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Showing posts with label Billy Hutchinson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Billy Hutchinson. Show all posts
Brandon Sullivan & Winnie Woods  ✒ The Unionist Political Class Betrayed Loyalism – Same As It Ever Was, Same As It Ever Will Be.

Billy Hutchinson has an article out on loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson’s site. In it, Hutchinson explores the clumsy Bryson soundbites that have become ubiquitous of late: the NI Protocol was a result of “threats of violence” from republicans. It is worth reproducing some of Hutchinson’s words in full:

And so it was with the Protocol; inflammatory comments made by the Pan Nationalist Front erroneously warning of the threat of a return to IRA bombs alongside staged stunts by Sinn Fein at the border, this formed the context for the imposition of the Protocol, which according to the most senior judges in this jurisdiction “subjugates” the Union.

Leaving aside the hyperbolic conflation of bombs and ‘staged stunts’ (assumedly meaning the peaceful border demonstrations), Hutchinson’s use of the term “Pan Nationalist Front” (PNF) seems deliberately chosen.

This term became popular in the early 1990s, and was used by unionists and loyalists to describe basically any groups or organisations that had as an aim the reunification of Ireland. So whilst Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein & the IRA were seen as the head of the PNF, John Hume and the SDLP were just as culpable. The PNF encompassed the government of both the Republic of Ireland and the USA (especially the Irish-American lobby) as well as the GAA, musicians playing traditional Irish music and Irish language proponents. Hell, if your chippy offered a cut price fish supper on a Friday, it was in the PNF.

Of late the Bryson, Hoey & Allister triumvirate have issued warnings that former bastions of unionism, such as the judiciary, vast swathes of the civil services, huge amounts of lawyers, the police, Queen’s University and the media, have succumbed to nationalism. The pan nationalist front is ever widening and will surely soon include those Lundies who haven’t bought into the protocol panic and ‘shouldn’t even call themselves unionist’.

These days (as in times past when the ‘Ulster will fight & Ulster will be right’ siren has sounded) you’re either with the hardcore or you’re a traitorous Irish rebel wanting to bring down the precious union by whatever nefarious means necessary.

Hutchinson using the term PNF can be seen in the same spectrum as loyalists claiming that the Good Friday Agreement is null and void at the one end, and unionist politicians refusing to confirm they would accept a deputy First Minister post alongside Sinn Fein First Minister at the other. It’s part of an increasing and accepted failure to recognise an aspiration to Irish Unity as legitimate.

Hutchinson lays the blame for the protocol at the door of basically organised Irishness whilst he ignores the fact it was his own elected representatives and his mother parliament at Westminster who engineered this situation. The attempt to frame this as being a breach of the GFA is cynical in the extreme. If there has been a breach of the consent principle, it has not been at the hands of nationalists living in NI. However, that is who the threat is aimed at when Hutchinson states that the GFA peace treaty, to which loyalist paramilitaries signed up, no longer exists.

It’s a threat. It isn’t subtle. But it is to an extent menacing. It is meant to be menacing. It is meant to be menacing the same way it was menacing during the GFA negotiations when paramilitaries were taking cards off tables and not going away you know. It is meant to make civic society collectively shudder and desperately hope that death and destruction might not be visited upon them because of a failure of politics.

Hutchinson reveals a wanton desperation in his article. The “warning of the threat of a return to IRA bombs” was erroneous – that is, it wasn’t real. Hutchinson doesn’t think that the IRA would have bombed installations at the border, and we think that he’s correct in that assessment. It’s therefore hard to know what Hutchinson is saying here. Is he saying that the British were forced by the mere threat of republican violence into ‘subjugating’ the Union? Doesn’t sound very taking back freedom, Dunkirk spirit of them. Would it not be more likely that M15 & the rest of the lads had a fairly good handle on the threat assessment given they seem to have been at every Real IRA tea party for the last however many years?

Would it maybe follow that they actually subjugated the Union because they (a) don’t give a shit about Northern Ireland and (b) are more interested in all the disaster capitalism that they can profit from now that Brexit is kicking off?

It must be soul destroying to be a loyalist. Who isn’t in the PNF at this stage? The EU? The Tory party? The DUP? They’ve all got to be in it. Bloody hell, at this stage we would not be surprised if Bryson turns out to be a card carrying member. His recent tweet comparing NI to Ukraine certainly seemed the work of a sleeper agent.

Billy doesn’t explicitly say who a threat is aimed at (got to love that plausible deniability) But what he does say is this:

So, when a young loyalist generation comes to me and says ‘the threat of violence was good enough to prevent a land border, why shouldn’t the same not apply to a Sea Border?’, what am I to tell them?

Well, one might imagine that your first step, as you said you would, would be to outline the horrors of the past and explain no one would ever want to live through such times again. Maybe try to explain how brutal and depressing that time was. How pointless it was. How nothing was won and much was lost. How countless mothers lost children. How people still wake up screaming. Tell him how hate-traumatised generations here and you were one of the shining lights that said no more and led people out of that horrible mess. Tell your loyalist friend that everyone should be invested in fairness and equality and peace and violence can never be tolerated. Tell him to become involved in civic politics and discussions.

