SAOIRSE32

THE MURDER OF BRIAN STEWART

From Relatives for Justice

Brian Stewart 13 years, Norglen Crescent, Turf Lodge, west Belfast, hit by a plastic bullet near his home on 4 October 1976, fired by members of the British army’s King’s Own Scottish Borders. He died in hospital six days later on 10 October.

Brian was the fifth child in a family with eight children. He attended Holy Trinity Primary School, and Gort Na Mona Secondary School, both in Turf Lodge. Brian’s mother, speaking to Relatives for Justice in the mid 1990s, described her son as the ‘clown of the family.’ She said he loved to climb the mountains that overlooked their home, and on one occasion when he was up on the mountains captured dozens of butterflies and took them to school, where he released them into his classroom to the laughter and joy of classmates. ‘He was the type of child’ she said ‘always messing about, and quick to see the funny side of things.’

Mrs Stewart told the RJF on the day her son was fatally injured he came home from school as usual, watched television for a while and then did his homework. Afterwards he had his tea and then went out to play with his friends at around 6.20pm. Brain she said had only left the house about 10 minutes when a young boy rushed up the pathway of her home shouting for her, and when she came out the boy told her Brain had been hit in the face by a plastic bullet.

A resident who witnessed the fatal shooting described what happened. She said she noticed a military foot-patrol near her home, and one of the soldiers kneeling down beside a parked car with his plastic bullet gun in an aiming position. ‘I thought this was to frighten some children, as I could not see any children, but thought they were about. A soldier who seemed to be in control stood behind the soldier (kneeling beside the car) and pointed; there was a bang and someone squealed. I ran over to the soldiers shouting, You’re suppose to aim at the ground not straight at the head. The soldier, I took to be in charge of the patrol said the children should not throw stones. I can honestly state that I did not see a stone land while I was there, and I was about four yards from the soldier who fired.’

Another resident who witnessed the incident also said there was no stone throwing when the soldier fired his plastic bullet gun, and while there were about ten children in the street, she said they were dotted about the place and not standing in a group. ‘I heard a plastic bullet gun being fired and I saw a young boy falling to the ground. A member of the patrol went up to him and attempted to pull him by the leg down the street. There were a couple of other children around the boy at the time. I feel the soldier who attempted to pull the boy away saw the blood pouring from the boy’s head, realised it was very serious and retreated back to his patrol.’

Other residents living close to the scene went to Brian’s aid, and finding him unconscious carried him to a nearby house where he began to vomit continuously. The plastic bullet had struck him on the temple, leaving a large open wound above his ear.

Immediately following the shooting hundreds of Turf Lodge residents, aware that a child had been shot, flooded onto the streets in and around the scene of the shooting. One resident described the situation; ‘the whole district was out, everybody was angry. All the time plastic bullets were being fired… The soldiers were running backwards into a field as they retreated towards the Fort Monagh Army Base.’ The soldiers were still firing as Brian was being removed from the house to be taken to hospital.

The British army in a statement issued through their press office tried to reverse the sequence of events before the shooting by claiming their soldiers had been attacked by a crowd of 500, and only then did they fire a number of baton rounds ‘to extradite themselves and unfortunately one baton round hit a thirteen-year-old boy.’

In another British military statement issued some days later the commanding officer of the K.O.S.B., stated, ‘the unfortunate boy was a leading stone thrower.’

The family of Brian Stewart and the residents of Turf Lodge totally rejected both British military statements accusing Brian of being a stone thrower and ringleader, and that the child was shot during serious rioting and not before, when the area was peaceful.

Brian Stewart died of severe brain damage in the Royal Victoria Hospital on 10 October.

The Stewart family pointed out that the RUC at first failed to carry out any investigation into the killing of Brian and only initiated one following pressure from a variety of locally based community groups. The RUC investigation took several months and concluded with no prosecutions against any of the soldiers.

An inquest into the killing of Brian Stewart was held in December 1977. None of the soldiers involved in the shooting attended, military representatives, who identified each by a letter of the alphabet, read out their statements.

During the hearing a British army spokesman admitted the soldiers involved did not know the rules regarding the use of the plastic bullet weapon. Another army representative said the boy got hit because the soldier who fired the round was struck on the shoulder by a stone. There was no mention of the allegation made at the time of the shooting that Brian was a stone thrower and ringleader.

All the civilian witnesses present in court gave evidence contrary to the British army version of events that day.

The jury returned an open verdict.

In the years following her son’s death Mrs Stewart became a tireless worker for justice and a prominent member of the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets until her death in 1999. During the interview with the RFJ Mrs Stewart spoke of her efforts over the years to achieve justice, attending countless street protests, silent pickets and conferences. ‘They (the British authorities) offered me £800, but it wasn’t the money I wanted. They could have offered me a million pounds and I wouldn’t have taken it. I just wanted justice.’

No British soldiers were ever charged in connection with the killing of Brian Stewart.

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EYEWITNESS STATEMENTS TO THE KILLING OF BRIAN STEWART

Originally posted at the IRBB by Ailín October 2003

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Click on the thumbnail for full view of mural photo by CRAZYFENIAN

The following article is a sampling of some of the statements of area residents and witnesses in the killing of Brian Stewart (age 13) outside of his home by the British Army regiment known as the King’s Own Scottish Borderers at Turf Lodge (housing complex), Belfast in October 1976. The Nationalist people of Northern Ireland now refer to this regiment as the King’s Own Scottish Murderers.

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY DOBBIN
56 Norglen Crescent (Housewife).

On Monday 4th October, 1976 at 6:15 pm I called over to Mrs. Stewart’s house. Brian aged 13 years was sitting in the living room with his sister. She was helping him with his homework. Just at 6:20 pm Brian went off to the bathroom, first calling into the working kitchen to his mother. When he came out of the bathroom, someone had called at the door. I left Mrs. Stewart’s directly after, at around 6:30 pm. I was back into my own living room, had lifted my dinner and was on my way back into the living room when Mrs. Stewart came running in. It was only 6:35 because the music of Crossroads had just come on. She said Brian had been hit in the face with a bullet. She was hysterical and crying. I put her into the living room and said I would go and see how Brian was and get the details. I got into the street and everyone said the boy had been taken to Mrs. Mulvenna’s house. I went there. He was in a pretty bad way. He was unconscious and vomiting badly. The house was full. While I was there Mrs. Mulvenna phoned a second time for the ambulance. It came shortly afterwards. I accompanied him to the hospital. His sister had meantime joined me in the ambulance. We arrived at the R.V.H. (Royal Victoria Hospital) and went to reception and gave Brian’s particulars to them. Brian meantime had been moved into the ambulance room. We waited for quite a while. The nurse came out and told me that Brian had a fractured skull. I asked was there any danger and he said not at that particular time but that there could be complications later, e.g. a blood clot might form. After that they took Brian up to the ward. We stayed, some time later we were joined by his father who had rushed down. His father also saw the surgeon who told him the same as he told us. The father signed a consent form in case an operation should be necessary. We then came home.

Signed: Mrs. Mary Dobbin

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY MURPHY
Monagh Crescent

At 4:45 pm October 4, 1976 I saw soldiers on foot patrols (of eight or ten men). They were walking up and down Monagh Road and Norglen Drive. Earlier on at 3:30 pm the children were saying the soldiers were firing rubber bullets at Holy Trinity School when they were coming home. This aggression from the soldiers continued until teatime around 6:30 pm, even after Brian Stewart was shot by a rubber bullet. (Note: It was actually a PLASTIC bullet.) One of my sons aged 10 ran into the house to me shouting that Brian had been shot. I ran down to the street with my husband. They were lifting Brian off the street. The women took him into Mrs. Magee’s house. All the time rubber bullets were still being fired even though people were on the street. I would say at least a hundred bullets were fired. I saw three other boys limping away. The soldiers were running backwards into a field towards the Fort Monagh Army Base. The whole district was out, everyone was angry about Brian being shot and seriously wounded. I was very upset. I was trying to keep my children out of the way. Most of the mothers were trying to do the same as they did not want their children to witness the state Brian was in. They were also afraid of their children getting hit by the rubber bullets. My daughter Christine told me that she saw Brian getting shot with a bullet. She said “Mommy, it was the the same soldier that shot a child round at the flats”. (Probably Divis Flats) This was when she was at the shops for me. Brian could not have been throwing stones as he had just gone to the corner. Also as the mothers were so frightened, they were bringing in the children; so it is a lie to say that 400 children were rioting. In this estate (housingcomplex) every time the Army do something on the people, they try to justify it by telling lies right away.

