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Showing posts with label Book Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Reviews. Show all posts
Christopher Owens ðŸ”– With April 15th marking the centenary of his birth, it’s fitting that Belfast’s literary circles are reappraising the work of Pádraic Fiacc.




Although celebrated by the likes of Michael D. Higgins, Terence Brown and Gerald Dawe, his work is often overlooked in favour of others that he would have deemed (unfairly in some cases) as “pee the bed poets”. Growing up in Hell’s Kitchen before moving back to Belfast ensured he did not suffer fools gladly.

Published in 1986, Missa Terribilis (a reference to the feast of Peter and Paul) is a howl of despair emanating from the darkest, loneliest forest imaginable. By this stage, the conflict had been going on for 20 years, it had been over 10 years since the murder of friend/poet Gerard McLaughlin and Fiacc’s alcohol intake wasn’t healthy. Hence the whole mood is one of bleak anger.

Consider the following poem, ‘A Slight Hitch’ (layout as per book):

“We wanted to think it was the quarry,

But the pigeons roared with the white

Smoke, black smoke and the ghost



-faced boy broadcaster,

Fresh from the scene, broke down

Into quivering lips and wild



Tears (can you imagine, and him

‘Live’ on the TV screen!),



Had to be quickly replaced

So that the news could be announced

In the usual cold, acid

And dignified way by the



Northern Ireland British

Broadcasting Corporation.”

Notice how the tone manages to encompass cynicism, sympathy, weariness and mock horror at the same time to create something so caustic? It’s quite impressive and the myriad of emotions help lift it beyond what could have been (in other hands) a simple polemic piece?

As a diversion, ‘The United Ireland of the Seventies/A Qui Tollis’ (dedicated to Henry McDonald) depicts a world where

“Behind backstreets of Belfast, bombings

And killings go on to maim

Today and tomorrow’s flint

-eyed ‘killer kids’, emerging

from brick-wall wombs with

Blood-drained faces, while, to the death

Choking on their own vomit from the booze,

The terrible great worry in Dublin is

Whether or not to legalise

The Wearing of the Sheath.”

By suggesting that nothing would change in a united Ireland, he (perhaps inadvertently) invokes Connolly’s line about hosting the green flag over Dublin Castle wouldn’t change anything unless there was the will to do so. It’s also worth wondering if this is where Robert McLiam Wilson stole his “description” of our own Mackers.

Adopting different voices and splicing elements of black humour throughout, Missa Terribilis still has a visceral power after nearly 40 years because of how unflinching it is in its depiction of violence and hatred. The imagery is hard to shift from the mind but, crucially, there is defiance running through the book which lifts it beyond the realm of confessional or polemic poetry.

With the recent launch of a new anthology, as well as his work being translated into Irish for the first time, this is the time to celebrate an underappreciated (and quietly influential) Belfast writer.

Padraic Fiacc, 1986, Missa Terribilis, Blackstaff Press. ISBN-13: 0-856403601

⏩ 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.

Missa Terribilis

Christopher Owens ðŸ”–“Only way to feel the noise is when it's good and loud. So good I can't believe it, screaming with the crowd.”


So sang Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister in 1979. The track in question (‘Overkill’) would not only be the most astonishing collision of metal and punk up to that point, but it would be the beginning of Motorhead’s ascent into legend.

Since his death from cancer in December 2015 (two days after turning 70), the myth and legend of Lemmy has grown substantially. Regarded as a true rock n roller who drunk Jack Daniels every day while reading vicariously and playing loud music for a career, he lived life on his terms and never apologised for who he was.

So you would expect this autobiography, published in 2002, to be packed with rip roaring tales of debauchery, humour and music. And while these elements are all present and correct, it’s important to read it with the mindset that Lemmy’s bending your ear in the pub after having his tenth can of Carlsberg Special Brew.

Of course, it’s impossible to expect pinpoint accuracy and honesty when it comes to autobiographies of this nature (I seriously doubt that Lem’s mother saw newborn babies with rudimentary feathers and scales while working in a TB ward) so if you treat it as a pub yarn, then the stories about the 60’s, Hawkwind and Motorhead are utterly entertaining. Running throughout is his sense of humour, very much informed by The Goon Show and Monty Python. Take this example of how the band and crew dealt with a Norwegian promoter who kept giving them the wrong distances between gigs, meaning they were late on stage every night on that particular tour:

Finally in Trondheim we got totally fed up with him and covered him with squirty cheese. It was the fifth time we’d had to take a speedboat and we were two hours late for the show and we were really pissed off. Kids always think it’s the band’s fault when the gig starts late. So there we were on stage at last, and this cunt of a promoter was leaning against the PA like he was some Big Deal because it was in his hometown. And our roadies came up behind him and grabbed him, handcuffed him, dragged him out on stage and pulled his trousers down. Then they squirted him with the squeezy cheese and mayonnaise and anything else they could get their hands on. Our tour manager at the time, Graham Mitchell, walked up to the mic and said to the audience, ‘See this asshole? That’s why we’re late tonight!’ And, per-doom!, we pushed him off the stage. The guy wound up going to the police station – like that! Covered in slop, and in a taxi! After the gig, in the dressing room, we got the inevitable loud thump-thumpthump on the door, and it was this giant fucking cop – the Norwegians are real tall – who looked like the super-Gestapo.