You could further say that you believed the threat of republican violence wasn’t real? That it was “erroneous”? Maybe tell them that once violence is introduced into a society like Northern Ireland, it can spiral into dystopia? That if one armed group (be it republican, loyalist or state) attacks a community, then it is highly likely that that community will fight back? Maybe, and we're being deliberately controversial, tell him that despite the “loyalist backlash” cliché, the republican backlash was significantly more violent, wide-ranging, and destructive?

Maybe tell them that it’s highly likely that he’ll spend decades in prison, and that, contrary to some myths, loyalists were captured and convicted far more frequently than republicans. Tell him that a fifth of all victims of the last loyalist campaign were politically uninvolved Protestants murdered in mistake for politically uninvolved Catholics, and that even if he kills the “correct” politically uninvolved person, and not spend decades of his teens, 20s, and 30s in jail, he might end up in a feud and die at the hands of fellow loyalists, his name conflated with criminality, and ignored by the British press.

You might also wish to point out that it was not so much the threat from M15 infiltrated dissident republican groups - who have very little support amongst the pan nationalist front - that prevented the imposition of a land border it was statecraft. It was nationalist politicians and groups (the PNF if you will) lobbying the EU & America & reminding them of their responsibilities under the GFA and having them remind the British of their responsibilities.

You could have a chat with your young loyalist about the failure of unionist politicians to represent the views of their constituents who are so dismayed by the protocol. What were they doing when they made Brexit their hill to die on? Why did they throw their lot in with the hard right of the Tory Party instead of with the people of NI? Why did they not agree arrangements that would have avoided a protocol?

You could reassure the young loyalist that the failure of unionist political class has led to this juncture, not his nationalist neighbours who pose no threat and that working people, no matter what class or nationality have much more in common with each other than they ever will with ruling class. Remind that young Loyalist of genuine working class progressive views, Billy.

However, Hutchinson deserves genuine credit for this:

The truth is, beyond the obvious point that we will always - in all circumstances - discourage all young (and not so young) loyalists from engaging in any form of violence.

But then, as so many politicians before him, he gives himself a bit of plausible deniability before getting out the dog whistle, and saying:

we have no real answer to the proposition that the threat of republican violence has led to seismic constitutional change being imposed without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland.

Despite the fact that this statement is simply factually incorrect, it does raise an interesting point – Hutchinson charges that the protocol was “imposed without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland.”

Why not call for a referendum, then? What is wrong with political means? Why not test if it carries the consent of the people of Northern Ireland?

Instead, Hutchinson says this:

It is obvious therefore that for the maintenance of peace and stability it is vital for the Protocol to be removed, in order to demonstrate that the threat of violence should never have been rewarded. That is a wrong which must be righted.

This seems rather like a threat of loyalist violence if the protocol is not removed. Aside from the almost comedic hypocrisy (poll after poll rates the protocol as rating fairly low as an issue of concern), we are entitled to ask exactly how and where that violence will occur?

What is also left unsaid is what would happen if the protocol is removed. What Billy is saying is ‘put a hard border up between NI and the South’, get rid of the GFA. Let’s get back to the days when unionists dominated civic society. The realisation that this is seriously unlikely to ever transpire makes those of us - and it’s a hell of a lot - in the pan nationalist front nervous because of the questions that it leads to: 

Who will loyalists attack? What will they do? Who is their enemy? The Pan Nationalist Front is all encompassing. You might not even not you were a member until after you gave been targeted.

How many “young loyalists” will risk decades in Maghaberry, with no prospect of early release under an amnesty, for killing people who had nothing to do with enormous own-goal scored by the halfwits in the DUP cozying up to a nest of vipers in Westminster?

And for what? Loyalists will lose their fight against the protocol, as they have lost every fight they started since Drumcree. It’s just such a shame that it all has to be framed and a fight & one side having to win lest there be disastrous consequences for them.

It’s worth reciting the fights that loyalists have lost: Drumcree; Harryville; Holy Cross; the 2005 riots (what were they about?); the Flag protests; and now the protocol. Each of these tactical catastrophes alienated the only people who can maintain the union: voting nationalists.

Unfortunately it seems it’s the only way to attract support for the union is to declare - once again - its under the worst threat ever, ever, promise this time the pan nationalist front are really coming for us.

Maybe Hutchinson should drop the “Progressive” part from the PUP and accept they’re as lacking in vision as the rest of the tragic has-beens that constitute contemporary political unionism.

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys. 

⏩ Winnie Woods is a recently retired housewife with an interest in human rights & politics.
 

Wise Up, Billy Hutchinson!

Brandon Sullivan discusses both a recent book and its main character. 


For students of the Troubles, November 2020 provided two excellent books: Anatomy of a Killing, by Ian Cobain, and Billy Hutchinson’s memoirs; My Life in Loyalism (written with Dr Gareth Mulvenna). This piece is about violent loyalism in general, and My Life in Loyalism in particular. 