Signed: Mrs. Mary Murphy
Witness: Rita Mullan

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARGARET FISHER
Monagh Crescent
5 October 1976

On Monday 4th October, 1976 I was standing at my front door around 6:30 pm. There were about six or eight boys in the street, not together in one group but interspersed. Suddenly I heard a shot and then I saw one boy fall. I did not know who it was but I ran towards him. When I got there there was a soldier. He was pulling the boy by the feet to take him away. A crowd of people were converging on the spot. A little girl was trying to pull the boy away from the soldier. The soldier kicked or pushed her. I shouted at him to leave the child alone. The soldier made another attempt to get the child. The crowd had now got to the spot and they took the boy further up the street. A boy named David Magee lifted him and carried him into his own house.

Signed: Mrs. Margaret Fisher
Witness: Kate McQuillan

STATEMENT OF MRS. IRVINE
Monagh Crescent (Housewife)
5 October 1976

Shortly after 6 pm on Monday 4 October, 1976 I was standing at at the door of my home at the above address. There is a shop next door and a boy was standing there. I recognised him as he was a boy who played with my own children sometimes. There were two girls in his vicinity but they were not specifically with him. I saw a foot patrol walking backwards along Norglen Road which runs along the bottom of my street. I saw the patrol go by; then one soldier came back. He was a very tall soldier, broad in build. He had a thick moustache. As he came back he took aim at the boy and fired. The child fell to the ground. The same soldier came over to the boy and lowered his hand to the boy’s legs. The girls at the spot had run forward and one of them seemed to be remonstrating with the soldier but I could not hear what was said. I saw the soldier move towards the girl but I don’t know whether he just pushed her or not. I could just see an arm raised. The child was lifted then and taken away.

Signed: Mrs. B. Irvine
Witness: Elizabeth F. Murray

STATEMENT OF FRANK DIAMOND
Norglen Road

At around 6:20 pm on October 4, I was standing at my own door-way which is approximately 30 yards from the corner of Monagh Crescent. A foot patrol was moving down Norglen Road (four men). There were no more than 10 children in and around Monagh Crescent corner. They were not in a group. The soldiers were walking backwards down Norglen Road. I heard a plastic bullet being fired. I saw a young boy falling to the ground on the footpath at the corner of Monagh Crescent and Norglen Road. A member of the patrol ran up to him and attempted to pull him by the leg down the street. There was a couple of children around the boy. I feel the soldier who attempted to pull the boy away saw the blood pouring from the boy’s head and realising it was very serious, he retreated and backed down to his patrol. I ran over to the corner and other neighbours lifted and carried him into Magee’s house in Monagh Crescent. I went into the house with the child. I could see he was seriously wounded on the left temple. It was an open wound approximately 2 inches above his left ear. The top part of his left ear was black. Right above his left ear there was an immediate swelling. We tried to stop the blood flow until the arrival of an ambulance. The child never spoke a word at all although his eyes were opening and closing. He did not appear to be conscious. The boy appeared to be in a fit. His legs and arms were twitching and he was vomiting continuously until he was carried into the ambulance. The ambulance man looked into the boy’s eyes and said “I think this lad has a fractured skull.” As far as I am concerned this is a true version of what happened at my corner. I already appeared on BBC television news today stating that I did not see any stone-throwing prior to the boy being shot.

Signed: Frank Diamond
Witness: Rita Mullan

STATEMENT FROM THE COMMITTEE OF THE MOTHERS OF TURF LODGE:

Brian Stewart (age 13) of Turf Lodge died in the Royal Victoria Hospital this morning. He died as a result of a fractured skull and massive brain damage caused by a plastic bullet fired by a British soldier on Monday last. The grief of his family has been increased by the lies told by the British Army about the killing:

LIE NUMBER 1:
The soldiers were under attack from 400 (later raised to 500) rioters when they fired on Brian Stewart.

THE TRUTH:
There are at least 5 reliable witnesses who are prepared to testify that there was no crowd, much less a riot, in the street at the time of the incident. Television camera crews failed to find any evidence of a riot when they arrived.

LIE NUMBER 2:
The soldier who killed Brian Stewart fired a plastic bullet at the identified ringleader of the attacking group.

THE TRUTH:
A woman visiting the Stewart home is prepared to testify that Brian had left his home only minutes before he was fatally injured. He had no time become involved in anything much less the ringleader of a non-existant riot.

LIE NUMBER 3:
A soldier who went to render first aid was attacked and had to retreat.

THE TRUTH:
A soldier tried to drag the injured boy away by the heels. When a young girl at the scene remonstrated with him and held on to the child, the soldier threatened to shoot her.

The Mothers of Turf Lodge will not be deflected by this detestable incident from their goal of protecting their children from the murders of the British Army and mourning in a dignified way the death of Brian Stewart.

Our demands still stand:

1. The immediate retraction of British Army lies.
2. The charging of the soldier who fired the plastic bullet with murder.
3. The charging of the officer who ordered the bullet to be fired with conspiracy to murder.
4. The immediate and permanent withdrawal of the British Army from Turf Lodge.

Two of our children, Leo Norney and Brian Stewart, have been murdered; Sandy Lynch has been seriously injured by British soldiers. We are determined that these murderers will not be allowed back into Turf Lodge.

Sunday October 10, 1976
_________________

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Click pic for full view of mural photo by CRAZYFENIAN

Comrades-In Memory of Volunteers Jimmy Quigley, Eamonn McCormick, Teddy O’Neill and Michael Magee

Danny Morrison

IRA Volunteer Jimmy Quigley–2nd Battalion, Belfast Brigade–shot dead on active service on Friday 29 September 1972

In this extract from his book, ‘All The Dead Voices’, Danny Morrison introduces us to IRA Volunteer Jimmy Quigley who became his best friend

**The previous extract concerning Danny can be read >>here

Jimmy Quigley

On sunny afternoons after school my friends and I sat against the gable of the barber’s shop at the corner of Beechmount Avenue, eyeing the girls making their way home. A few times I noticed a tall youth dander through the entry opposite us and I instantly recognised him as the fella who had put the guns in my house back in July. One day I winked at him conspiratorially and he smiled back.
Shortly afterwards I switched to St Peter’s Secondary School and it was there that I again met sixteen-year-old Jimmy Quigley and learnt his name. He was in the class a year below me and was beginning his ‘A’ Levels but because he was in the IRA and I was holding an arms dump we had to be careful about our friendship. It wasn’t until the guitar case with its arms and ammunition was removed in early 1971 that we could begin to openly go around together.
However, almost immediately he disappeared from the scene, having been sentenced to six months in St Patrick’s Boy’s Home for possession of petrol bombs during a riot in Ballymurphy.
Jimmy smoked but had little pocket money and since I was working in a bar I could afford to buy him cigarettes which I brought or sent up to him.
By the time he was released internment had been introduced and though I had moved on from his school to college we began socialising together and he often stayed in our house, especially after we had been to dances. I would throw a single mattress on the floor, parallel to my bed, for him to sleep on, though we spent most of the night talking away into the early hours.
Most of my memories of him are associated with his beautiful smile and his infectious laugh. We had great adventures together and talked mainly of two subjects: love and politics. On one occasion after a dance we persuaded two girls, Pauline and Eileen, to come and stay in my granny’s.
“Of course there are beds in every room,” I lied.
They each told their parents they were staying in the other’s house. They arrived with two teabags and no nightdresses. It was late October, below freezing, and we had no coal or electric fire. When they discovered there was only one double bed they accused me of being “a dirty bastard” and took Jimmy under the sheets between them whilst I lay covered in a coat, shivering on the living room floor. “If only he had told the truth,” I heard Jimmy pronounce smugly to the two schoolgirls with no nightdresses.
The girls left at eight in the morning and Jimmy and I left for school and college. “If only you had told the truth,” he laughed as we departed. A few days later, my mother, who occasionally checked my granny’s, baffled me by asking what had happened to the Sacred Heart picture on the wall. I checked the house and it was true, it had gone, been stolen. When confronted, Eileen confessed that Pauline had put it up her coat on her way out.
“She said its eyes had followed her and that she had never seen one of those pictures before where God watches you as you go past.”
Jimmy and I investigated. We went to Pauline’s house and confronted her but she denied having taken it. In the end, I had to go to the OC of the IRA in the Clonard area. He called to her house and demanded that she hand it back. She again denied having it. But her brother - who had been trying to get into the IRA - confirmed that he had seen a new Sacred Heart up on her bedroom wall. When she was out he stole the picture back - it was his first operation - and was accepted into the IRA.

