in 1977–8. He served for forty-one years on Belfast City Council. He became the city’s Deputy Lord Mayor in 1983 and 1993, and was eventually appointed Lord Mayor in 1994–5. Awarded an OBE for his services to the community in 1996, he died in 2014.
Gusty Spence Born in 1933, Spence joined the Royal Ulster Rifles in the mid-1950s, seeing action in Cyprus during the EOKA Emergency. He was sworn into the UVF in 1965 and led its Shankill unit until his arrest in 1966. He escaped briefly in 1972 and went on the run, helping to restructure the organisation. He was released from prison in 1984, becoming involved with the PUP until his retirement from politics in the late 1990s. He died in September 2011.
‘The Pipe’ Born sometime in the 1940s, he is believed to have joined the UVF in the late 1960s. By the 1970s he is thought to have risen to the position of UVF military commander, subsequently taking over as the group’s Chief of Staff sometime in the mid-1970s. An articulate and tough individual, he has been a key architect of the UVF’s long transition from war to peace.
Rab Warnock Born in 1948, Warnock joined the UVF in the 1970s and was imprisoned in Long Kesh in the middle of that decade. A tough and streetwise individual, he was the Officer Commanding of Compound 19 in Long Kesh. Sometime after his release from prison, he rose up the ranks to become the overall commander of the East Antrim and North Belfast UVF. He died in December 2012.
Billy Wright Born in 1960, Wright joined the Mid Ulster UVF in 1975 and was imprisoned for terrorist-related offences in 1977. After his release in the early 1980s, he underwent a brief conversion to Christianity. By the late 1980s he had risen to prominence to assume overall command of the Mid Ulster UVF when its long-serving commander, Robin Jackson, stepped down. Wright was assassinated by the INLA in the Maze Prison in December 1997.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This has been the most challenging book I have ever written. It has had a long gestation, stretching back over three decades to when I first became aware that I was growing up in an environment that was, by all accounts, deeply unusual. I was born in Belfast in 1980 and grew up in the predominantly working-class areas of Rathcoole and Carnmoney in Newtownabbey on the outskirts of North Belfast. It is a part of Northern Ireland that acts as an intersection between the sprawling urban streets of the region’s capital, Belfast, and the vast undulating rural Glens of Antrim. It is also somewhere deeply intertwined with the history of the modern Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). In the 1960s, UVF units based in Carrickfergus, Glengormley and Rathcoole carried out a series of sectarian attacks in conjunction with another UVF unit on the Shankill. This form of militant loyalism soon spread throughout the province. As it grew, the organisation became more centralised and structured along British Army lines across five ‘brigade’ areas: Belfast, East Antrim, Mid Ulster, North Antrim, and Londonderry and North West Ulster. Each of these areas was sub-divided into ‘battalions’, ‘companies’ and ‘platoons’, though in reality each of these sub-units was split into welfare ‘teams’ and military ‘teams’.
At the time of writing, most of those structures are still in place and, despite the hard work of some genuinely progressive people, show little sign of withering away on their own. In fact, the most recent evidence suggests that a ‘Praetorian Guard’ has been formed to maintain the old adage of a ‘pike in the thatch’. One only hopes that the record provided in this book will highlight the wrong turns taken by loyalists in the past, before more young people ruin their lives by travelling the futile road of paramilitary violence.
Several people have made the process of researching and writing much easier than expected. The person who originally suggested that I write the book was the former UVF Brigade Staff officer turned PUP strategist Billy Mitchell. At a meeting in Monkstown in October 2005 he asked me: ‘When are you going to write the history of the UVF?’ He paused for a moment, grinned, then continued: ‘Cos you’ll have to do it before these guys [indicating the group’s senior leadership] and others, like me, pass on.’ I told Billy then that I would undertake the project. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but it needs to be told warts and all.’ I hope that this book has fulfilled the objective which Billy first handed down to me, as difficult and dangerous as it has been for me to do so. The story I narrate will not please everyone, but hopefully it has prized open a pitch-black past and exposed it to a little more light than heat.
Billy was a close friend and mentor as I worked with him and others to try and bring the UVF, in his memorable phrase, ‘out of the jungle’, and along the path of conflict transformation, from war to peace. Without his support and advice between 2001 and his tragic death in July 2006, I would not have had the confidence to assist in this ambitious project. From the moment I first encountered Billy when he gave an oration at Derry Hill in Rathcoole in November 2000, until a few weeks before his death when I sat in his company with community representatives, leading UVF members and a handful of ‘critical friends’ to address the legacy of the violent conflict, I knew Billy was a sincere individual who wanted to right the wrongs he and others had committed in the past. It was said of Billy by his friend Liam Maskey that not only did he ‘walk the walk’ but that he demanded others ‘walk with him’. I always found that to be true.
Ben Forde, the policeman who began a dialogue with Billy and other former paramilitaries in the 1980s, told me that he believed strongly that ‘God had a plan’ and that he ‘used me and Billy – and now you – to bring this message to the world’. While I would not claim the same reserve of spiritual faith that these two gentlemen drew upon in truly dark times, I would like to think that everything happens for a reason. With that in mind, I would like to acknowledge Ben’s assistance in accessing his collection of correspondence with Billy, which shed new light on our mutual friend’s prison experience. In the years that I knew him, the 1980s always seemed like something of a ‘black box’ as far as Billy Mitchell was concerned. He rarely talked about it. Therefore, it was imperative that I spoke to those who knew Billy well in those years. I spoke to Ian Major and Kenny McClinton at length about their interactions with Billy in the 1980s and 1990s. Without their perspectives, I would have been unable to offer a more rounded picture of Billy’s intellectual development from conflict to peace.
For obvious legal and security reasons, I cannot name the numerous individuals who assisted me with my research. However, it is unlikely that this book could ever have been written in such detail without their help. As with my other research and writing in the past, the ability to undertake this kind of work in an honest way would not have been possible without the trust placed in me by many loyalists, including those belonging to the UVF, at all levels. I would like to acknowledge the cooperation of the UVF leadership who responded to my questions over the years. I only hope that I have represented their views fairly.
Writers and researchers around the world have always relied upon individuals who are prepared to assist them by going the extra mile and putting themselves at considerable risk. This book was no different. Apart from the assistance afforded by the late Billy Mitchell in the last years of his life, I benefited enormously from the assistance of ‘Matthew’. Without his help, this book would not have been possible. I would like to pay tribute to the risks he has taken to ensure I gained a balanced insight into the UVF.
Someone I can publicly acknowledge for the trust he placed in me is the leader of the PUP, Billy Hutchinson, who has given me incredible insights into progressive loyalism over the sixteen years I have known him. Billy’s encouragement during some very difficult periods in the research prevented me from throwing in the towel. Similarly, my friend Dawn Purvis recalled her extensive work alongside David Ervine and gave me an unparalleled glimpse into the PUP’s relationship with the UVF. Tom Roberts at EPIC had also been helpful and supportive. None of these people bears any responsibility for my analysis.
Other individuals who opened doors and sat with me for hours as I wrote, spoke and interviewed people since 2001 include Gusty Spence, Jim McDonald, Billy McCaughey, Billy Greer, Bobby Gourley, David Ervine and Hugh Smyth, all of whom are no longer with us. I am fortunate