Both books are excellent. Hutchinson’s memoirs are fascinating, and frustrating. Fascinating because of the vividness of the writing and the opportunity to look closer at a world that isn’t often looked at closely. For all of my criticisms of the content of the book, it is a vitally important history. One of the best books of the Troubles, in my opinion, is Killing Rage, the memoirs of the IRA man Eamon Collins. Collins was afforded latitude to write with honesty, having been tried and wrongly acquitted of the murders that he was involved with. Hutchinson was found guilty of murder and could have similarly written about them with candour – he didn’t. So it is frustrating because of what he says without expanding, and for what he doesn’t say. And sometimes, what he does say is offensive, evasive and self-serving.

Some Of My Thoughts On Loyalism

I am hostile to loyalism – it is important to say that I am not an objective observer. Whilst I was born on the Falls Road, I left for Scotland whilst still in primary school, and rarely thought about “home” except when news reports came on. I first encountered loyalism, and Billy Hutchinson, as an 18 year old, when he appeared on Peter Taylor’s excellent TV series “Loyalists.” I was watching with my mother as Hutchinson described how he had “no regrets” about murdering two men a matter of metres from where many of my family lived. My mother remembered the murders, and was very upset. Billy Hutchinson, in today’s parlance, radicalised me against loyalism. I could not believe the audacity of this man, attacking my community, presuming he had the right to life and death over my father, uncles, brothers and cousins, and, if I was old enough, me. In the years to come, I was to understand that near neighbours of mine visited upon Hutchinson’s community exactly the type of murderous terror he inflicted on ours.

I believe that loyalism is founded on Protestant superiority and unsustainable, grandiose, vainglorious beliefs. These beliefs required actualisation and performance: Stormont; B-Specials; a Protestant dominated RUC; Orange parades; privileged access to some jobs in some sectors; Gerrymandering; and some privilege in housing allocation all worked to give an impression of superiority. Hutchinson, accurately, talks of the lie that these impressions gave, quoting his father as saying “we might have gotten a slum quicker, but it was still a slum”. In truth, for the most part, the working class PUL community did not greatly benefit in any meaningful, economically significant way from the manner in which Northern Ireland was administered from 1922 – 1972. A mythology developed, believed by the PUL and the CNR community, that one was much better off than the other. The PUL community took comfort in their supposed privilege, and the CNR community simmered with resentment at the slights they believed were visited upon them.

I believe that these slights were, for the most part, part of the loyalist project: the performance of Protestant superiority, needed to fuel loyalist domination.

The prison psychiatrist James Gilligan famously quoted:

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt to prevent or undo this ‘loss of face’ – no matter how severe the punishment, even if it includes death. (Anatomy Of A Killing, p29)

By 1972, the RUC had been (temporarily) disarmed, Stormont had been prorogued, and direct rule from London had begun to redress discrimination that favoured Protestants. Protestants found themselves arrested, jailed, even beaten and tortured by “their” police force, and by the British army they had been indoctrinated to revere. And whilst the Orange Order still marched, they had some of their parades banned, and on other occasions, marched through streets strewn with the rubble of republican bombs and past the wreckage of the often Protestant dominated commercial heart of towns and cities in Northern Ireland. And another march was machine-gunned by an IRA man, in a blatantly sectarian attack.

An IRA man once said that “killing an RUC officer, or a British soldier, was an attack on the delusion of colonial” superiority. Killing them removed notions of superiority and destroyed the myth of their invincibility.”

The IRA, in 1972, displayed no fear of the state, killing scores of soldiers and police officers, and no regard for loyalist paramilitaries, bombing Protestant pubs and murdering dozens of Protestant civilians in blatant sectarian attacks. In fact republicans almost seem to be daring the loyalists to come at them with their much prophesied backlash.

Loyalism had, in four short years, seen virtually every foundation that it required to function attacked, damaged, or destroyed. I believe that the most accurate way to analyse the actions of loyalist paramilitaries is not through the lens of counter-revolutionary warfare, but with an understanding of the humiliation that was experienced by a community for whom domination of The Other was a fundamental necessity. 

My Thoughts On Billy Hutchinson

Hutchinson’s habit of sticking to clichés is as saccharine and irritating as reading any booked penned by Gerry Adams. He wearily talks of “fighting the IRA” – “bringing the war to the IRA” and so on, and on, and on and on. The UVF rarely fought the IRA. Hutchinson knows this, and in fact, in an insight into 1970s loyalist paramilitary activity, details how, following the killing of Jim Hanna, Hutchinson approached the UVF brigade staff demanding to know who was responsible. Told that it was the IRA, Hutchinson said they had a list of six IRA targets and were going to “hit them … right away.” His UVF commander’s “face went white” at the suggestion. Why? Weren’t the UVF waging “war” on the IRA, as Hutchinson so frequently claimed? Why would a senior UVF officer pale at the prospect of hitting actual IRA targets. Hutchinson doesn’t say, so we are left to ponder. But it does make Hutchinson’s claims, made elsewhere in the book, about strategy, tactics and analysis seem preposterous.