Though I had held guns for the IRA and would, in a juvenile way, defend their actions against critics whom I thought offered no alternative, I had qualms about many aspects of IRA activity. I plagued Jimmy with various scenarios and asked him to convince me of the morality of this or that act. I think I use to exasperate him. One night in his house, when I was demanding answers (and, simultaneously, worrying that I might be undermining his convictions), he said, “Danny. I volunteered to be led, not to lead.”
As 1971 came to a close Jimmy and I went to a New Year’s Eve ceili in Clonard Hall. It was a great dance but at the stroke of midnight many girls started crying because their boyfriends were in jail and this put us in a sombre mood. Jimmy and I walked up the Falls Road to George’s Shop, which stayed open all night, to get his cigarettes, then on the way back to my house we were stopped and searched by Scottish soldiers. At 3.30 am I wrote in my diary, “sit talking, listening, communicating with Jimmy.”
He asked to write something in my diary and I handed it to him. He wrote:
“I hereby declare that I, Jimmy Quigley, shall from this day forward, the first of January, read as many books, articles and writing as I possibly can. Dated, 1st January 1972.
“I don’t know how 1972 shall take me but I shall make this my year of years, and I hope I shall be able to say at the end of this year that I am satisfied with everything I have done, said, read and thought. I also hope that I will make the same resolution at the beginning of every year…
“I shall make my mark on this earth and I hope I am worthy of this mark.
“Your health! To my improvements and my ambitions. Up the Republic!”
To which I added, “YES”.

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Danny Morrison

IRA Volunteer Jimmy Quigley–2nd Battalion, Belfast Brigade–shot dead on active service on Friday 29 September 1972

In this extract from his book, ‘All The Dead Voices’, Danny Morrison writes about the death of his best friend, IRA Volunteer Jimmy Quigley

The Death of Jimmy

I was downtown sitting in Kieran Meehan’s car whilst he was signing on for the dole. He came back to the car and said, “Somebody told me they heard that the fellah shot dead was Quigley from the Flats.” As we came up Divis Street I stopped a member of the Official IRA who told me that it was Jimmy who had been killed. My stomach turned and I felt sick. I asked Kieran to bring me home. The house was empty.
I went up to the bedroom where he and I had lain for hours talking and laughing and arguing and I lay down and cried convulsively. When I heard my sister Susan and mammy come in I rushed down to tell them. Susan and Jimmy had gone out a few times together earlier that year and Susan burst into tears.
Jimmy and I had been in A Company together but he moved to D Company in the lower Falls to be with Frank, his brother, who had escaped from Musgrave Hospital after being wounded.

On Friday, 29 September 1972, Mrs Quigley had been taken shopping by Jimmy, who had just received a cheque for £70, as part of a school grant. “He bought me a fur coat in Sinclair’s, and he got himself a new sports coat, shoes and shirt. We called into Sawyers’ and bought a load of white fish and cream buns because we were in the money! He left me at a quarter to eleven and I got the bus in Castle Street to go up to the shop of my hairdresser’s, Janet Farrell, to get my hair done for the weekend.”
Frank was the quartermaster of D Company and gave Jimmy the Garand rifle he had asked for. Jimmy, who was almost six foot tall, put the muzzle down one leg of his trousers and tucked the butt under his armpit and covered it with his jacket.

Jimmy had planned to ambush a patrol coming out of Divis Flats. He had chosen a second floor derelict attic above Caulfield’s chemists at the junction of Albert Street and McDonnell Street as his firing position. He was accompanied by a 17-year-old youth who himself had been seriously wounded by British soldiers some months earlier and was still recovering. He carried a .45 Webley revolver.
“We were up in the attic about ten or fifteen minutes and a couple of times Jimmy changed position to have a look out of the window,” he said. “I was sitting at the back of the room. Jimmy was watching the flats opposite and the road, then he said, ‘They’re out of their Saracen!’
“I said, ‘Can you see any, can you take a shot?’
“He looked out and said, ‘Hold on, hold on.’
“We then heard noises and only afterwards did I learn that they were actually beneath us. I said, ‘Fuck! What’s that?’
“He said, ‘Look out the back window and see if you can see anything.’
“I left him and went to the back and pulled open a piece of corrugated iron. I put my head out and a soldier, who was on the flat roof, put a rifle to my head. I was expecting to be whacked at any second. I shouted, ‘British army! What are youse after! What are youse after! I’m only collecting lead!’ hoping to alert Jimmy. There was another soldier, a black soldier, on the roof as well. The soldier pointing his gun at me said, ‘Get out on the roof! Get out on the roof!’
“I still had the Webley in my belt and he shouted, ‘Search! Search!’ for me to open my coat. All of a sudden we heard four large bangs, shots being fired. I think that was when Jimmy was hit. Nothing happened but then within sixty seconds, it could have been longer, it could have been shorter, there were more shots and the other soldier, the black soldier, had looked out to see what was happening and was shot dead.
“The soldier who had been guarding me suddenly took off. I couldn’t believe it. I then escaped across the walls, in through a house, out the front and through a crowd of people rushing up the next street.”
A rumour swept the Lower Falls that the raiding party had desecrated Jimmy’s body and thrown it from the window to the ground, and this fuelled the anger of local people and sparked off widespread rioting. Later that same day in the same area the British army shot dead twenty-year-old Patricia McKay, a member of the Official IRA, who was unarmed at the time of her death.

Two months after Jimmy’s death I was interned. One night he came to me in a wonderful dream, bursting with happiness and laughing. I knew him for but two years and can only explain my great sense of loss by the fondness and love his personality generated in those around him.
Often I think of him in relation to the thousands of things I have done since 1972; the pleasures he has missed - fatherhood, relationships; the music he would have loved; the life he would have led. There is not a day I do not think about him. He can never leave me.
“When people talk about closure I don’t know what that really means,” said Tommy, Jimmy’s younger brother who was in jail and refused parole to attend the funeral. “I don’t think there’s a point in time when you are healed from it. It is still a raw wound and always will be. There’s never been a sense of a ‘normal’ mourning process… It has no ending.”

I spoke to Mrs Quigley when I came to write this. She said, “I often wonder what Jimmy would have ended up working at, how things would have been, if the Troubles hadn’t come along.”
“It’s hard to believe that it is thirty years ago,” I said to her.
“Jimmy’s forty eight this year,” she whispered.

BBC ON THIS DAY

**Sometimes at work I can’t post as much as I would like, so I wanted to get some stories done early

04 October 1971

Many victims were buried under the wreckage of the demolished pub

At least 10 people, including a 13-year-old boy and a woman, have been killed and 17 injured after a bomb exploded in a crowded pub in Belfast.

>>VIDEO

The bomb is believed to have been placed near the front entrance of McGurk’s Bar, in North Queen Street in a mainly Catholic area of the city.

The building was demolished instantly by the explosion. Many customers were trapped under the rubble.

One man who ran from a nearby shop after the blast said, “There was just a great cloud of smoke where the pub was, and soot all over everything. There was nothing left of it.”

John Irvine, whose wife was killed in the explosion, described how he was caught in the blast as he sipped a glass of stout.

“The next thing, chairs and tables were piled up all around me and a roof beam was slung across my chest, pinning me in my seat,” he said.

“I do not know how long I was there. Then I heard someone shout to bring the hose. The firemen doused me and all around me to stop the fire getting to me.

“I was conscious all the time but I went out after they had freed me.”