‘I sink you haff done somezing very awful to this person,’ he informed us.

‘Yeah? Well, he told us all the wrong fucking directions,’ and all: we told him the story.

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ he said. ‘But zis is no reason to cover a man viz cheese!’”

Cultural differences, don’t you love them?

However, the reason I was a tad disappointed is that it felt like Lemmy was living up to his image a little too much at times. And yet the moments where he discusses his views on racism, Nazi memorabilia and history show that he was a proper self-educated working-class lad. A bit more insight along those lines would have been cool.

Then again, if it’s how he wanted to be portrayed, then he did so on his own terms.

Lemmy Kilmister,‎ Janiss Garza, 2002, White Line Fever: An Autobiography. Simon & Schuster ISBN-13: 978-1471157653


⏩ 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.







White Line Fever

Caoimhin O’Muraile ðŸ”–☭ This book, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, is an essential read for all who consider themselves socialists and, indeed, those who do not but are interested in politics.


Written by Robert Tressell (real name Robert Noonan) it tells the story of a group of building workers working for the firm Rushton and Co. (an apt name) in the town of Mugsborough (Hastings) in the early years of the 20th century. The book is a semi-autobiography written by Robert Noonan based very much on his own experiences. He chose the name Robert Tressell which is the name used as the author of the work. It sums up working conditions and practices of Edwardian Britain based purely on exploitation, bullying and ‘scamping the work’ simply for profit.

The book in parts is wildly thought to have had an influence on the 1945 UK General Election result which for the first time brought in a majority Labour administration led by Clement Attlee. Atlee’s programme was broadly socialist with manifesto promising a Welfare State, including a National Health Service and an end to the means testing for state benefits in the event of unemployment. It heralded in a new era of British politics basing the economy on the works of the liberal economist, John Maynard Keynes. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has been described as instrumental for this landslide victory of the then progressive if not exactly revolutionary, in its violent overthrowing of capitalism sense, Labour government. This was despite the fact that the full work was not published until 1955 by Lawrence and Wishart. Bt parts of the work, much written in pencil in Noonan’s spare time, were put together in some condensed versions before this date, hence ten years previous having a bearing on the election result.

The book is humorous, tragic and certainly very political, and explains the principles of socialism without the hard work of reading the works of Karl Marx. The working conditions of the men working on the site, renovating an old house, The Cave, owned by a Mr Adam Sweater, a friend of Mr Rushton the owner of the building firm Rushton and Co a man who knew absolutely nothing about the industry he claimed to be a leading light of. It was here at The Cave where the men were slave driven all day by the firm's Foreman, Mr Hunter or ‘Nimrod’ as he was called behind his back by the hands. Employed at The Cave were painters, plasterers, plumbers, bricklayers and general labourers, who Hunter harangued threatened and sacked. Mr Rushton paid as little in the form of wages he could get away with while demanding the maximum output from the men. Many of those employed by the firm were not in fact tradesmen at all but could at best be described as semi-skilled. Among those who were tradesmen was Frank Owen, a skilled painter who could also perform specialised work. He was an old school painter trained well by another craftsman. The names of the characters are all very appt and sum up the relative alternative use and meaning for their names.

Bob Crass was the foreman painter though he knew very little about the trade except how to ‘scamp’ or rush the work and grovel to the Foreman. Crass alternatively means ‘stupid’ which this character certainly was. The Foreman, Mr Hunter or ‘Nimrod’ was named such because he was always hunting or stalking the men always looking for an excuse to either sack a man or reduce his wages even further. If he could sack a full price man, he could bring in a ‘makeshift’ worker who was perhaps not fully qualified but could, for example, splash some paint over the wall. This way he could pay him below price thus saving the firm money but charging the customer full price for tradesmen’s work. 

One man outside Hunters reach was Frank Owen, who was a skilled man and more than that he was competent and took pride in his work. Other characters were Joe Philpot, who liked a drink and a full pot of ale, Will Easton and his wife, Ruth, who took in a lodger, a Bible thumper, as was Mr Hunter, named Slyme. Again appropriate names with dual interpretations. The good Christian (I think not) Slyme had an affair with Ruth Easton making her pregnant and therefore terrified of what her husband would say or how he would react. Slyme, the Bible thumping hypocrite, was a supposed workmate of Will Easton whose wife he had impregnated. Another tragic character is the young supposed apprentice, Bert White who was basically used by Rushton and Co as unpaid hard labour. There are many other characters, some hilarious, some sad others tragic but all relevant to the times. People like the ‘Semi-Drunk’, the ‘Besotted Wretch’ and the petit bourgeois ‘Old Dear,’ the pub landlord, all add to complete the novel.