Allow me to digress – I watched Hutchinson’s 1997 interview with Peter Taylor, when he says he “has no regrets” in the murder of two Catholic civilians, with my psychotherapist father-in-law. My father-in-law empathised with Hutchinson, saying that he was a man in extreme and acute pain, uttering words about himself (having no regrets) he knew not to be true. My analysis of Hutchinson is not as kind. I think he’s a coward and a hypocrite. He attempts to blacken the name of the two men he murdered, by saying that his organisation, the YCV, had “intelligence” that they were active republicans. He says he doesn’t know if the intelligence was accurate.            

Hutchinson deprived a family of two members. He did not see fit to acknowledge that they were, at best, victims of an organisation with a completely unreliable intelligence gathering system, or, more accurately, simply either shot at random, or killed for dubious reasons. One of the brothers had been shot and injured already, by a shot fired at random across the peace-line. Contemporary newspaper reports of the time note that the brothers worked at a building site in Bangor. I wonder if someone on that site objected to two Falls Road “Taigs” being about the place? A contemporaneous TV news report, by Jeremy Paxman, noted that the modus operandi of the double murder committed by Hutchinson and his friends was identical to others that took place in that area at that time. The victims were postmen, or bakery workers. Did Hutchinson’s friends have information on them, as well? Hutchinson has already said he had intelligence on IRA targets, targets that made the UVF brigade staff fearful of touching, so why were he and his men shooting labourers, bakers and postmen (none of whom received IRA funerals)? Again, he doesn’t say.

Hutchinson discusses his relationship with west Belfast Catholic Jimmy McKenna, who worked with Hutchinson and his men in targeting various men alleged to be connected to the Provos. It appears nobody within the UVF stopped to think that their campaign of harassing, torturing and murdering members of the nationalist community might dissuade more persons from that community coming to them with information on IRA targets. Nevertheless, McKenna’s story is fascinating.

Billy Hutchinson, Lenny Murphy, And Johnny Adair

Hutchinson discusses his relationship with “Shankill Butcher” Lenny Murphy, providing a glimpse into a spectral, almost mythic personality of the Troubles, and offers this summation:

Lenny [Murphy] seemed consumed by the need to be recognised. He appeared to have a steely determination to make a name for himself, and the kudos he began to receive within loyalist circles apparently wasn't enough to satisfy his burning desire to become infamous.

This insightful analysis of Murphy sprung to mind later in the book, when Hutchinson discusses Johnny Adair, a man he obviously loathes. What Hutchinson doesn’t do in his memoirs, but perhaps should consider, is why loyalism sustained, promoted, and propelled these two men, Murphy and Adair, to prominence? What is it about loyalism that attracted Murphy and Adair and, more importantly, why did loyalism do nothing to curtail the deeply anti-social activities of these men, activities that arguably devastated the Shankill in a manner that the IRA never could.

Bakers, Builders, Gardeners And Unrepentant Murderers

20 years after Hutchinson and other Shankill loyalists murdered two Falls Road working men, some other Shankill loyalists murdered another Falls Road working man, Sean Monaghan, a 20 year old landscape gardener whose Protestant partner was left to raise their twin girls alone. The loyalists who murdered Sean Monaghan, in barbaric circumstances, were part of Adair’s UFF. One of these men, David Burrows, on trial for the murder, turned to Sean Monaghan’s mother, and shouted “I shot your fucking son – four in the back of the head … I killed him, I’m proud of it.”

What, ultimately, is the difference between Burrows taunting his victim’s mother and Hutchinson saying he had no regrets about murdering two brothers?

When all is said and done, what Burrows and Hutchinson did was identical. They drove from the Shankill onto the Falls, committed murder, and did it unapologetically, and with no remorse. 

Abject And True Remorse Versus Banal Justification

Loyalists, in stark contrast to most republicans (particularly those who remain loyal to Sinn Fein), are capable of disarming honesty when they talk about their often brutal paramilitary activities and the beliefs, which some of them have since renounced, that led them to violence. The UVF’s Billy Giles gave perhaps the most affecting testimony of a combatant in the same TV series that Hutchinson said he had “no regrets” – Billy Giles’ regrets tormented him until his death by suicide. Hutchinson has said “I justify everything that I did in the Troubles, and I have to do that to stay sane.” One of the issues that I have with Hutchinson is that the justification for his murders might well have driven, and continue to drive, the families of Michael Loughran and Edward Morgan to even greater hurt and grief. Their cousin wrote a very moving piece about them in the Belfast Telegraph, that humanised them, and gave them an identity they deserve. History, at this moment in time, records them as the two completely undeserving victims of a man who would go on to become an acclaimed politician.

Despite my criticisms of what Hutchinson chose to divulge in his book, I am grateful that he told some of his story. My Life in Loyalism is essential reading for any student of the Troubles, or indeed of political violence. In some ways, it is a natural companion piece to Gareth Mulvenna’s Tartan Gangs and Paramilitaries, which is simply one of the best and most important book to about the troubles to emerge in recent years.