Volunteers have been working throughout the night helping police and firemen rescue the injured.

Doctors also treated eight people wounded by gunfire during clashes shortly after the blast.

Fighting broke out between Protestant and Catholic crowds, and an army major and two policemen were wounded.

Police suspect the IRA planted the bomb, although it remains a mystery why the attack should have been carried out in a Catholic area. (See CAIN)

McGurk’s Bar was frequented by Catholics, although it is not believed to have had any connection with the IRA.

One theory is that the bomb went off by mistake. But an Official IRA spokesman in Dublin condemned the attack and said its members had “nothing to do with it”.

A similar denial came from the Provisional IRA.

Republicans believe it was planted by loyalist paramilitaries. A backlash has long been feared after the IRA blew up a number of bars in Protestant areas this autumn.

In Context

The final number of people to have died was 15, including two children and three women. The McGurk’s Bar bombing was the first major atrocity of the Troubles.

The wife and 12-year-old daughter of the landlord, Thomas McGurk, were among those who died. His three sons and Mr McGurk himself were injured.

The theory that the explosion was caused by an IRA bomb which went off by accident continued to hold currency for years after the incident.

Then in 1977, the driver of the getaway car confessed to his part in the attack, and it became clear that it was carried out by the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

The driver received 15 life sentences, and remains the only person ever to have been convicted in relation to the bombing.

A memorial was unveiled on the site of the bar in 2001 to mark the 30th anniversary of the McGurk’s Bar bombing.

The families are calling on the authorities to re-open the investigation into the bombing, and for an inquiry into the events surrounding the atrocity.

Sunday Life

02 October 2005

REV. Harold Good has revealed how a Provo atrocity spurred his 30-year quest for peace.

He said the IRA’s no-warning bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Store on the Shankill Road in 1971, made him determined to work for peace.

The clergyman was based in the area at the time of the attack, which claimed the lives of a 17-month old baby, a two-year-old girl and two men. (see CAIN)

Since then, the Rev Good has worked for the cause of peace.

Speaking to us last night, Rev Good said that he was willing to meet with the victims of the Provo outrage and other victims of republican violence to outline his reasons for acting as independent witness to decommissioning.

Rev Good, who received a letter of support on Friday from a mother who lost a child to the IRA, said he would always listen to victims of loyalist or republican violence.

He said: “I remember the babies being pulled out of the rubble of the Balmoral and it is an image I will never forget.

“If the mother of the little ones who were killed in that blast would like to meet me, I would value the opportunity of such a meeting.

“We are all on a journey and I hope that what I have witnessed can lead to a better future for everyone.”

The victims of the Balmoral Furniture Store bombing were:

Colin Nicholl (17 months).

Tracy Munn (2).

Harold King (29).

Hugh Bruce (70).

Sunday Life

By Stephen Breen
02 October 2005

BBC photo

OUSTED terror chief Jim ‘Doris Day’ Gray is receiving round-the-clock protection from elite anti-terror cops.

Senior security sources told Sunday Life Gray - released on bail after he was accused of money laundering - is being protected by about a dozen undercover officers.

Gray, who has been staying at a relative’s house in the Clarawood area of east Belfast, received the protection over fears that he would be targeted by the UDA.

Many of his former comrades are worried that he is set to spill the beans on a number of murders and armed robberies committed by the UDA, during his reign as ‘brigadier’.

This latest development comes after senior loyalist sources denied rumours UDA hit teams had visited bars in the east of the city, last weekend, in a bid to murder Gray.

The ousted terror boss has to attend various police stations and is also under curfew, as part of his bail conditions.

He also been spotted in Bangor and Ballyclare, and is believed to have held meetings with some of his co-accused.

The former loyalist was released from Maghaberry Prison, earlier this month, but has been left isolated in his old stomping ground.

Said a loyalist source: “The talk in east Belfast is that big Doris is receiving round the clock protection from undercover police and Army officers.

“If anyone wanted to kill him they would face a hard job because the security forces are watching his every move.

“People are wondering why the security forces are protecting Gray, and many believe it’s because he’s ready to become an informer.”

sbreen@belfast telegraph.co.uk

Sunday Life

By Ciaran McGuigan
02 October 2005

A SUSPECTED armed robber - targeted by the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA)- is a close associate of the man who watched IRA murder victim Robert McCartney die.

Brendan Devine, himself behind bars for his role in an armed heist, is an associate of Henry Charles Hayles, who had £200,000 of his assets frozen last week.

Hayles, of Glenwell Avenue in Newtownabbey, is alleged to have been involved in “cash-in-transit” robberies - a speciality of Devine’s - to boost his fortune.

The High Court last week granted an interim order on assets held by Hayles and his wife Lauziata.

There is no suggestion that Mrs Hayles had been involved in any crime, but merely held assets from her husband’s alleged criminality.

Among the items frozen were the couple’s Glengormley home, a property in Florida, a Nissan Terrano, a Volkswagen Golf, a Renault Clio and a bank account.

The ARA claimed that Hayles had been involved in organised crime, including armed robberies and drug trafficking.

And, according to Sunday Life’s underworld sources, Devine was among the criminals he worked alongside.

Devine - who was left for dead in the attack that resulted in Robert McCartney’s death outside Magennis’ Bar in Belfast in January - was jailed for seven years in June for armed robbery.

He and two others were caught red-handed robbing a security van in south Belfast.

Devine was on bail awaiting trial at the time of the knife attack that took McCartney’s life.

Said one underworld source: “Devine and the others worked as part of a team, doing robberies and knocking out some gear (drugs) and they were close to Hayles as well.

“Devine was badly caught out when he tried to knock over that van in Finaghy, but Hayles wasn’t stupid enough to get involved.”

Sunday Life

02 October 2005

THE Methodist clergyman who witnessed the destruction of the IRA’s arsenal offered last night to oversee the decommissioning of loyalist weapons.

Speaking to Sunday Life, former Methodist President Harold Good said: “If I can be helpful to the representatives of loyalist paramilitaries in any decommissioning process, my door is open.

“If the decommissioning of loyalist weapons becomes another chapter in our quest for peace, then I will make myself available again.”

The Rev Good (68), who worked in the republican stronghold of south Armagh during his career, believes “beyond any shadow of doubt” that the IRA has decommissioned ALL its weapons.

He told us he was approached last year to act as an independent witness - but only agreed to the offer after discussing it with his wife, Clodagh.

The Rev Good added that he was “surprised” to be asked to oversee the Provos’ decommissioning process because his name had never been mentioned.

Now that his work has completed with the republican movement, he is now looking forward to retirement - although he will remain available to do a similar job on loyalist arms.

“I will take to the grave with me what I witnessed, because it’s a matter of trust. I would act exactly the same way if I witnessed a similar process in loyalism,” he said.

“When trust is invested in you, you cannot betray it.

“I feel the detail of the decommissioning process is secondary to the outcome.

“The decommissioning of IRA weapons is a big step in the journey of lasting peace and it’s now over to the politicians and those in positions of leadership.”

sbreen@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Sunday Life

**Newsflash for you Michael: LOTS of people feel that way.

02 October 2005

GRAVEYARD loyalist killer Michael Stone last night told how he still believes he will be murdered by an IRA gun.

And Stone is convinced republicans could use the Browning 9mm and Ruger pistols which he lost after killing three people at Milltown cemetery, Belfast, in 1988.

The handguns were recovered by the Provos after Milltown and later used in attacks on the security forces.

Stone has always maintained that the IRA was determined to kill him with his own weapons.

The former UDA hitman made the claims after General John De Chastelain of the Independent International Decommissioning Body (IICD) confirmed the IRA had decommissioned its entire arsenal.

Stone believes the IRA has kept some of its weapons for the defence of vulnerable nationalist areas, but also to settle “old scores”.

Although Stone welcomed this week’s historic development, he believes the Provos could easily re-arm if the peace process fails.

The killer-turned-artist also insists that loyalist paramilitary groups will not hand over their weapons.

He has challenged the republican leadership to publicly state that he is not under threat from any member of the IRA.

Said Stone: “When I was in jail just before the 1994 ceasefire was announced, Terence ‘Cleeky’ Clarke told me that ‘peace or no peace’ I was a dead man.

