the Protestant working class. The suspicions many of them harboured of British politicians brokering secret deals with the IRA became rife. Craig’s words of warning gained further traction when the Heath government prorogued the Stormont Parliament on 24 March 1972. ‘The Shankill Road and Sandy Row, probably the strongest loyalist areas, have remained outwardly calm’, reported Times journalist Robert Fisk, ‘but plans have been made for a campaign of civil disobedience similar to that by the civil rights movement.’32 Even moderate Protestants seethed with anger. Loyalist paramilitary groups mobilised their members to take part in a planned two-day strike.
The biggest and most powerful of the loyalist groups that had attended Craig’s Ormeau rally was the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Originally established in the Woodvale area of West Belfast, likeminded vigilantes soon formed larger associations in East Belfast, East Antrim and Londonderry. By January 1972, the UDA had come together under the control of a thirteen-member ‘Security Council’, with Charles Harding-Smith, Tommy Herron and Jim Anderson taking up leading positions. The UDA was first and foremost a mass movement, ‘democratic to a degree, recognising merit in men’s abilities to fight, or organise or commit offences for which they could expect long terms of imprisonment’.33 Like the UVF, the UDA’s membership was fiercely working-class, but its paramilitary activities were initially limited in the sense that it orientated principally around defence and street disturbances.34 As the organisation grew in size, it began to structure itself along British Army lines – into platoons, companies and, eventually, brigades. UDA leaders were usually elected on the basis of tough reputations as hard men in local areas, others if they had prior military training. In Rathcoole, the South East Antrim’s power base, leaders were elected by free vote.35
The UDA opposed any constitutional weakening of Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom, and initially led opposition to attempts to undermine the Stormont government.36 Like it had done on 20 March, the UDA led its men to another huge Vanguard rally outside Belfast City Hall on 27 March, attended by around 10,000 people. Craig denounced as ‘traitors’ anyone who willingly sided with the British government’s policy of suspending the local Parliament. In perhaps the most visible sign of a rightward shift towards talk of independence for Ulster, a young man scaled the front façade of the City Hall and tore down the Union Jack that fluttered in the breeze, unmolested, all year round. A few moments later he raised the red, white and gold Ulster Flag emblazoned with a red hand in its centre. The crowd roared with approval.37
Despite the fiery rhetoric of a handful of unionist politicians, the Security Forces had little, if any, intelligence to suggest that this Protestant disaffection would translate into a much more concerted armed campaign. However, the army did believe that there was ‘increasing evidence that extreme Protestant organisations are trying to procure arms, but no evidence so far that any large quantity has been successfully delivered’. Security Forces commanders were of the view that Protestant resentment would manifest itself in ‘more low level, largely uncoordinated incidents of a sectarian nature’.38 By spring, military commanders were looking eagerly to moderate politicians and a nascent peace movement to take the ‘sting out of the tail’ of the violence before it worsened any further. Until such times as such violence dissipated, soldiers would remain locked in intense gun battles with the IRA in Belfast, Derry and elsewhere.
While the IRA remained active in terms of shooting incidents, it struggled to perfect its bomb-making capability. The Abercorn Restaurant bomb attack on 4 March 1972, which killed two young women and injured 130 others, was the high point of its bombing campaign. In seeking to complement the sniping activity of its volunteers, it sought to school more of its members in the deadly ingenuity of constructing home-made devices, colloquially known as ‘Co-Op mix’, because of how easily accessible the ingredients were in local shops. But it came with a heavy price. The IRA lost four members in a premature bomb blast in the Clonard area of West Belfast in early March, three members in Bawnmore, North Belfast, a few weeks later and another eight members in Short Strand, East Belfast, at the end of May. Some of those killed were Catholic civilians, who had merely been at home relaxing, as the bombers tinkered with their explosives in so-called ‘safe houses’. Nevertheless, the IRA’s strategy of targeting army mobile and foot patrols soon paid off when, in June 1972, the group killed sixteen soldiers over a four-week period.
By July 1972, the armed conflict had taken on a deadlier form in Belfast, as loyalists and republicans carried out a sectarian tit-for-tat murder spree across the north and west of the city. Civilians were the principal casualties in this mini-war of attrition. The UDA abducted, beat and shot two men at the beginning of the month. The next day the Provisional IRA killed two Protestants who had mistakenly crossed into a Catholic area after a night out in the same way. The UDA were quick to retaliate by abducting and killing two Catholics the same day. On 3 July, the UVF abducted, beat and shot John Patrick O’Hanlon. Police discovered his body with a hood over his head and his hands and ankles tied with a bootlace, which was a ritual performed by terror gangs on both sides before they shot their victims at point-blank range in the head. O’Hanlon lived in the lower Crumlin Road area, and had gone out late at night to buy chips from a local cafe. Seven months earlier, John O’Hanlon was one of those who scrambled to help victims of the UVF bombing of McGurk’s bar. He had even pulled the owner’s son, John McGurk, from the rubble, thereby saving his life.39 It was one of many dark twists of fate in the close-knit killing grounds of the troubles.
A few days later the Provos abducted and killed a Protestant, David Andrews, in North Belfast. In the south of the city they kidnapped another Protestant civilian, who did manage to escape before being killed, and they also murdered a UDA member who strayed into a Catholic area. On 9 July, the Provisionals abducted and shot three friends on a night out, one of whom, a Catholic, was serving as a Staff Sergeant in the Territorial Army. In retaliation, the UDA murdered two Catholics on 11 July, one of whom was a fourteen-year-old boy. IRA members responded by abducting a Protestant civilian, torturing him and shooting him in the head at point-blank range. He was found with a pillowcase over his head. In the remaining days of the month, the UDA abducted and killed Catholic civilians on five other occasions. All the victims were killed in the same way. At the end of the month, a fifty-seven-year-old Protestant lorry driver, William McAfee, was also abducted, probably by the same gang. He had his hands tied with cord, a hood placed over him and had been shot twice in the back of the head. It was believed that the UDA had mistaken him for a Catholic.40
According to the logic of local circumstances, the violence pulsated uncontrollably despite British government attempts to take the sting out of the IRA’s tail by suspending unionist rule at Stormont. Worse was to follow.
4
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
‘Anarchy will not defeat anarchy. Lawlessness will not defeat lawlessness. The only way in which this movement can be put down is by the Forces of the Crown, who must be supported by all law-abiding citizens in the duty that lies before them.’
Ian Paisley, speaking at Westminster on 24 July 1972.1
Oxford Street Bus Station, Belfast City Centre, 2:45 p.m., Friday, 21 July 1972
The depot manager of Oxford Street bus station heard the crash and thud of the bombs as he sat in his office. One explosion nearby shook the building and sent shards of glass flying inside. ‘Due to the bomb on the bridge going off some of my staff in the general office were in hysterics, so I calmed them down and then left the office to see if there was any more damage to the offices,’ he later recalled. It was about then that his telephone started ringing. ‘A caller from the Ulsterbus head office rang the Oxford Street bus station general office saying that a bomb had been left in a car outside the station.’ Two soldiers came in and asked if he could identify the car. A few minutes later the depot manager took the soldiers outside to a Morris 1100 car. Curiously, he noticed that it had one of the company’s official passes on it, a sign perhaps of how well-organised the attacks were that day. Just as the depot manager put his hand on the vehicle,