Frank Owen was also a socialist which was why Mr Hunter despised him but could do nothing about it. Owen, probably named after Robert Owen, the socialist and industrialist who helped form the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU) back in the 19th century and formed a workers cooperative in Lanarkshire, Scotland. Owen spent tireless hours trying to convince the slave driven hands that there was a better way to run the world's affairs. A way based on cooperation and mutual help and a harmonious life called socialism. The underpaid, underfed hands were all hostile to this concept of Owen’s, many considering him “a bloody fool”. Perhaps the most hostile to Owen’s thinking was the foreman painter, Bob Crass. Crass considered himself a good friend of Mr Hunter, which he was not as Nimrod had no friends, and because the Foreman, Hunter, allowed Crass to help out in the firms undertaking side of business Crass considered himself well in with the bosses! Owen described the principle of exploitation in the most basic way to make the concept easier for the men to understand. Crass constantly tried to outflank Owen, with absolutely no success, with articles from his daily read; The Daily Obscurer a paper which, as the title suggests, obscures the readers already infantile mind from anything approaching the truth.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has had a huge impact over the years in changing people’s political outlooks and opinions. Many would-be onetime fascists have become socialists after reading this book. Perhaps a famous example of such a transformation of political position is that of the actor and onetime trade unionist, Ricky Tomlinson. Tomlinson was given a two-year prison sentence in 1972 for his part in the first national construction workers strike Britain had ever seen. He and another union activist and construction worker, Des Warren, were jailed for two years. However, prior to Tomlinson’s involvement in socialist and trade union activities he was, under his own admission, a member of the fascist National Front (NF) in Britian. He was inspired at the time by Enoch Powells ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968. What completely transformed his views and political position, making him an ant-fascist, was reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists so influential is the read. Ricky Tomlinson is now a member of ‘Socialist Labour’ with Arthur Scargill, the former miner’s union leader.

The book is considered by many, including myself, to be the socialist bible and describes in a humorous though sometimes sad, regards the story, and informative way the principles of socialist politics and economics without the hard work of Marx’s Das Kapital. Perhaps some of Britain’s contemporary Labour MPs should read this book and have a rethink about the modern Labour Party’s position and how far off the track, derailed, they have become!

Critics of the book say things like ‘oh yes that was all very well over a hundred years ago but things are not like that now’. Really? The principles applied by Tressell in this work are as applicable today as they were then. People are still grafting for starvation wages, are still without a roof over their heads, are still exploited just as the hands were in the town of Mugborough. The only aspect which has changed is the advancement of the means of production, something which under socialism would benefit the whole of humankind, but under capitalism only advances the interests and profits of the employers.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is available in many bookshops including the Communist Party of Ireland shop, Connolly Books in Essex Street, Temple Bar Dubin, the Sinn Fein Book Shop (or it once was stocked there), Parnell Square Dublin and many other shops. A recommended read for all students of politics not just socialists, after all, we are the ‘converted’ but those who may consider themselves ideologically removed from socialism, like Ricky Tomlinson once was. Tomlinson is not alone in his complete change of political position. I personally know of former fascist sympathisers who are now vehemently anti-fascist often fighting them on the streets. Many will tell you one of the greatest influences in their change was reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

Robert Tressell, 2012,  The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Publisher: ‎Wordsworth Editions. ISBN-13: ‎978-1840226829

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Brandon Sullivan & Sean Bradfield 🕮 continue with their review of Martin Dillon's The Shankill Butchers. 



Chapter Two – A Killer is Blooded

(Intro & Chapter One is here).

Note – due to the density of materiel in A Killer is Blooded, this article is split into two sections. The second part will follow soon.

The atmosphere in 1972

This chapter begins with an interesting and well-presented overview of the political temperature of Northern Ireland at the beginning of 1972, and how it increases throughout that year. The malignant nature of politicians like Bill Craig is analysed, as well as the impact of IRA actions on sections of the PUL community. Quotes are used to describe a growing extremism with militant loyalism, with Dillon noting that a: “phrase which frequently found its way into Loyalist news sheets and bulletins was ‘the Provos and their passive sympathizers’. A lack of any proper definition of the enemy encouraged many Loyalists to believe that all Catholics were IRA sympathizers, if not actual supporters.” Other quotes are now infamous, Bill Craig’s call to “liquidate the enemy” and “God help those who get in our way.”