“I was always told that the Shankill Butchers, Maggie Thatcher and I would be murdered by republicans regardless of any peace process.”

A senior republican source dismissed Stone’s theories, adding: “Michael Stone is nothing but a publicity seeker and his views cannot diminish the importance of last week’s historic act by the republican movement.”

Sunday Life

By Stephen Breen
02 October 2005

A MYSTERY group of campaigning mothers last night vowed to step up their campaign against LVF drug dealers in Lisburn.

Families Against Drugs (FAD), told Sunday Life they have compiled a new dossier of suspected drug pushers in the area.

Sunday Life has received a copy of the dossier, but cannot publish it for legal reasons.

The group, which vowed to erect their list on lampposts across the city, have chosen to remain anonymous over fears they will be targeted by the pushers.

The protesters claim to have photographic evidence of the dealers selling drugs to young people.

According to the women, a teenage boy has died and a young girl has fallen into a coma as a result of the lethal Ecstasy tabs being sold in the area.

Sunday Life contacted the parents of the young boy, but they refused to comment.

They claim the dealers, who work for leading LVF men in north Belfast, have torn down previous posters which identified them.

The group also claims to have the names of suspected dealers from the nationalist community.

The women, who have accused the police of failing to address the problem of drugs, say their ‘name-and-shame’ campaign is the only way of combating drugs in Lisburn.

They have denied being a vigilante group, and insist the 30 names featured on their list are all well-known dealers.

A spokeswoman for the group accused the dealers of destroying young people’s lives in the city.

She said: “Every person on the new list we have is a drug-dealer.

“We have spent a year researching and watching these people sell drugs to innocent kids.

“Our dossier is not a threat to anyone’s life - it’s our way of letting people know who is responsible for poisoning their children.

“We believe many of these hoods are police informers - that’s why they always seem to be above the law, and very rarely charged with any drug offence.

“We would love to reveal our identity, but these thugs are armed and very dangerous.

“They have been trying their hardest to find out who we are.

“Our campaign will continue until these animals leave Lisburn for good.”

A police spokeswoman appealed for people with information on drug dealing to come forward.

She said: “We are doing all we can to combat the problem of drugs in Lisburn.

“The issue can only be dealt with by the proper authorities.

“If anyone has information on drug-dealing in their community, they should contact us immediately.”

sbreen@belfast telegraph.co.uk

Sunday Life

By Cairan McGuigan
02 October 2005

JUST hours after appearing in court for allegedly beating his wife, Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair was issuing grim threats to the brother of one of his closest lieutenants.

Adair - convicted last week of harassment and then arrested for wife-beating - launched a foul-mouthed tirade down the phone at former loyalist drug dealer-turned-supergrass Dessie Truesdale.

Truesdale, who gave statements to cops in a bid to have his brother. Ian. caged for the murder of Jonathan Stewart, was left in no doubt that the ex-UFF terror boss wants him dead.

Last month, Dessie Truesdale emerged from his bolthole in Leeds to reveal how he turned supergrass after the murder of close pal Stewart.

And he told how he had bedded a close friend of Adair’s, hoping that the gay fling would enable him to gather more information about Adair’s inner circle.

Truesdale is now certain that Adair wants to have him killed, after he revealed how at first him, and then Jonathan Stewart, were drugs runners for Adair and Ian Truesdale’s cocaine and Ecstasy empire.

He claimed that Adair had Stewart gunned down, because of fears that he was on the verge of taking over the drugs racket.

It was then Truesdale gave statements to cops that saw his brother Ian charged with murder.

The charges were later dropped, however, Dessie Truesdale has refused to withdraw his statements.

In a bitter telephone call last week, just hours after being bailed from Bolton Magistrates Court, Adair raged: “You f****** b******, queer, touting coward, c***sucking rat.

“How could you do that to your brother?”

Said Truesdale: “Adair is starting to lose the plot now.

“I know he wants me dead.

“But he is quickly realising that he can’t get away with everything while he is over here (in England).

“The police here have clamped down on him, so it’s not as if he can do what he likes, like he did back in Belfast.

“And that is really getting to him.

“You can see that by the way he was arrested for beating Gina up.”

Adair appeared in court on Wednesday and admitted assaulting his wife.

He was bailed and is due to be sentenced later.

Last Monday he was convicted of harassment, along with his close pal William Woods (37) of Halliwell Road, Bolton.

cmcguigan@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Sunday Life

By Stephen Gordon
02 October 2005

A FORMER Lord Mayor of Belfast has claimed unionists “don’t want THEIR BOYS to give up their weapons”.

In an amazing outburst, staunch Paisleyite Eric Smyth - who as Lord Mayor welcomed President Bill Clinton to Belfast in 1995 - said he believes unionists want loyalist terror gangs to keep their guns.

The ex-DUP councillor also claimed “frightened” unionist people “had to defend themselves somehow”.

In a BBC radio interview, broadcast UK-wide, Mr Smyth began by saying loyalist terror groups should give up their arms, which is in line with DUP policy that all illegal weapons should be surrendered.

But the gospel preacher then did a bizarre U-turn, apparently spurred on by his shaky grasp of history - he claimed Lord Carson had organised the UVF “in the 1920s”.

Mr Smyth, who was a Belfast councillor for over 20 years before standing down in May this year, was interviewed by Radio 4’s Hugh Sykes for a report from the Shankill Road on unionist reaction to the IRA decommissioning.

He began by saying: “They (loyalist paramilitaries) should give up their weapons because they are not needed by anyone.

“I don’t believe the IRA will go back to war because I believe the British Government has given them what they want.”

But he then began to ramble well off the DUP’s beaten track.

He said: “They are taking away our Britishness step by step.

“The ordinary people can see this. This is why I don’t think the paramilitaries on our side will give up their weapons,” said Mr Smyth.

“I don’t think the unionist people would want their boys to give up (their weapons) because they are frightened.

“If we are going to down a road to a united Ireland we need somebody to defend us. If the Government is not going to defend us, the people have to defend themselves somehow.”

Asked by Hugh Sykes if this meant he approved of paramilitaries taking up arms, Mr Smyth replied: “No. I approve of defending my country.”

Urged to clarify his comments, he said: “I mean, in the 1920s Lord Carson organised the UVF to defend this country. I believe in that right.

“I believe that if my democratic right to be British and my way of life is taken from me by a British Government (which is) giving into men of violence, then we have to organise ourselves and to be ready to defend our country, so that our children will have the same rights.”

He explained this did not mean going out to murder people or destroy property “but, to defend our right to live as we want”.

“This is what people are saying: By golly! If it happens, then we will given them’uns (sic) what they gave us.”

The Shankill Road man also expressed suspicions about some of his old party’s current leadership.

“I’ve no problem with Dr Paisley’s leadership, I think it’s the ones coming up, I think they’d compromise if he wasn’t there.

“I didn’t like it when they went down to Dublin to talk the Taoiseach, that’s given them a recognition that they have a say in Northern Ireland’s affairs. That would never have happened in the past.”

Mr Smyth also said he did not approve of DUP politicians sharing TV and radio studios with Sinn Fein representatives.

“Never talk to men who have murdered and killed in this land,” he said.

Sunday Life

By Joe Oliver
02 October 2005

UNIONIST councillors in Belfast are caught up in a blazing row over plans to REPEAT a Twelfth bonfire ‘bonus’ scheme in loyalist areas next year.

The controversial decision has sparked a furious row with Sinn Fein members.

But the council’s community and recreation committee decided to persevere with the pilot project - designed to make bonfires more environmentally-friendly.

The initiative was introduced last July, when community groups, in eight areas, were each offered £2,500 to help their celebrations go off with a bang.

But the plans - and a charter agreement with residents - ran into trouble, when the UVF staged a show of strength in one of the areas on the 11th night.

Masked terrorists used the bonfire at Pitt Park in east Belfast to declare war on the LVF, and also fired weapons into the air.

A subsequent report expressed further “disappointment” over the number of paramilitary flags and emblems displayed at the bonfire sites.

