarce, the local pawn shop became a regular haunt. A life-long supporter of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), Jimmy drilled into his family a sense of pride in work. His favourite motto was ‘In order to better ourselves we must rise ourselves.’ At elections, Jimmy Smyth would often comment that all a politician needed to do to get elected on the Shankill was to ‘traipse a donkey in a union jack up the Road and people would vote for it’. There was some truth to this well-worn adage. Unionist Party politicians in the area had been regularly re-elected without much opposition, save from the occasional breakthrough coming from Independent Unionists or NILP politicians.
Jimmy Smyth would frequently express his frustration at what he believed was an unfair system, which made all working-class unionists third-class citizens. It was a view of politics that would greatly influence his son, Hugh, a committed Christian who would go on to become a respected Sunday School teacher in the neighbouring Mayo Street Mission Hall. Hugh carried his strong, faith-based beliefs into the Orange Order and Royal Black Preceptory, where he met several men who were to become the UVF’s leading lights, including Gusty Spence, Dessie Balmer Snr, Norman Sayers, Harry Stockman Snr and Jim McDonald. Stockman and McDonald were also members of the NILP. In joining the UVF, these men found an avenue by which to hit back at the establishment, ‘as well as the IRA threat’.9
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Belfast City Centre, Daytime, 16 June 1966
A medieval crescendo of flute band music carried far and wide along the Shankill Road as Ian Paisley headed a large parade, which was steadily making its way to the Ulster Hall in Belfast city centre. Heading up the Shankill Road from the Peter’s Hill direction was Willie Blakely, who was accompanied by twenty-one-year-old Leslie Porter, a dumper driver from Beltoy Road in Kilroot. Porter had expressed keen interest in joining the UVF in the days leading up to the parade, and was anxious to become involved in their activities. Blakely and Porter had arranged to meet Gusty Spence in the Standard Bar on the Shankill. They were told to come armed, and so brought with them an automatic handgun and a Smith and Wesson revolver. Not long after they had arrived at the bar, Spence summoned Blakely and Porter to the toilets to examine Porter’s gun. After clearing it by ejecting the magazine, Spence handed the weapon back and left the bar to join the parade. The two East Antrim men remained in the bar and carried on drinking as the bands marched past.
As the final columns of the parade disappeared down the Shankill, Blakely and Porter joined the last of the marchers as they made their way towards the city centre. There they met Geordie Bigger, who was intoxicated. He became giddy with excitement at the prospect of handling Porter’s revolver. The East Antrim man became somewhat uneasy by the prospect of having to produce the pistol in broad daylight and, at first, refused. Bigger continued to badger him until Porter gave in and invited him over to a dark corner, where the gun was produced. Bigger promptly snatched it from him, unclipped the chamber and loaded three bullets into it. ‘I’m getting off side,’ Porter told both men. Blakely asked Porter to carry his automatic in his holster, which he did. The three men then headed to a pub on May Street, passing on the opportunity to attend the Paisley speech. Once the rally had finished and men began to disperse from the hall, the three UVF men left the pub and joined with others from their unit on the march back up the Shankill Road.
‘On the way up there was five of us; that was myself, Reid, McClean, Porter and Blakely,’ Bigger said later in a confusing recollection of the events of that day. ‘We got up the Shankill allright [sic]. We broke off at Crimea Street and I got the gun off Porter. I know Porter had a gun but I can’t remember what way the talk about it came round.’ It seemed that the men had hastily hatched a plan to attack premises in Crimea Street that, they alleged, ‘was doing business with tinkers and the like’. Bigger now had Blakely’s automatic handgun, or, ‘at least I was told afterwards by Dezzy [sic] Reid that was what it was’. Once they got to the ‘wee electrical shop’ Bigger fired one shot at the rear door and, he claimed, Blakely then fired two shots. ‘The gun Blakely had was a small one. I kept my gun and after the next morning I took it down to Des Reid at his home. What he did with it I do not know. After we fired the shots I went up Meenan Street. I ran. I don’t know what way Blakely ran ...’10
A couple of days later, with this initiation ritual over, McClean informed Porter that he had been accepted as a member of Shankill UVF, and that both men were to be officially sworn in. Porter said that the ceremony had taken place in a house on the Shankill. Also in attendance was McClean, Spence, Frank Curry and his wife Cassie, who was Spence’s sister, and one other man. ‘Robinson, Reid, Blakely and myself were then brought into the back kitchen,’ Porter recalled. ‘I was there, together with Blakely, Reid and McClean, [and we were] sworn in as members of the Ulster Volunteer Force. This was done by Spence. After this, Spence produced my 45 Smith and Wesson revolver and asked me if he could hold on to it. I told him that he could keep it. He then asked me if he could keep the revolver, and I said that he could. That was the last I seen of it.’11
A few days later, on 20 June, Alexander McClean, a young joiner from Carrick, was at home watching television with his daughter. The curtains and blinds were open, though the living room was in darkness. Only the flickering of the light from the TV could be seen outside. McClean was startled by a loud bang before seeing the whole front room window of his house come flying into the room. He panicked, jumped up and ran outside onto the street to see what had caused the window to shatter. The streets were empty. He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.12 In the shadows, though, someone, somewhere bore a grudge for something. McClean went back inside and began to clear the glass. He heeded the warning. The UVF in East Antrim had carried out its first attack. They were gearing up for many more.
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Watson’s Bar, Malvern Street, Shankill, 2 a.m., 26 June 1966
The noise of the crash and whistle of the bands echoed around the streets of West Belfast as Orangemen made their way from the Shankill Road, along Workman Avenue and onto the Springfield Road. The annual Whiterock parade would later become one of the most contentious in Northern Ireland, but in 1966 it would pass by predominantly Catholic houses without so much as a murmur from the residents. Later that evening