Notes on Lenny Murphy’s personality

Focusing back onto Lenny Murphy, Dillon again offers insight into his personality:

In the first six months of 1972 Lenny Murphy was preparing for his terrorist career in a most unusual fashion by attending many of the murder trials being held in Belfast’s Crumlin Road courthouse. He not only appeared in the public gallery at the trials of those UVF members whom he knew but also at trials involving members of the IRA. Murphy was learning about the law, the nature of witness and forensic evidence, and when such evidence was ruled admissible or inadmissible.

Dillon quotes an RUC man who had this to say about Murphy:

Lenny loved his notoriety and the fact that we knew who he was. He enjoyed watching the reaction of his friends when he talked to me or my colleagues. It was as if he was saying to his friends, ‘Look, I can talk to these jerks and they don’t know what the hell I’m up to and even if they suspect me there is nothing they can do about it.’ … He was like the smiling assassin. When I saw him in the scarf and the leather jacket he reminded me of those First World War pilots who were going off in glory to battle and were loved by the women. He was like that. He always had young girls around him even in the courthouse. There was a Jack-the-Lad quality about him as well. I’m not a homosexual, you understand, but I have to say he was good-looking. I think in retrospect that he saw himself as a film star.

Dillon wrote:

The only apparent thing was his pathological hatred of Catholics which he constantly stressed in all his conversations. He seemed a hardworking shop assistant, though his criminal activities paid for his flamboyant lifestyle of heavy drinking and womanizing.

Numerous accounts of Murphy from his time in prison, and others of him socialising, suggest he was not overtly sectarian at all times, and could in fact be charming and likeable. This is also borne out by anecdotes shared with us by people who encountered Murphy in pubs and music venues in Belfast city centre up to and including the early years of the conflict. It is also worth noting that later in the book Dillon states that Murphy was not a particularly heavy drinker which contradicts the assertion above.

Murphy’s relationship with the security forces is returned to in Dillon’s book, as well as others. It seems clear that he enjoys being a person-of-interest to the RUC and army. In his memoir, Billy Hutchinson recounts Murphy being upset that soldiers arrested Hutchinson but not Murphy when they were stopped together in 1972. Another incident where Murphy came to the attention of the security forces is not covered by Dillon. During 1972 when loyalists were setting up no-go areas across Belfast Murphy had a brush with the army when he stole a military vehicle and narrowly escaped a custodial sentence. This would fit into a pattern of behaviour which preceded the Troubles when Murphy and some of his associates were prolific car thieves.

Dillon's attempt to flesh out the Lenny Murphy behind the subsequent headlines is limited. This is largely due to the fact that it is unlikely that many people who knew Murphy well would have spoken to Dillon; though it is evident that he did try to get information - he recounts arranging a meeting with Margaret Berry, Murphy's ex-wife, while he was researching the book. At the last minute she cancelled the arrangement as her husband, a former associate of Murphy, didn't approve.

One of the authors has spoken to people who knew Murphy well, including some family members, and recollections range from 'a sound guy' to 'an utter psychopath' - this isn't surprising and speaks to the complexities of comradeship and kinship in a low-intensity conflict situation.

What we do know about Murphy from the conversations that we have had with people who knew him are that he was, on the surface, as Dillon states, much like any other young man of his age. He loved music, particularly the Beatles (and later Wings) and when he was told that he reminded someone of the pop star David Essex, he immediately started getting his hair styled a la Essex 'Gonna Make You A Star' era.

A common thread in anecdotes about Murphy's development into his later notoriety was the murder of Thomas Kells and the anger this stirred within the young loyalist. Some senior loyalists also talked about a particularly gruesome torture murder of a Protestant in 1972. The man, who was associated with loyalist politics, was allegedly found in a cold storage van and the loyalists one of the authors spoke to still talk animatedly about how the RUC pasted SOC photos of the victim on walls around the Shankill. Whether this is true or apocryphal, it demonstrates the then pertaining mood and the increasing levels of barbarity in society.

Back to the chapter in question, Dillon goes on to link Murphy to four killings that, for various reasons that we will explore, are at the very least open to question.

Reappraising murders attributed to Lenny Murphy in 1972

On page 34 of this chapter, Dillon writes:

His [Lenny Murphy] first direct involvement in killing was on Friday 21 July 1972. That day a thirty-four-year-old Catholic, Francis [Frankie] Arthurs, from Fallswater Street off the Falls Road, was travelling in a taxi from the predominantly Nationalist Ardoyne area in North Belfast. The taxi was stopped on the Crumlin Road, which runs parallel to the Shankill Road. The mistake made by Arthurs was a classic one, in that the enclave from which the taxi emerged signalled to those watching the area that the occupant of the vehicle was a Catholic. Arthurs was drunk and was unaware that the previous night a young Catholic couple, also travelling in a taxi, had been apprehended and murdered. When Arthur’s taxi was stopped he was bundled out of the vehicle unceremoniously and was hit over the head with a metal object. He was then taken to the Lawnbrook Social Club, a Loyalist club off the Shankill Road.