But one unionist councillor told us: “We were forced to address this problem because of public criticism over bonfires, which annually cost thousands of pounds to clean up and carry out necessary repairs. Pitt Park may have been a big issue, but what can ordinary people do when masked and armed men suddenly arrive on the scene?

“It would be wrong to punish the innocent and there were successes.

“For instance, we achieved a reduction in the period of time over which materials were collected.

“There was also a vast improvement on how materials were stored, and a major reduction in the number of tyres burnt.

“There will be an independent evaluation, but we intend to hold talks with representatives of the various communities to see how the scheme can be improved next year.”

So far, it is understood that around £15,000 has been paid out to the groups that participated in the scheme.

The committee decision will have to be ratified by the full council.

One Sinn Fein member said: “It’s a scandalous waste of ratepayers’ money.

“It’s completely unjustifiable.”

slnews@belfast telegraph.co.uk

**Received via email from ‘poblachtach dearg’

Press release - Reject all institutions of the British state

With the construction of the H-blocks in the mid 1970’s, the British political and military establishment announced the methods by which they hoped to defeat Irelands liberation struggle . Underpinned by MargaretThatcher, this British strategy was defined as Ulsterisation, Normalisation , Criminalisation of Republican prisoners and making some some form of British rule acceptable to the nationalist community of the occupied six counties .

The events of the last week in particular now mean that Britain’s counterinsurgency strategy as outlined above has been largely successful. There can be no denying this reality. Tragically for republicanism and despite the heroic sacrifices of the past, the success of this British counterinsurgency strategy has in no small way been facilitated by the political direction adopted by the Provisional movement over the last decade in particular. We say this not out of bitterness but as cold political fact.

The acceptance of Britain’s Stormont parliament has underlined the provisional leadership’s acceptance of British rule in Ireland as legitimate. However, their recent move to finally surrender Republican arms is a clear acceptance by them that armed resistance to British rule is no longer legitimate. That these hard won and protected arms have been surrendered on the pretext of gaining admission to a British parliament frankly beggars belief. This move clearly signals that the Provisional leadership now view the British crown forces as the only grouping with a legitimate right to bear arms in the occupied 6 counties. It can not be viewed in any other way within a clear Republican analysis, or indeed any rational analysis.

Having fully recognised the legitimitacy of British political and military institutions in Ireland while simultaneously denouncing Irish resistance as illegitimate, it is now abundantly clear what the Provisional leaderships next logical step within the process of Ulsterisation and normalisation will be . Sadly it will be to urge young people within this community to play an active role within the P.S.N.I., an armed and belligerant force of British occupation in Ireland . While the SDLP have long acted in a capacity of collaborating with this armed British force , we note that local Provisional representatives have made the first step along a similar path by recently meeting with the PSNI in Newry and Mourne’s council offices. At a a national level their leadership have sent unmistakable signals that participating in this force is an eventual certainty. Having decommissioned republican weaponry this certainty is now much, much closer.

South Armagh 32 County Sovereignty Movement urge all Republicans, especially our youth, to reject all British institutions in Ireland. We remind the people of South Armagh that anyone joining the P.S.N.I. or its district boards will simply be viewed by Republicans as just another member of the British occupation forces. Such a profession has always been seen as dishonourable and will remain so. We urge them not to be fooled by the soundbites and posturing of political opportunists from whatever party.

We strongly urge all Republicans at this perilous time for our nation to engage in open and far reaching debate, and to critically analyse these latest developments from an honest and principled Republican perspective. Republicans should continue to view all British institutions in Ireland as a hostile usurpation of Irish sovereignty and Irish national rights under international law.The British occupation of Ireland is as illegal and immoral now as it ever was. No verbal trickery or media hype from establishment politicians posing can ever change that fact.

Is mise,
Kevin Murphy
P.R.O.
32 County Sovereignty Movement
South Armagh
sarmagh32csm@hotmail.com

Guardian

UVF commander rejects calls to follow the republican lead and says they have not spoken to de Chastelain

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday October 2, 2005
The Observer

Loyalist terrorists have rejected calls for them to follow the IRA and decommission their weapons.

In an exclusive interview with The Observer, one of the leaders of the Ulster Volunteer Force confirmed that the organisation would not be disarming. “¿Decommissioning isn’t even on our radar screen and is unlikely to be in the future,” he said.

The UVF commander added that the organisation had not spoken to General De Chastelain’s Independent International Commission on Decommissioning for almost four years.

The Observer has also learnt that the largest loyalist paramilitary force, the Ulster Defence Association, is refusing to decommission. Its membership in the heartland of Ulster loyalism, the Greater Shankill, has warned that there will be no arms surrendered to match last month’s IRA move that put most of its arsenal beyond use.

Last week the Irish Foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern, said there had been discussions with the loyalists about disarmament - a claim rejected by the UVF leadership.

“There has been no contact with Dublin for the last 18 months,” the UVF commander said. “So I don’t know who the hell Dublin is talking to. The UVF has made clear there is only one link we will use between ourselves and the Irish government and that is the Dublin trade unionist Chris Hudson. If they don’t want to use that envoy then they won’t be talking to us.”

On possible UVF decommissioning, he said: “Why should the UVF give up its weapons to facilitate Sinn Fein’s entry into government in Northern Ireland? What possible gain is there for working-class loyalists in that?

“There has been a lot of nonsense in the media since Monday that the UVF is going to follow the IRA. It is rubbish because the UVF doesn’t dance to the IRA’s tune.”

However, he stressed that there was no wish in either wing of mainstream loyalism to attack the republican community. The UVF commander was once the organisation’s contact with De Chastelain. But he ruled out any new contact between the UVF and the Canadian general and his team: “Contact was broken off by us four years ago and I don’t see any chance of the UVF entering a new dialogue.”

He described Sinn Fein claims that Ian Paisley exercised influence over the loyalist paramilitaries as “totally laughable” to the UVF. “Let’s make this absolutely clear: the UVF does not and will not listen to the likes of Ian Paisley or the DUP. They have no influence on our thinking and I have nothing but contempt for Paisley.”

Last week Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, hinted that loyalist leaders could face the full rigour of the law if they do not follow the IRA’s path to disarmament.

On the prospect of UVF and UDA leaders facing charges such as Directing Acts of Terrorism, the loyalist source said: “They could arrest us but the situation in Protestant working-class areas is already destabilised. Arresting people who have been central to the peace process would make a bad situation worse.”

He said the UVF would continue to attack the remnants of the Loyalist Volunteer Force despite calls for an end to the feud that has cost four lives since the start of the summer. The LVF would have to disband, especially in the Greater Belfast area, before the UVF onslaught ended, he added.

“There is no demand in my community that the UVF give up its guns. If anything there is pressure that we hold onto them because many people in that community wonder if, in the medium to long term, the union is safe,” he said.

Guardian

Members given immunity deals to transport arms for destruction

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday October 2, 2005
The Observer

Members of the IRA had to be issued with dozens of immunity-from-arrest certificates in order to transport tonnes of weapons being decommissioned last month.

The scale of the disarmament was so immense that the six certificates issued to the IRA had to be photocopied dozens of times to facilitate its “volunteers” taking guns, ammunition and explosives from arms hides to a central location in Northern Ireland.

Republican sources told The Observer that the Irish and British governments, General John de Chastelain’s decommissioning body and the security forces agreed to the immunity scheme. The sources also said the IRA was particularly concerned to get back guns used to murder and maim during the Troubles because they still had forensic traces on them.

“The leadership demanded everything from its units,” they said. “No one was allowed to keep even a single bullet or gun as a souvenir of the armed struggle. Quartermasters long since retired from the IRA were asked to locate arms dumps from as far back as the 1970s.

“The gear [weapons] was taken to three rural locations in the north for collection and the whole thing was overseen by a republican veteran from east Tyrone. No one should underestimate what happened, it was huge.”

So far there has been little or no resistance within the republican movement to last month’s unprecedented move to put arms beyond use. Even areas historically at the sharp end of loyalist attacks, such as Ardoyne in North Belfast, handed over large caches of weapons. However, some IRA guns will be retained for self-defence and the “policing”cof nationalist communities.

