Belfast, observed that for ‘the first time in forty years there was a spirit of compromise in the air. People from the two communities were more prepared than ever to live together in harmony, and the old shibboleths that had for so long been sources of division were being closely questioned.’3 There was nothing inevitable about the outbreak of the troubles and, with the exception of a residual amount of loyalist and republican militancy, all signs pointed towards a relatively settled population. Even those who came from areas that would later become staunchly republican, like West Belfast, acknowledged how, in the 1960s, they were ‘conditioned towards accepting Northern Ireland and playing a part in it, rather than towards resisting it or begrudging it’.4
With the escalation of intercommunal tensions in 1969, people began to pull apart more noticeably. In the inner-city slums of Belfast, residential segregation gave birth to a patchwork quilt of sharp sectarian division between Catholics and Protestants. Street corners suddenly demarcated rigid psychological and territorial boundaries, as communities intersected along increasingly fraught tribal lines. Housing estates became the exclusive preserve of one side, or the other. Built in the 1950s, Rathcoole, on the outskirts of North Belfast, grew exponentially as sectarian confrontation escalated. Those Protestants displaced from their homes in Ballymurphy, Suffolk and other areas of Belfast flooded the estate as it became more and more Protestant in religious composition. As a direct consequence, Catholics began to move out into the areas vacated by Protestants in increasing numbers. Some of those individuals forcibly ejected from their childhood homes in Rathcoole, such as Bobby Sands, Freddie Scappaticci and Jim Gibney, left with embittered memories of sectarian intimidation. Like others, who also subsequently joined paramilitary organisations, they would point to their direct experience of intimidation and threats as a principal motivating factor in explaining their drift towards political violence.5
By the early 1970s, the garish pebble-dashed council houses in these new estates on the periphery of Belfast enveloped the tiny red-brick terrace houses of the old city. Both would sit in stark contrast alongside larger, more imposing, bungalows and semi-detached homes of the greater Belfast area. The commanding, undulating glens of Antrim, sat flush against Belfast Lough, where the Irish Sea disappeared into the Lagan River Valley. On the surface, the arteries of trade and industry gave Northern Ireland the appearance of a modern, outward-looking society. To the people who lived in increasingly ghettoised areas though, a different story was emerging, as the air became chokingly thick with the nauseating waft of bigotry and intolerance. It was amidst Belfast’s changing demographics that sectarian violence was reborn.
***
Shankill Road, West Belfast, Evening, 4 December 1971
Christmas decorations began to spring up along the Shankill Road as people prepared for the festive season. There was a chill in the air, but the weather was more wet and windy than wintry. Robert James Campbell, known as Jimmy to his friends, joined the UVF in the summer of 1971. On 4 December, he was summoned to a meeting with his superior officer in a bar off the Shankill Road, where he was told to accompany two other men on an operation and not to return until ‘the job’ was done. Accepting the task without knowing the full picture of what he was about to become involved in, as many other UVF men did at the time, Campbell walked outside and climbed into the back seat of a car. He sat quietly as the driver moved off towards the city centre. After a few moments, he broke the silence by informing his companions that they were ‘going to do a bar in North Queen Street’. The full significance of the task which lay before them had still not sunk in by the time the men reached their intended target, just under a mile from where their journey began.
As they sat in the vehicle alongside the pavement opposite McGurk’s Bar, the men caught a glimpse of the silhouettes of patrons moving around inside the premises. Men and women were busy enjoying themselves. The party was in full swing. Outside, the UVF men watched their prey. Calmly, deliberately, they checked every move, noted every outbreak of laughter, registered the happy revelry going on inside. Allowing the engine to tick over for a few minutes, the driver slowly slipped the car into gear and drove off around the block, before returning to the street, this time pulling up just outside the side door of the bar. One of the men picked up a taped parcel at his feet and climbed out of the car. He walked with purpose across to the bar door, before slipping inside to deposit his device in the narrow hallway. ‘That’s it’, he shouted as he hurriedly returned to the car. The men drove off down a side street and onto York Street. The driver accelerated, not too sharply, for he didn’t want to draw the attention of any passing Army patrols. As the UVF men rounded the corner a huge explosion sent their pulses racing. As calmly as he could, the driver pulled up at the kerbside and turned off the ignition. The doors opened and the men got out, making their way towards Donegal Street, where they were collected by another vehicle and driven the short distance to an Orange Hall on the Shankill.
Campbell was first to appear from the vehicle, walking inside the hall to the small bar where he reported back to the man who had sent him out on the bombing mission only half an hour earlier.6 His commander appeared pleased with the result. The two men enjoyed a drink together before calling it a night.7 Both men rounded off the evening with mixed emotions. In the eyes of the UVF commander, a blow had been struck against the enemy. Campbell was much more sanguine. He took no pleasure from his actions that evening, or on any other. He was later described by Gusty Spence as someone who was ‘non-sectarian, someone who not only worked happily alongside Catholics, but associated with them through his membership of the Grosvenor Homing Pigeon Society’, which was situated off the Falls Road. Campbell had joined the UVF in the aftermath of sectarian rioting in Penrith Street, near Dover Street, on the Shankill.8 A few months later he was participating in the first major armed attack by the UVF. At one time, Campbell had glimpsed the humanity in the faces of his Catholic work colleagues. That empathy now evaporated with every new job he was handed down by his UVF superiors.
***
When the dust settled from the explosion at McGurk’s bar, local people ran to the scene to see if they could help the injured. They were greeted by the horrific cries for help from their friends and neighbours, who had been pulverised in the bomb attack. When it exploded, the device ripped through the two-storey building, causing it to collapse in on itself. Panic spread, as people desperately picked through the rubble to rescue survivors. Body parts peppered the debris, some still smouldering from the intense heat of the explosion. This was a slaughter of innocent people, out for a drink in their local pub. They now lay dead, their bodies mangled by the callous acts of members of another community. It transpired that fifteen people had been killed in the attack, and another thirteen injured.9 Shortly afterwards, a caller to the Belfast newsroom claimed that the ‘Empire Loyalists’ group had carried out the attack. In reality it was the UVF, which, in 1971, killed seventeen people. All but two of their victims died in this single atrocity.
Although RUC and British Army intelligence on Protestant armed groups at this time was limited, they were subsequently able to intern two loyalists for terrorist offences, including the bombing of McGurk’s bar. However, it was the Unionist government’s spread of disinformation about the explosion being the result of an IRA ‘own goal’, which led to a botched handling of the case.10 That bias crept into the follow-up police investigation had even deadlier consequences, for it was the UVF, not the IRA, which had already honed its bomb-making skills at the time, the only loyalist organisation to have this capability.11 Consequently, more death and destruction would follow unchecked.
The warning signs that the Security Forces were ignoring the threat posed by loyalist paramilitaries to civilians were apparent many months earlier. Paddy Devlin, a local Stormont MP, had been handed a secret military intelligence dossier from a constituent, who had picked it up after it was dropped by an army officer in Andersonstown. Devlin found its contents ‘so hair-raising and inaccurate’ that he felt compelled to raise the matter at Stormont. Importantly, Devlin believed that the document exposed the Army’s ‘partiality … for there was little mention of the UVF or any other loyalist paramilitary organisations, even though they accounted for a significant proportion of violence at this time.’12
That