Later in the chapter, Dillon states:

A detective revealed to me details of Murphy’s involvement in another murder which occurred around this period. I could not, however, trace the victim because of the number of unsolved crimes in June and July of 1972. The detective’s source, which I cannot reveal here, could be described in journalistic terms as impeccable. This informant described how Murphy beat and tortured a Catholic man in a lock-up garage in a street running from the Shankill Road to the Catholic Springfield Road. The informant confirmed one detail about Murphy in these words: ‘Lenny hit the guy harder than the rest of the people there that night. It was as if he was out to prove that he hated the Taigs more than the rest of us. He wanted to show that he was more violent and more capable than anyone else there. He was the one who used the knife before we shot the guy.’

Dillon again:

One month after the Arthurs killing an elderly Catholic was murdered in a way which bears a striking resemblance to the Arthurs crime. Though no one was ever brought to justice for these murders, it was thought that the manner of killing strongly indicated the same hand at work.

And later:

The third murder was that of forty-eight-year-old Thomas Madden who worked in a mill on the Crumlin Road and who, due to the geography of Belfast, was obliged to travel each day through tough Protestant enclaves to reach his place of work. Madden was a bachelor, an inoffensive man who enjoyed a drink and went to Mass on Sundays. He lived in a boarding house in Cliftonpark Avenue in North Belfast and worked as a security guard, which involved night shift duty. Three weeks before his death he was stopped by vigilantes and taken to a club on the Shankill where he was interrogated. There is little doubt that it was the Lawnbrook Social Club, where Arthurs was murdered.

Of these four killings, two of the victims are named, and two are not. Of the two that are not named, regarding the man alleged to have been tortured and murdered by Murphy in a lock-up garage between the Shankill and Springfield Roads, working on the assumption that Murphy and his fellow murderers would dump their victim close to where the murder took place, we looked to Lost Lives and the CAIN index for June and July 1972 to see if we could identify the victim. Despite exhaustive searches of all available open source records, we were unable to – perhaps John O’Hanlon, but his body was left in Twickenham Street, which was closer to the Oldpark than the Springfield Road adjacent part of the Shankill.

Regarding the murder of an “elderly Catholic” a month after Frankie Arthurs was killed (so by the end of August 1972), the oldest Catholic to die in this timeframe was 57 year old James Casey, shot dead by the British army in Derry. We do not believe that an elderly Catholic man was killed in the circumstances Dillon describes in the timeframe given and are not sure why this was suggested by the author.

Regarding the two named victims, Frankie Arthurs and Thomas Madden, these are widely regarded as having been carried out by members of the UDA, and not of the UVF. As Dillon points out in his book, dual membership and overlap of association - before regimental loyalty became a defining characteristic of loyalist militancy - means that the situation in 1972 was fluid. But there are a number of other reasons why it could be wrong to connect these murders to Lenny Murphy.

Dillon gets a number of details wrong about the murder of Frankie Arthurs. He states that Arthurs was travelling in a taxi from Ardoyne when in fact he was travelling from the Engineer's Club in Corporation Street in the centre of Belfast, having spent an evening socialising with his girlfriend and others. The city was tense, having been subjected to widespread bombing earlier in the day. This would become notorious as Bloody Friday.

The taxi containing Arthurs, his girlfriend and another man and woman was stopped at a loyalist roadblock (vehicle checkpoint) on the Crumlin Road, near to St Mary's Church of Ireland, between Silvio Street and Yarrow Street. Along with the other passengers Arthurs was asked for identification and then frog-marched towards Yarrow Street – not to the Lawnbrook social club. Arthurs was also not struck with a wheelbrace after he left the taxi, as Dillon claims. Arthurs' girlfriend later gave a chilling account of what actually happened. Having been asked to exit the taxi, all the occupants were allowed to get back inside. One of the loyalists then returned to the taxi and spoke to Arthurs: 'Right, out you.' His girlfriend said "He did not protest or put up any fight to the men. He was taken by the arm by a number of men who took him round the front of the taxi and across Crumlin Road towards Yarrow Street. As soon as Frankie was out of my sight a dark haired man twentyish and slightly built came and spoke to the driver of the taxi. I didn't hear what was said but the taxi driver turned the car and he drove to Glenravel Street Police Station.' Dillon claims that Arthurs' mistake (coming from Ardoyne in a taxi, which he didn't) was a 'classic one' and that a couple had been abducted and murdered in similar circumstances the previous evening. In fact, the couple Dillon alludes to were taken around an hour before Arthurs was abducted and we consider it likely that elements of the same killer gang were involved in both murders.