As ever, I hope that my writing encourages discussion and debate, and welcome criticism and commentary. 

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys.

Further Reflections On Loyalist Paramilitary Activity

Belfast Telegraph ✒ Ex-UVF man turned peacemaker Billy Hutchinson: 'When you're involved in conflict, you have to dehumanise the enemy'

Suzanne Breen 

Former UVF man turned peacemaker Billy Hutchinson served 16 years jail for his role in a double killing but, as his biography is published, he insists he has no regrets.
 
Billy Hutchinson is talking about murder. He was just 18 years old when he drove the car used in the double killing of half-brothers Michael Loughran and Edward Morgan.

It drew up beside them as they walked down the Falls Road to work at 7.30am. The teenage UVF gunman in the passenger seat opened fire. Michael was the same age as Hutchinson, Edward was nine years older.

A court later heard it was a random sectarian shooting by assassins who had toured Belfast looking for Catholics. Does the former paramilitary turned peacemaker think much about the lads whose life he helped end in October 1974?

"I don't," he says candidly. "When you're involved in conflict you have to dehumanise the enemy. It makes things easier if you have a coping mechanism in order to survive. Otherwise, you cause yourself problems."

Hutchinson's book, My Life In Loyalism, is published today. It's not the fake, folksy narrative for which Gerry Adams has been slated, but it does gloss over the brutality of the loyalist campaign.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Billy Hutchinson ➖ Dehumanising The Enemy

Irish Times ✒ As a loyalist paramilitary he was sentenced to life in prison for murder. Now, the UVF leader-turned-politician says Brexit must not lead to more violence in the North.

Freya McClements

Belfast has always had peace lines, says Billy Hutchinson, “but they’re in your head.” 

He was 14 when, in 1969, many of these demarcation lines became real barricades, thrown up along the previously invisible boundaries between Protestant and Catholic areas as the Troubles began.

Hutchinson tells how, as a teenager, he accompanied his father to see a Catholic colleague who lived in Cupar Street; nowadays, it is adjacent to a peace wall which continues to divide the Protestant Shankill and the Catholic Falls.

“When I went into the house there were all these girls. There must have been six or seven girls, and I went in there as someone who was very shy. I had one sister and that was it,” he explains.

Years later, he met their brother, who said his mother wanted to ask him a question. “He says, ‘she felt you were very strange the day you came into our house ... was it because we were Catholics?’ I said no, it was because of all your sisters. 

Continue reading @ Irish Times. 

Billy Hutchinson ➖ ‘I Justify Everything I Did In The Troubles. To Stay Sane, I Have To.’

Christopher Owens in conversation with Gareth Mulvenna.

 
November 2nd sees the publication of My Life In Loyalism, the memoir of Billy Hutchinson (leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, Belfast City Councillor and former UVF member). Written with Dr. Gareth Mulvenna, it has been described in the press notes as being filled “…with great candour and honesty, this is a gripping memoir of an extraordinary life which reveals previously unpublished accounts of both the Northern Ireland Troubles and the peace process that culminated in the historic Belfast Agreement of 1998.” 

To coincide with the release, I decided to speak to Dr. Mulvenna about the book, his other research relating to the conflict and what we can expect next. My sincere thanks to him for taking the time to answer my questions.

CO: What are the origins of this project?

GM: In October 2016, 22 years on from the CLMC ceasefire, I was invited to speak at Shankill Road Library as part of the promotional duties for my first book Tartan Gangs And Paramilitaries. The invitation was from Action for Community Transformation (ACT) and the organisers asked me would I like to pick some people who I had interviewed for the book to sit on a panel as part of the evening which would be chaired by ACT co-ordinator William Mitchell. I didn’t have to think for long and immediately asked Eddie Kinner and Billy Hutchinson.

One of the incredible things about researching and writing a book like Tartan Gangs... was that I could ask people who lived through the history and who contributed to my research to illuminate and expand on some of the issues I had addressed in the text. Eddie and Billy came of age in that tumultuous early 1970s period; both of them were on the scene after the Balmoral Furniture Showrooms were blown up in December 1971 and both were honest about their desire to be part of the loyalist response to what they saw happening around them.

It was a candid event and instead of me talking from a purely historical slant, Eddie and Billy were able to talk about that history from their perspectives. Anyone who has read Tartan Gangs… will know how the lives of Eddie and Billy dovetailed at a certain point, and I had talked to both of them extensively since 2013 for the purposes of the book.

After this event in the library, as I was packing my stuff away, Billy told me he had something to ask me; basically, he said he wanted to write his life story and he wanted me to help him do it. I think that a trust had grown between myself and Billy as well as the other guys I had interviewed and come to know well over the three years since I embarked on the project.

Needless to say, I agreed to assist Billy. I knew there were many untold stories out there, and even at that stage I was advocating storytelling – whether public or private – as a means of preserving the past. That complimented what Beano Niblock was doing of course, and how Belts and Boots eventually came about.

So, leaving the library that evening in October 2016 I had another great project ahead of me.

CO: What challenges, immediate or gradual, did the two of you face when working on this?