In Belfast for instance, the city’s three IRA battalions centralised almost all of their weapons before they were taken across the border. The Provos 3rd Battalion - which covers Ardoyne, the Short Strand, Markets, New Lodge and Lower Ormeau - used a house in the Markets area as the central collection point for the vast bulk of its arms.

The final act of decommissioning took place in front of de Chastelain and his team as well as two churchmen at a single location in the Irish Republic. The Protestant churchman who witnessed the decommissioning said he had “never felt as right about anything as I felt about this”.

Former Methodist President the Rev Harold Good said he was “overwhelmed” by the positive response of many unionists including Orangemen to last Monday’s announcement. He added that neither he nor his Catholic counterpart, Fr Alec Reid. had been used by the IRA in the decommissioning process.

“I don’t believe I have been naive, but we have to be prepared to be fools for the greater good,” he added.

Sinn Fein is hoping for major concessions on justice and policing as part of a package aimed at restoring devolution. One key aim of the Provisionals is that the criminal records of IRA members should be wiped clean and that both ex-IRA and younger republicans can eventually join the police.

However, dissident republicans in south Armagh warned that anyone who joined the force would be seen as “just another member of the British occupation forces. Such a profession has always been seen as dishonourable and will remain so.”

Sunday Business Post

02 October 2005
By Tom McGurk

Since the IRA’s final act of decommissioning, no interviewer has yet chosen to ask the DUP the obvious question: if you, as a member of the DUP, had been allowed to view the decommissioning process and even to bring a film crew with you, how would you have found proof that the IRA had decommissioned every weapon?

The answer, of course, is that there is no way of proving such a thing, either you accept that the republican movement is for real or you don’t.

The problem now is working out whether the DUP is for real. Its reactions to the IRA’s decommissioning varied from the absurd to the surreal. It is, naturally, a mere smokescreen, erected for a variety of reasons.

In the first instance, the DUP is divided down the middle about the whole concept of sharing power with Sinn Féin. The religious wing of the party led by the Paisley family is in the ‘sackcloth and ashes’ mode; dominated by biblical paradigms, it requires at least that Sinn Féin be somehow politically ‘born again’ before being allowed to enter the sacred temple of Stormont.

The secular wing of the DUP, led by Peter Robinson and Jeffrey Donaldson, can barely hide their political ambitions, but have to be satisfied with an enigmatic word dropped here and there during press conferences, against the general background of Paisley’s ranting.

During the Cold War, ‘Kremlin-watching’ became an art form in itself; now DUP-watching is assuming zoological proportions, like some new form of political anthropology.

For Paisley - who, like Beelzebub in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, has spent a lifetime insisting that he would “rather reign in hell than serve in heaven’‘ - the spectre of being the other half of the political structure that would bring former army council members of the IRA into devolved government is a persisting nightmare.

From his earliest days, he has opposed any move that would lessen unionist majoritarianism, and he has been the personification of a virulent strain of sectarianism that has consistently played on the fears of his followers and dehumanised his opponents.

Ulster was the biblical Promised Land and Paisley the Moses figure entrusted with leading the chosen people of the Lord to salvation, surrounded by enemies who were distinguished by their lies, treachery and persistence. At that level, power-sharing is tantamount to supping with the devil.

But Paisley’s day job is as leader of the major unionist political party, and after 40 years banging on the back door, he is now occupying the drawing room. In some ways, his dilemma is truly Faustian. To achieve the final goal of a lifetime spent battling his bitter enemies, he is now required to lower his sword and sit down and work with them. Is that heaven or still hell?

The divisions within the DUP merely echo the wider divisions within unionism itself. Increasing numbers of them see continued direct rule as the least bad alternative to devolved government - because of the political machine that the republican movement brings to it.

In the seven years since the Good Friday Agreement, unionists have been aghast at the pace of change, and are seemingly incapable of comprehending that the creation of equality of citizenship does not in any way undermine their constitutional position.

Despite the fact that the North is an economic basket case, and that the levels of poverty and unemployment in loyalist heartland areas are rising, the unionists are still like rabbits frozen in the political headlights.

In hindsight, for example, the struggle to achieve decommissioning was the engine for the destruction of the Ulster Unionist Party. David Trimble himself was decommissioned before the IRA’s arms were. Imagine how different the North would now be, had the UUP spent the last seven years working the devolved institutions instead of collapsing them.

Imagine, too, the political distance this would have opened up between them and the DUP. But by their insistence on decommissioning, the UUP turned their backs on a political opportunity, and effectively brought the IRA back to the very heart of affairs.

Apart from the fact that the whole idea of decommissioning was always nonsense – the IRA could simply re-arm at any time just as quickly as it could decommission - the destruction of its arms by any guerrilla group can mean any number of things. And as we can see now that it has happened, it has merely given the DUP yet another chance to move the perpetual goalposts across the unionist’s nightmare landscape.

We simply don’t know if, come the new year and all other things being equal, the DUP will enter devolved government. The reality is that they don’t even know themselves. Paisley will attempt during the coming negotiations to see how much of the Belfast Agreement he can trade in return for entering devolved government.

This tactic should be firmly resisted.

Paisley is now like a pantomime giant, lumbering all over the place in two minds and increasingly uncertain what to do. The seven-year-long decommissioning debacle has simply been one long political cul-de-sac; unionism finds itself unable to accept the evidence of its own eyes.

Not once in 40 years has Paisley ever successfully politically negotiated anything with anybody, nor has it ever been his style. Self-elected, self-appointed, self-ordained, what he leads is not a democratic political party, but a straggling, sneering bunch of camp followers hanging onto his every word.

Vote for me, he has been saying for four decades, and I will not sell you out.

Vote for me, and Ulster will be safe from pernicious republicanism. Vote for me, the man who will never surrender.

Well, now he has the votes, and at long last we can all sit back and watch him deliver. But another characteristic of his 40 years in politics has been his instinct to stir it up as much as possible, and then never be around when the logic hits the fan. And one suspects that he is far too old to go changing.

Sunday Business Post

02 October 2005
By Paul T Colgan

“It could be, I suppose, that a number of years from now, somebody could stumble across a field and there are some arms and they belong to PIRA and they could say: ‘Well, you were told that you had everything, and you don’t. You were wrong.’ Is that possible? Of course it is.”

General John de Chastelain, September 26, 2005.

Keen observers of the peace process should read the above quote from the decommissioning boss carefully - they are going to be hearing it repeated ad nauseum over the coming months and years.

Despite the assured delivery from de Chastelain and his colleagues at last Monday’s press conference, the euphoric reaction of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the giddy excitement of Tony Blair and the endorsement of none other than US president George W Bush, Ian Paisley and his party are far from convinced that the IRA has actually decommissioned.

The retired Canadian general spoke for about 45 minutes on his weeks spent in the wilderness. He witnessed the dismantling of machine guns, Semtex, flame throwers, rocket-propelled grenades,

ground-to-air missiles, mortars, grenades, rifles and pistols.

Finnish brigadier Tauno Nieminen counted the weaponry, diligently matching it against the estimates provided by the Garda Special Branch and British intelligence. Andrew Sens took notes.

Churchmen Harold Good and Alec Reid were close at hand, almost agog at the sheer scale of the arsenal that lay before them.

Last Saturday, de Chastelain bade farewell to the senior IRA representative who had overseen the collection and delivery of the weaponry. The following day he reconvened with Sens and Nieminin to write up what they had seen and done.

Last Monday, they briefed the two governments that the IRA was no longer able to wage armed struggle, then strode into the conference room at Culloden Hotel on the outskirts of Belfast.

While these five men had quietly gone about their work, Paisley was meanwhile preparing to condemn the entire enterprise.

“The falsehood of the century,” claimed the DUP leader moments after the press conference. “The hidden things of darkness are surely coming to light when the extent of the shameful betrayal of truth will be uncovered. Ulster is not for sale and will not be sold.”

Ignoring de Chastelain’s contention that the weaponry decommissioned matched the two governments’ assessments of what the IRA possessed, Paisley instead latched on to his statement that he could never be certain that all of the IRA’s weapons had been destroyed.

This will be the DUP’s constant refrain for the next year and beyond. The party has said it would only consider sharing power with Sinn Féin when it sees next January’s International Monitoring Commission (IMC) report on paramilitary activity.