Dillon claims that once in the Lawnbrook Club Lenny Murphy repeatedly stabbed Frankie Arthurs. The source of that information is however of dubious quality: 

Joe Bennett, who later became one of the major UVF supergrasses, once told a friend that Murphy stood out from others that night as the most barbarous gang member present.

Bennett was a skilled bomb-maker who was popular with some UVF members but regarded as unreliable due to his womanising and gambling problems. In the early 1980s a large number of senior UVF members were convicted on foot of Bennett's supergrass evidence.

In December 1984, after a lengthy appeal process, the men were released; Lord Lowry questioned the credibility of Bennett's evidence and the UVF men won their appeal. Bennett has long been regarded as a fantasist in UVF circles and while there may well be some truth to what he claimed in the supergrass trials his legacy is that of an unreliable witness.

Thus information he is alleged to have given 'a friend' about the circumstances surrounding the murder of Arthurs must be read in the context of his unreliability.

It is worth noting that in almost all accounts of the brutal and sadistic murder of Frankie Arthurs (including coroner's reports from the time) he is not noted as having been stabbed.

Elsewhere in the book, Dillon spoke of Murphy’s hesitance in being seen with other members of loyalist paramilitary organisations. This would exclude him from the roadblock at which Frankie was abducted, where his girlfriend states that a 'fair-haired man' was in charge.

It is possible he would have been at the venue around Yarrow Street where the unfortunate man was taken, but we do not believe that it is plausible. Convictions were secured against some men who murdered Catholic civilians in identical circumstances to those in which Frankie was killed, and in all cases those involved were UDA members.

Throughout the summer of 1972 press coverage (mainly in the south of Ireland) began to publish articles about a 'Jack the Ripper'-style loyalist assassin operating out of Yarrow Street. This seems to have been forgotten or ignored through the sands of time, despite matching up with what contemporaneous witness statements suggest.

The murder of Thomas Madden in August 1972 was horrifying (see newspaper graphics at the end of this article). Dillon claims that Madden’s first abduction saw him being taken to the Lawnbrook social club. He offers no evidence for this, despite saying “there can be little doubt.” In fact, it seems that the UDA, and not the UVF, had taken an interest in Madden, having shot his brother, Hugh, dead earlier in the year. It seems that Madden, like Arthurs, was brutally murdered by UDA men operating around the Crumlin Road/Oldpark areas of Belfast. There was an extremely active, extremely brutal group of men abducting, torturing and murdering Catholic men in that area at that time. We do not believe that there is compelling evidence to suggest that Lenny Murphy was among them. We do believe that Davy Payne was.

On page 36 on chapter two, Dillon states that: “Until now [1989, date of the book’s publication] no-one has known of Lenny Murphy’s involvement in several murders in the summer of 1972.” In fact, on the 27th November 1982, the republican newspaper sold in the USA, the Irish People, published an article titled “Lennie Murphy’s Bloody Career” which linked Murphy to the murders of Arthurs and Madden.


Contemporaneous newspaper reports of Thomas Madden’s murder note that his ears were cut off. On the 26 August 1972, two Catholic men from Ballymena, John Nulty and Patrick Kelly, were abducted together, tortured, murdered, and their bodies left in separate locations “400 yards apart in the Oldpark area.” One of the men had had an ear cut off, and another had his tattoos gouged with a knife. The CAIN website, among other databases, list these two murders as the work of the UVF. In terms of the appalling treatment of the politically uninvolved civilians murdered, and the location, and the time-frame, it could be reasonably assumed that the same gang was responsible. We think that Dillon linking Murphy to the murders of Arthurs and Madden, but not Nulty and Kelly, does not make much sense. The Woodvale UDA were notorious in the summer of 1972 for operating in plain sight - quite literally picking innocent Catholics who drove into their vehicle checkpoints off the street at will (often during daylight hours) and subjecting them to unimaginable cruelty before murdering them and leaving their bodies in the Lower Oldpark/Clifton Park Avenue areas (see newspaper graphics at the end of this article).

Dillon also wrote:

Four weeks after the death of Thomas Madden another Catholic, fifty-year-old William Matthews, was found dead in the Glencairn Estate in a spot where Lenny Murphy was later to dump many of his victims. Matthews’ body also bore the signs of torture and the use of a knife. Again, the character of the wounds indicated the hand which killed Arthurs and Madden.

It is not implausible that Murphy was involved in this killing. As we will see, he headed to Glencairn after other paramilitary operations. We feel that this is clutching at straws, given the number of killer squads operating in the area at the time.

Less than a week after the murder of William Matthews, was a killing for which Lenny Murphy was tried and which fits an emerging pattern of a Murphy as an accomplished gunman whose preferred mode of transport during murders was a motorcycle. 