GM: The following year, 2017, Billy seemed to go off the idea of doing the book. There were probably a variety of factors which fed into that reticence, but there’s no point in retreating into old ground about the Boston tapes or poor accounts of loyalism here. That was fine, and no offence was taken. I always felt, however, that when the time was right Billy would return to the book idea and if he still wanted me to work with him on it, I would.

Later in 2017 Billy decided that he wanted to pick up the project and we made plans to start doing interviews around November or December. Some would be recorded, some not. I say interviews, but they were more typical of the conversations we would have had anyway, but with a bit more structure.

Then, in early 2018, just as we were about to get going in earnest Billy fell and broke his hip. As he was recovering I fell ill with pneumonia and eventually ended up spending the best part of a month in hospital with an abscess on my lung. I was out of action until the summer of that year, but when I was feeling well again we got back into it.

Billy was honest that he would be able to tell me the stories, but he would be relying on me to prop up his memory on some things such as dates and ensure that the book was structured in a way that made sense to those reading it. We also brought in other people for chats and bounced ideas back and forth. What would make a good story, what wouldn’t, that sort of thing. Of course, we had to be careful that there was no talk out of school, but I was well-versed in that style of interviewing from doing the research for Tartan Gangs... We wanted to give an authentic perspective of Billy as a paramilitary and as a politician without breaking the confidences that go with both of those cultures. Unlike some books about paramilitaries who have turned to politics, Billy didn’t skim over the early years – indeed there is much material about the early to mid-1970s and the book gives a good insight into some of the machinations at leadership level in the UVF.

I know that Billy didn’t want to rewrite history and he wanted to be explicit in taking responsibility for his actions as a member of the UVF but he also analysed the structural issues that gave rise to the Troubles – the ‘polluted politics’ that David Ervine so candidly spoke of. One of the big challenges I suppose was writing about the double murder he was arrested for in 1974 at the age of 18. It was something that had to be addressed directly by him in the text. There was no way around it. Just pasting in a newspaper article or something would have been shirking responsibility for me as a writer and researcher. I can honestly say that Billy was of the mind that while he wanted to be open as far as possible, he didn’t want anything in the book to rub the noses of victims in it. There’s a perception that Billy is hard-nosed but every time we have talked about legacy he is very much of the ‘abject and true remorse’ school of thought. People might look at that and compare it to some recent accounts of the prison escapes of the early 1980s. Are there two different approaches to legacy and interpreting the past? That’s for people reading these accounts to decide.

Billy was also adamant that I included a paragraph in my introduction stating that I did not agree with much of what had been said in the book. He’s protective that way as he is aware of the fact that people may mistake me for a ‘fellow-traveller’ rather than an historian. He’s aware of the abuse I have received over the years and he was very clear in asking me was I sure – was my partner sure – that this was something we were happy for me to work on.

I see My Life In Loyalism as a natural extension of the work I did with Tartan Gangs..., but it is unlikely I will write about loyalism for a while. I don’t want people to accuse me of being a ‘loyalist historian’. I am a ‘Troubles historian’ if labels are your thing. I actually talked about this with a close friend recently. His father had been jailed for UVF activities in the late 1970s. I was bemoaning the fact that over the years my research into loyalism has perhaps led some people to question my motivations, and I often wondered whether job opportunities had slipped through my grasp due to the powers of Google. It doesn’t help of course when one of the main newspapers erroneously referred to me as a ‘loyalist blogger’. My friend made an excellent point:

Maybe employers or others should be asking how this Catholic guy from north Belfast was able to build such positive and enduring relationships with former members of loyalist paramilitaries? He must have strong interpersonal skills, he mustn’t allow people’s pasts to interfere with his ability to create strong working relationships with them, he must have a strong level of empathy and an ability to understand other people’s perspectives.

It was a Damascene moment, and I remember feeling ten-foot-tall after we chatted that day.

CO: It's often cited that capturing the voice of the subject is important for writers when working on such projects. Was this something that came naturally, or was there some work needed?

GM: We had actually done something of a dry run back in 2013/14. Paul Burgess and I were drawing up a list of potential contributors for The Contested Identities of Ulster Protestants and Billy was near the top of that list. Billy was a neighbour of Paul’s growing up in the Shankill and Paul has had Billy down to Cork for some events at UCC. I agreed to ghost Billy’s chapter for the book, so I had experience of capturing his voice.

Also, there are plenty of newspaper and television interviews with Billy in the archives. I modelled it round those and added a very little bit of my own style. I also imagined what Billy would have sounded like as a 16-year-old talking to UVF members around the country.

He has a good sense of humour, which most people don’t see – so it’s a case of portraying that authoritative military figure authentically but ensuring that it doesn’t become a cold experience for the reader. Billy is down to earth and intelligent, and the book had to reflect that. He is also a deep thinker, so I had to give gravitas to some of the background thoughts that led to his decisions.

