of a standard loyalist operation, and required no assistance’.16 In line with the UVF’s own explanation for the attacks, it was believed by the Irish government that the farm used by the UVF members who carried out the attacks was central to the planning and preparation of the bombs. ‘It is also likely that members of the UDR and RUC either participated in, or were aware of those preparations,’ read the report.17 Yet, despite the close involvement of some Security Forces personnel who moonlighted as terrorists, the inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings concluded:
Ultimately, a finding that there was collusion between the perpetrators and the authorities in Northern Ireland is a matter of inference. On some occasions an inference is irresistible or can be drawn as a matter of probability. Here, it is the view of the inquiry that this inference is not sufficiently strong. It does not follow even as a matter of probability. Unless further information comes to hand, such involvement must remain a suspicion. It is not proven.18
The carnage unleashed by the UVF on unsuspecting shoppers in Dublin and revellers in Monaghan was not the first time, nor the last, that the group would turn its sights south of the border. Reflecting on the rationale for sending the carnage to the Irish Republic, one Brigade Staff officer at the time observed how, people in the south were ‘being very blasé about their attitude towards republicans – they weren’t getting extradited, they weren’t being actively pursued into the Republic, we saw it as they were getting a free hand to do what they wanted … And well, we just wanted to let them know what it feels like. That was it.’19
The Dublin and Monaghan bombings were the tip of the iceberg as far as UVF attacks were concerned. The vast majority of the devices were well-constructed, expertly transported and planted, and in a considerable number of cases they demonstrated advanced bomb-making skills. The UVF certainly had such men in its ranks, with a few of them having seen action in Britain’s post-war conflicts, such as Palestine, Korea, Malaya, Cyprus and Aden.20 Some of these men had been NCOs in the British Armed Forces, and were extremely adept at leading men on operations, handling explosives and other weapons of war. Like those in the Provisional IRA at the time, one or two of these UVF men had even demonstrated a deadly ingenuity by turning under-the-counter products – the so-called ‘Co-Op mix’ – into what we would today call Improvised Explosive Devices. Organisationally, of course, the UVF had been involved in constructing bombs from as early as 1966. By 1974 they had perfected their bomb-making techniques. Although the Provisionals had also made great strides in their own bomb-making prowess, they hadn’t the same kind of pedigree of well-trained volunteers in their ranks that the UVF could call upon. It was little wonder that the UVF could explode more bombs than their IRA rivals in 1971 and unleash a wave of death and destruction on Irish streets, north and south of the border.21 Until the mid-1970s, the UVF preferred to take most of its recruits from the ranks of disgruntled ex-servicemen. This cadre of individuals not only possessed intimate knowledge of weapons and explosives, but were also adept at passing that knowledge on by way of training and advising others.
Another way in which the UVF acquired such military experience was by infiltrating the ranks of the British Army. One such individual was Geordie, a young volunteer who hailed from the Oldpark Road area of North Belfast. He said that in the early 1970s, ‘there was no formal training’ for UVF members. In order to acquire such skills and drills, he claimed he was ordered to infiltrate the Territorial Army (TA) by ‘Big Sam’ McCorkindale, the UVF’s commander in West Belfast. ‘Big Sam’ certainly had prior military experience, having served in the ranks of the British Army. Geordie alleges that, as a result of his infiltration, he spent hours cleaning weapons in military armouries. ‘We cleaned millions of them; from SLRs to Sterling sub-machine guns to GPMGs,’ he said. He also claimed that, in one incident in the 1970s, he and several other UVF men tried to smuggle guns into the province. In one run, the men were able to conceal a cache of weapons inside their military vehicles, which were then returned to Belfast after a weekend exercise. Searches by the Royal Military Police turned up hundreds of stolen weapons hidden in the side-panelling of huge water tankers.22
The UVF’s infiltration of British military ranks also extended to the newly formed UDR, the British Army’s largest infantry regiment, which was based permanently in Northern Ireland.23 Many of these men led ‘double lives’. Geordie remembers how, at one UVF meeting in the early to mid-1970s, almost all the men present held dual membership of the UVF and British Army. Two were UDR Sergeants, one was a UDR Corporal, and two other men were in the TA. It was then that the army moved swiftly to eradicate dual membership – leaving these men on borrowed time. Billy Mitchell, a leading member of UVF Brigade Staff at the time, justified such infiltration on the following basis. ‘It is part and parcel of human nature. Anyone who believes that it did not happen, or that it should not have happened, is naïve in the extreme,’ he later wrote. ‘There are a number of valid reasons why loyalists would want to join elements of the local Security Forces – intelligence gathering and military training being among them.’24
Up until its de-proscription a few weeks before the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the UVF had been a highly secretive organisation, which people were only invited to join. It vetted its members rigorously and styled itself as a ‘counter-terrorist force’, established to oppose ‘violent nationalism’. In an early issue of Combat magazine, the UVF said its objectives were to:
(a)Watch over, promote and protect the Protestant liberties, culture and traditional way of life of the Ulster people.
(b)Work for the physical defence of the loyalist community in the face of armed aggression and terrorist activity.
(c)Train, equip and discipline a dedicated body of Ulster patriots capable of implementing (a) and (b) above.25
The UVF claimed that the vast majority of decisions it took were ‘of a military nature’, directed towards ‘producing an efficient military reaction against the terrorist programme of the Provisional Republican Alliance and its various political and cultural front organisations’. Billy Mitchell went on to elaborate:
Primarily the UVF saw itself as a military machine. The term which fits although wasn’t used at this time was ‘defensive retaliation’ but very often it was ‘get your retaliation in first’, [such as] defence of working-class areas, retaliation for republican activities. UVF Brigade Staff at that time employed this twin track approach. It was never going to follow the Stickies and go for politics alone. It was always going to be both approaches. It was useful to engage with the NIO. It was useful to engage with political parties, useful to try and get people elected, as they did with Hugh Smyth and in Carrick with Hugh Burton. [However], the main campaign was a military one.26
The UVF argued that this policy was ‘legitimate, essential and rewarding’, making the organisation ‘a force to be reckoned with by our enemies’.27
Such familiarity with weapons and explosives gave the UVF a greater killing potential, but it came at a price. Geordie recalled attending a UVF training session in the Shankill, where he and other volunteers were invited to pack tubes full of explosives and attach a fuse. The bombs were crude and volatile, with volunteers nicknaming them ‘candy sticks’. ‘They were very unstable,’ Geordie revealed. ‘The place looked like Switzerland, as the fertilizer was stacked high in the warehouse.’ So blissfully unaware were some of the men to the dangers of handling explosives that he remembers seeing ‘one guy coming to the door of the warehouse with a fag in his mouth’. The amateurish nature of the operation meant that volunteers were sometimes killed by their own bombs.28
What made it difficult for the UVF to maintain a high tempo of operations at this time was that the vast majority of its members began their terrorist career in their spare time. Some men worked as office clerks, others as painters and decorators, engineers and even carpenters. Geordie worked as an office clerk by day and acted as a ‘wheel man’ for the UVF by night, which involved stealing cars for UVF operations. His platoon commander then was a young John Bingham, who would later rise to become the UVF’s military commander in West Belfast.