‎Martin Dillon, 2009, The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder. Cornerstone Digital. ASIN: ‎B003RRY608

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

⏩Sean Bradfield is a Former researcher who shouldn't care about this stuff so much but can't help himself.

The Shankill Butchers – A Reappraisal – Part Two (A)

Sarah Kay ðŸ”– Erasure takes so, so many forms.


We talk of erasure when talking about censorship; silencing; oppression, suppression, and the annihilation in its absolute form, genocide. In an era of rampant state violence, from police brutality to wars of expansion, the chant remains the same: say their names. But how do we pass on this knowledge? Above all, what does bearing witness mean?

Erasure is an odd term. It can be active or passive. It doesn’t, in itself, indicate violence. If nothing else, it is about the passing of time. Remnants of past civilisations – Pompeii, Athens, Jerusalem, Homs, Bamiyan – those places were erased, but not for the same ggkreasons. The elements do not have criminal liability. Survivors are not carrying the same burden.

In Against Erasure, we catch a glimpse at life in Palestine before the 1948 Nakba. A Palestine that rises from the ashes of military destruction. We see multigenerational families tending to olive groves; we see patriarchs with long white beards reading to young grandchildren; we see women in colourful dresses, resting on a thick, rich rug, sharing tea and wisdom amongst themselves. We see lives, intertwined and interdependent, living peacefully, including the presence of other ethnicities: an Armenian family; a Bedouin tent; a group of Coptic monks. Musicians, artists – singers, oud players, trumpetists – adorn the pages of this book, full of life, full of history, heavy with millennia-old knowledge.

Erasure, in a genocidal context, is not simply about human extinction. It is about annihilation of culture, of tradition, but most importantly, of memory. We see the same dynamics at play on a lesser level but with the same intent elsewhere: book bans, historical revisionism, passive voice in news coverage. By erasing suffering, we erase victimhood. By erasing victimhood, we erase its cause. We erase culpability, and root causes. We then all become unwilling participants in the process of destruction.

Bearing witness is not about the reckless consumption of graphic horror on the daily basis. Bearing witness Is knowing what is in front of us – erasure – and refusing it. We say names, but we also know the faces. We talk about places, but we also know what they looked like before walls, checkpoints, and military patrols. Candlelit processions to mosques, parades, murals on the walls of schools and processions in Gaza, the times of the British mandate however must not be seen through positive nostalgia. It was colonisation still, and state control pouring out of every frame. But the aspiration for a different and better future was still there.

Against Erasure affirms that Palestinians have the right to exist; the right to live free from violence; the right to their language, their history, their culture and their land, a fertile one stretching from the river to the sea. Our duty is never to forget.

Teresa Aranguren and Sandra Barrilaro, 2024, Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba. Translated from the Spanish edition by Róisín Davis with Hugo Rayón Aranguren. Haymarket Books.ISBN-13: ‎978-1642599800.

⏩ Sarah Kay is a human rights lawyer.

Against Erasure

Christopher Owens ðŸ”– “Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature” according to the sticker on my copy.






I’m not certain if that’s meant to be a sales pitch or a warning. However, it’s in relation to the author Jon Fosse whose 40-year career as an author and playwright in Norway have seen him labelled “the new Beckett” and “the new Isben” respectively.

The press blurb gives us the plot in a suitably ambiguous tone:

A man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and finally he gets stuck at the end of a forest road. Soon it gets dark and starts to snow, but instead of going back to find help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably, the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity.

And with the novella running to 56 pages, its safe to say this succinctly describes the plot. However, it’s all about the details.

It's not a million miles away from a book I reviewed on here a few years ago called Fin. But while that book was overtly spiritual, A Shining is less so and somewhat mysterious in what it is subjecting the protagonist to. Is he having a mental breakdown, have forces beyond his understanding compelled him to enter the forest, is he making it up? He doesn’t seem to be fearful of his situation, maybe more bemused and quizzical. This placidness renders him something of a blank canvass for the reader but whether that is good or bad is up for debate.

Take this segment where he believes that his parents are in the forest with him:

She says: you don’t know the way—and he says no and she says she was sure he knew where the way was, he always knew the way, she couldn’t remember a single time when he hadn’t known the way, she was sure he knew the way, she would never have imagined anything else, she says and she’s stopped, and she’s let go of my father’s arm and now she’s looking up at him, and she says, and her voice sounds scared: you don’t know the way, you can’t find the way back home—and my father shakes his head. She says: so why did we walk so far into the forest—and my father doesn’t answer, he just stands there stiffly. She says: answer me. He says: but we came here together. She says: no, it was you who dragged me into the forest. He says: but you wanted to find him.