To be honest, it’s a bit like the research for Tartan Gangs… – I put myself in the person’s shoes. Sit back and think about what it must have been like for them. Listen to the music of the time, look at photographs of the old buildings, the street maps, the archive footage. Just try and immerse myself in it. It’s the same with the recent writing I have done on Sammy McCleave. There were moments during the research for those pieces where I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Sammy’s movements that evening. The walk from The Tavern. Shelleys. Standing at the taxi rank afterwards. The music of the time.

That’s how I approach my research.

There was never a stage where Billy said, ‘this doesn’t sound like me’.

CO: How did Merrion Press get involved in the publication?

GM: I had been in touch with Conor during this period as I was actually planning another book about the loyalist paramilitaries – a sort of ‘secret history’ of the organisations during the 1970s. I wasn’t going to looking at the UVF too much because of the good work Iain Turner is doing. I had planned to look at the early years of the UDA – and in particular the WDA. I got a lot of good help on that front from a very good and sincere friend. I also had co-operation from former members of the Young Newton. I was hoping to revisit some of the Red Hand Commando history as well and develop on that as part of the book. I contacted Conor with my idea and he liked it, but then it became apparent that the Red Hand were planning on doing something in house to mark their fiftieth anniversary, so it would have become a book purely about the UDA. Although Ian S. Wood has written a fantastic history of the UDA, I do believe that there are a multitude of stories to be told about how the WDA and Young Newton (by way of examples) came about. One of the stories I was told was about the UDA stand-off with the army in Ainsworth Avenue in the summer of 1972. It’s a well-known episode, but not many people know how messy it could have got. Maybe it’s a book for someone else to write. As I said, I just don’t think I could commit to another project like that at the moment, where you have to work hard tom gain the trust of people across elements of an organisation which has always been unwieldy in terms of its structure.

So, basically, I mentioned to Conor that maybe the priority was this project I was working on with Billy. I had one chapter at that stage, a rough draft of chapter one. Conor knew Billy and was very excited at the prospect of signing us up with Merrion. I had approached Merrion because, in my opinion, it is the best publisher in Ireland at the moment. The level of visibility for the books they publish is incredible. Belfast and Dublin airports always have Merrion books on display. They seemed to work incredibly hard for their writers, and that has proven to be the case. Everyone – Conor, Maeve, Patrick – that I have dealt with have been brilliant. It makes a huge different when a publisher is excited about your work and is trying to proactively sell it.

Billy, Conor and myself had a meeting in the PUP room in the City Hall in October 2019, we signed the contract the following week and I delivered the manuscript during the summer. Lock-down actually galvanised me and Billy to get a jog on. When we set up Zoom meetings we knew we couldn’t sit and talk about football for an hour before starting.

CO: At the 'Boots and Belts...' event in the Spectrum Centre (nearly two years ago!), Billy talked about the importance of loyalists coming forward to tell their stories because (in his words) "the IRA are trying to rewrite history", and you've talked about how frustrating it is to see projects like Darragh MacIntyre's Spotlight on the Troubles' programme focus on loyalism when it comes to collusion. With those in mind, what do you hope will come out of this book?

GM: It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since that event Christopher!

As I’ve said before, myself and Beano have worked hard at trying to get loyalists to tell their stories. We have reminded people that if they don’t tell their stories, someone else will.

It’s that old adage of leading a horse to water. But I totally understand why people don’t want to tell their stories. There is no slick machine behind former loyalist prisoners, no safety net to pull ranks around them if they decide to tell their stories and they get wholesale criticism. One former member of the RHC, when I asked him why he didn’t challenge the myths around certain issues, just said “What’s the point?” That’s the attitude, and it’s one I understand.

I wouldn’t single out Darragh MacIntyre for criticism but there was no sense in those Spotlight shows of loyalist paramilitarism as an organic response to what was going on in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. I don’t think people appreciate just how amateurish and unaided the loyalists were at that time. There’s footage of the UDA on Pop Goes Northern Ireland that shows what it was in 1971 – old men carrying sticks who were patrolling their own neighbourhoods. The narrative of the Spotlight programmes was that the Troubles was essentially a war between the British and the Provos. That doesn’t allow for agency within the loyalist experience; it relegates lived experience to a proxy for someone else’s propaganda.

I don’t hold out any hope of the floodgates opening after Billy’s book comes out. Those who want to tell their stories will and I think Iain Turner’s book will contain many of those crucial voices.

What I really want to see is more women from a loyalist background tell their stories. Those are important narratives which are disappearing at an exponential rate.

CO: Is there any chance of a similar work coming from Eddie Kinner, since you've been publishing some of his writings on your site?

GM: I would love to see that. In fact, one of the first lines in Tartan Gangs is about an interview Eddie gave to a US newspaper in 1994 where he talked about writing his autobiography. Sadly, that never happened, but I have been very encouraged to see his recent articles and perhaps that is a sign that he is toying with the idea of doing something. Eddie is an articulate advocate for progressive loyalism, and it has been great over the past few years – at the Shankill Road library event and then the PUP’s 40th anniversary conference – to facilitate discussion panels with him and Billy. There is a lot of mutual respect between the two of them. It is very clear.