In the interim, the IMC’s next report, which is due later this month, is expected to back up Garda security briefings that IRA activity has come to an end. Such a report will boost the standing of republicans in the eyes of the two governments and put further pressure on the DUP to come on board.

The government, however, views the January report as crucial. According to one government source, if the IMC gives the IRA a clean bill of health, the DUP must engage with Sinn Féin.

“What the DUP had to say last week was to be expected, but if the IMC delivers a report in January saying the IRA is finished, then the DUP has to decide what it’s going to do,” said the source. “They’ll have no option other than to take the tough decisions.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs has certainly toughened its line on the DUP in recent weeks. In the wake of the Northern Bank robbery and Robert McCartney killing it had rounded on Sinn Féin.

Now it has unionism in its sights.

“If the DUP wants to manage its own affairs, then it’ll have to share power with Sinn Féin,” said a department source. “January will prove to be the real acid test as to whether the DUP is really willing to embrace power sharing. After January, the real pressure will come on them to engage.”

Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern is meanwhile unimpressed by the DUP’s reaction to the ongoing anti-Catholic attacks in north Antrim. He recently visited nationalists who had come under attack from loyalists.

“The DUP has to stand up against sectarianism,” said the source. “The minister feels that it hasn’t shown leadership when it comes to speaking out against attacks on nationalists.”

However, despite the new robust approach to unionism by the Department of Foreign Affairs, its current strategy is predicated on the assumption that the DUP will be forced to play ball. Any talk of a possible ‘Plan B’ is palmed away as unduly pessimistic.

The history of the DUP would suggest that it is not entirely uncomfortable with the status of political pariah. Paisley has made a political career of standing outside the pale.

He recently told an audience in Ballymena that there was no real appetite among unionists for power sharing with Sinn Féin and, putting aside the visits to Downing Street, the DUP seems content to thumb its nose at the two governments.

Government sources remain optimistic that a significant bulk of senior DUP members are keen on the idea of executive positions in the North’s Assembly. The much-remarked-on divide between the party’s Free Presbyterian wing and the supposedly more secular, pragmatic wing still provides grounds for those hopeful of a deal.

They suggest that figures such as deputy leader Peter Robinson are itching to walk into Stormont if only the circumstances were correct. This analysis took something of a battering last December when it seemed for a brief period that the pragmatists would win out in their bid for an arrangement with Sinn Féin.

Instead, Paisley’s now infamous “sackcloth and ashes’‘ speech, in which he called for a very public humiliation of the IRA, is understood to have made a deal impossible. Intriguingly, it has been suggested that the speech was written by Ian Paisley Jnr and did not have the approval of the likes of Robinson and north Belfast MP Nigel Dodds.

The DUP denies that there is any gulf, but suspicions persist that had Robinson been in a position to veto the comments, the speech would never have seen daylight.

At present unionism is floundering. Paisley’s bluster has been met with incomprehension in British and US political circles. After making a huge point of pursuing IRA decommissioning in the past decade, unionists now appear at a loss as to how they should react to last week’s news.

Republicanism, on the other hand, has never been in finer fettle. Putting aside the news that Sinn Féin will not be allowed to fundraise in the US during Martin McGuinness’ visit, the party is now back in favour.

With the IMC expected to confirm that the IRA has faded into the background in the coming months, it is only a matter of time before it becomes apparent whether the DUP pragmatists can call the shots.

Dunday Business Post

02 October 2005
By Colm Heatley

If election pledges meant anything the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) would be leading unionism towards a brave new future in the wake of the IRA’s decommissioning.

“Unionism - real leadership, we’re on top'’ was the slogan the DUP used in May’s Westminster elections, which saw it obliterate its political rivals in the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and become the North’s largest party with 33.7 per cent of the vote.

Yet in the wake of IRA decommissioning, the DUP’s key demand since 1994, the party has taken refuge behind a series of excuses designed to downplay the significance of the event and stall political progress.

The DUP’s stance has provided loyalist paramilitaries with a ready-made excuse not to decommission their weapons; if Ian Paisley doesn’t believe the IRA has disarmed, how could the leaders of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) be expected to?

The DUP’s electoral success is based upon its ability to stop change but now it is the party in the North best placed to take the loyalist gun out of Irish politics.

“We’ll fight against a united Ireland, there’s no chance of any loyalists giving up their guns. Republicans can do it because they have political clout but we’ve got none,” Sammy Duddy, the UDA’s public spokesman told the media in Belfast last week.

His statement is proof that IRA decommissioning has not put undue pressure on loyalist paramilitaries to follow suit, partly because the move has been ridiculed and presented as a republican trap by the DUP.

The political parties which represent loyalist paramilitaries have either disintegrated, as in the case of the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP), or are on the verge of collapse, as in the case of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP).

Within loyalist and unionist politics the DUP has the whip hand, the result of its long-term strategy to portray itself as Ulster’s saviour against the peace process.

However, so far it is refusing to use either its electoral mandate or its influence with the UVF and UDA to encourage decommissioning and political engagement.

The PUP and UDP’s association with criminality contributed to their political demise.

But ultimately both parties failed to electorally challenge the DUP because their pro-Agreement politics were portrayed as a ‘sell-out’ of unionism by the DUP.

Having successfully targeted the votes of the PUP and UDP, the DUP must now admit that its mandate includes the increasingly unstable and dangerous voice of loyalist paramilitaries.

The DUP’s official line is that it doesn’t talk to loyalist paramilitaries, but that is untrue. Through its involvement with the North and West Parades Forum in Belfast it talks on a weekly basis to members of the UVF and UDA.

Behind the scenes it has also held meetings with the UDA and UVF and more publicly has refused to call for tougher security measures to deal with recent loyalist violence.

The DUP has a long history of engaging with loyalist paramilitaries.

In 1996 when UVF member Billy Wright split off to form the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) he was joined on stage at a ‘Freedom Rally’ in Portadown by DUPMP Rev Willie McCrea. The act outraged the LVF’s intended victims - nationalists.

Although the DUP condemned the recent UVF and UDA violence in Belfast its leaders were keen to use that violence for political leverage with the British government.

Only last week the DUP’s deputy leader Peter Robinson appeared as a witness in an LVF murder trial in Belfast Crown Court. During the case it emerged that people with LVF connections were able to telephone the Robinson family home and talk to the MP.

In the wake of IRA decommissioning Northern nationalists are asking not if the DUP has a relationship with the loyalist paramilitaries, but how deep that relationship goes and whether it is being used to promote peace or conflict in the North.

With the British government about to respond to decommissioning by introducing legislation which will be seen as favourable to republicans the coming months will be a delicate time in the North’s peace process.

If the DUP sits outside the political process a political vacuum will be created, and past experience, especially the past two months, show that that vacuum is often filled by loyalist violence.

Cathy Stanton, a Sinn Féin MLA in north Belfast, said the DUP could tackle sectarian violence by talking to republicans. “If they talk to us they are sending out a very powerful message that talking is better than violence and that sectarianism has no place in our society,” said Stanton.

“In an area like north Belfast, where over the years nationalists have borne the brunt of loyalist sectarian violence, that would be a huge step forward.

“The DUP are talking to loyalists regularly, their position regarding Sinn Féin is undemocratic and serves only to hinder political progress, not reach political agreement.”

Paisley also has a particular responsibility to work towards loyalist decommissioning.

In November 1986 he formed Ulster Resistance, a pseudo-military group, at an invitation only rally in the Ulster Hall in Belfast.

The money raised by the group was later spent on an arms shipment from South Africa that arrived in the North in the late 1980s.

Much of the haul has never been recovered and it is these weapons which provide the backbone of the current loyalist arsenal.

Paisley condemned Ulster Resistance when news of the arms shipment broke.

There is a widespread belief that while Paisley is leader there will be no change in direction for the DUP.

The hope is that Peter Robinson or Nigel Dodds will change tack when Paisley leaves the stage. But there is no sign of Paisley stepping down.

The belief is that the younger generation in the DUP want a taste of political power in a devolved assembly, but so far their mandate is for resistance to change.

In the medium term that will be difficult for the party to maintain.

But in the short term it could use its influence with loyalist paramilitaries to stop further violence.