I honestly thought that Plum Smith’s Inside Man would open the floodgates for loyalist accounts of the conflict, but it just never happened.

Beano has been proactive about publishing – whether through short memoir or poetry – autobiographical writing on his experiences; Ronnie ‘Flint’ McCullough is sitting on what I feel is the definitive story of loyalists in Long Kesh in the period 1972 – 1977.

Let’s hope some of these stories emerge before long.

CO: How many "Boots and Belts..." events took place, and how would you describe the crowds that came to them? Didn't one take place in Scotland?

GM: That’s a good question! I think there were only four of five in the end. We had one planned for Lurgan, and another planned for England, both of which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic.

The crowds that came to the events were overwhelmingly male and loyalist. That’s who we wanted to reach in the first instance, anything else was a bonus. At the first event in the Ballymac there were members of the Green Party and others there, and there was more of a mixture. The second Shankill event had a women’s group, and we drove home the point that their stories needed to emerge.

In Lurgan the locals were enthusiastic about storytelling but admitted a reticence among those outside Belfast to talk. Alan Gracey was in the audience. There’s a guy who has an incredible story to tell.

CO: Your recent work on the death of Sammy McCleave was one that I believe you had floated with Lyra McKee before her murder. What was it about his death (and the events that followed) that made you want to investigate?

GM: Yes, that’s correct. The day before Lyra was murdered we had exchanged emails where I had encouraged her to write about Sammy and his brother Anthony. She was very enthusiastic, and it was tragic to wake up to the news of her cruel death.

I suppose it comes back to that empathy quality. I know I have been accused by some people of being a ‘UVF fanboy’ – in fact, I should have and will take legal action when people try to defame me like that from now on – but my first experience of reading about the Troubles was reading about the Shankill Butchers. I was horrified to read about what had been done to people who could just as easily have been my dad (who lived on the Cliftonville Road during that 1975 to 1977 period). What was the reason for this brutality? I couldn’t get my head around it, and still can’t. Was that the full story on loyalism? Of course not, and I learned more about the human experiences that motivated young men to join the UVF/RHC/UDA.

I can still think of many of the names of people who were killed at random in the early to mid-1970s in Belfast – it’s like a grim grid reference in my head. I see streets, some of which have changed irrevocably, and often think of the blood that was shed on them. Both Catholics and Protestants died horrible and unnecessarily cruel deaths on the streets of my city during this period of history. I wouldn’t want to get into a hierarchy of victims, but one can’t help but be depressed by the appalling circumstances surrounding the deaths of people like Stephen McCann who were killed as part of the ‘conflict’. Then there’s this realisation that there were potentially maniacs running around who didn’t even bother to hide under the cloak of political or religious fervour – the sort of people I now believe were involved in the killing of Sammy McCleave. From 1973, when Sammy was murdered, right up to the murder of his brother (I do believe Anthony was murdered) almost to the day in June 1979 there’s this appalling vista of violence which interfaced with so many helpless and innocent people.

The research into the deaths of Sammy and Anthony, and also Freddie Davis – another gay man who was murdered in 1973 – is a different type of project for me. It has allowed me to indulge in a bit of Gordon Burn-esque prose. I would never seek to copy him, for who could even touch the master of that sort of writing, but his work – Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son and Happy Like Murderers are a massive influence on me and I aim to write this next book (for I hope it will be a book) in that vein.

CO: You've been writing about some of the pop cultural events (such as the Exorcist screening) in Belfast from that period. Such aspects of Belfast life are pretty much ignored when it comes to the traditional narrative (which suggests that alternative lifestyles/cultures did not exist in the city until punk). In your research of this period, what has been your most surprising find?

GM: This is probably partly where I got the impetus to write about Sammy, Freddie and Anthony. A lot of the backdrop to their lives and deaths will be Belfast of the time, and the pop cultural events that characterised the decade as well as the violence. There were certainly alternative lifestyles and cultures that long predated punk.

In the 1960s working class kids would rent rooms on Clifton Park Avenue and do acid. There were always Teds, mods, rockers, bikers etcetera before punk. We both know that there’s an unforgivable myth peddled that bands didn’t play in Northern Ireland. It isn’t true and it isn’t helpful for cultural historians. Neither are depictions that paramilitaries are a people apart – they were all men and women who had lifestyles and interests outside their organisations. I’m interested in looking at all people in their different dimensions. I find it fascinating.

In terms of the most surprising find – I’m not sure any one stands out at the moment, but certainly in The Exorcist research I had a chuckle when I read about Pastor Dale Gaver. In an ad from the North Down Christian Centre for their Bible Adventure Land they promised that Pastor Gaver could play the organ and accordion at the same time. Punters at Bible Adventure Land could also receive the ‘power of Exorcism’ before being evangelised at by a man called Steve Orange.

The 1970s in Northern Ireland was certainly bloody and horrific, but it was also as zany, seedy and hilarious as anywhere else in the UK. 

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist. 

⏭ Gareth Mulvenna is the author of My Life in Loyalism. His earlier work was  Tartan Gangs and Paramilitaries.

My Life In Loyalism

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