There are a few interpretations here: the narrator’s fear that his parents have no interest in him manifests, he’s befuddled (which comes through in the imaginary dialogue) or there’s my belief that it doesn’t give the reader enough to work with. Coupled with the narrator being less of a defined personality and more of a Rorschach test and it all feels like a lot of (admittedly excellent) style and little substance which is reinforced by this quote:

…this sudden urge to drive off somewhere had brought me to a forest. And there was another way of talking, according to which something, something or another, led, whatever that might mean, to something else, yes, something else.

Unsurprisingly, many reviewers have picked up on the Christian angle that permeates throughout the text. Certainly, the title and premise seem to reference the phrase “Jai guru deva om” which, roughly translated, means “glory to the shining remover of darkness.” But, although I certainly recognise this interpretation, I maintain that Fosse writes in such an oblique, ambivalent manner that these issues are never developed not debunked.

Enjoyable, and evocative in places, but very much a literary game.

Jon Fosse (tr. Damion Searls), 2024, A Shining. Fitzcarraldo Editions. ISBN-13: 978-1804271032

⏩ 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.

A Shining

Aaron Edwards ðŸ”–covers two works in the Dublin Review of Books.

Stakeknife’s Dirty War: The Inside Story of Scappaticci, the IRA’s Nutting Squad, and the British Spooks who ran the War, by Richard O’Rawe, Merrion Press, 254 pp, €18.99, ISBN: 978-1785374470
The Padre: The True Story of the Irish Priest who armed the IRA with Gaddafi’s Money, by Jennifer O’Leary, Merrion Press, 256 pp, €18.99, ISBN: 978-1785374616

In his novel The Human Factor (1978), the wartime MI6 officer turned novelist Graham Greene takes us on an exploration of the motives of those involved in secret intelligence. The plot revolves primarily around a mole hunt for a spy leaking classified information, though what really drives the story forward is the rivalry between different intelligence agencies. Greene’s depiction of a conference held between MI5, which had responsibility for running agents in former British colonies, and MI6, which was meant to deal with threats outside Britain and the Commonwealth, speaks to how intelligence work was akin to what would pass for office politics in normal workplaces. 

Continue reading @  Dublin Review of Books.

A Bodyguard Of Lies

Christopher Owens ðŸ”– treads with the Teds.

You weren't here when the Teddy Boys arrived on the scene in the Fifties…London doesn't remember them with any fondness...Those crepe-soled shoes they wear, they had razor blades sunk in the toes. No, London doesn't remember the Teds with any fondness.

This quote, attributed to a friend of Jerry Hopkins (author of the infamous No One Here Gets Out Alive) is a succinct distillation of how people now view the first wave of Teddy Boys: volent, racist malcontents wearing long out of date clothing whose love of the fledging rock n roll movement laid the foundation for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (i.e. better things).

Like all narratives that seem too simplistic, there’s much more to the story than that. And Max Décharné (former drummer for the highly underrated Gallon Drunk) is determined to set the record straight.

Growing up in post-war Britain (particularly the East End of London), the birth of the teenager as a marketing concept coincided with the growing concern about their morality due to teen violence. As a result, the term “cosh boy” (which first appeared in print in 1950) quickly became associated with juvenile delinquency. However, in a foreshadowing of the moral panic about Teds, a cosh could be anything from a knotted hankie containing loose change to genuine coshes. Coupled with the simple fact that youths felt it necessary to carry something to protect themselves (even in 1950) and we start to see the formation of a folk villain.

By the early 50’s, there had been a revival in Edwardian fashion (because the fashion industry loves nothing more than recycling old crap and presenting it as modern) and working-class kids were spending a fair bit on Edwardian suits. Add in the DA’s (duck’s arses) for haircuts and the Teddy Boys were born. Quickly replacing the cosh boy, Teds were loud, crude and violent. Throw in the arrival of rock n roll (particularly ‘Rock Around the Clock’ by Bill Hailey and the Comets) and we have the birth of the real 1950’s (once described by Lux Interior as the height of culture in the Western world).

All of this makes for an enthralling and fascinating read. Going through contemporary news, Décharné clearly had a blast writing this book and his enthusiasm rubs off on the reader. What is a genuine surprise is the revelation that the Ted look actually predates the arrival of rock n roll in Britain by a year or so. Beforehand, cultural commentators of the day seemed to be unsure of what the youth were actually listening to.

Unsurprisingly, there are very few first-hand accounts of Ted life. Apparently, some were approached for comment but, owing to their age, chose not to discuss anything with Décharné as it was a long time ago and any teenage misbehaviour they’d prefer to keep to themselves. This is a genuine shame as it would be fascinating to read such recollections from people in their 80’s/90’s about being involved in such a subculture.

Where things turn sinister is the chapter about the Notting Hill riot in 1958. One reviewer has criticised Décharné by arguing that he downplays the extent of the involvement of certain Teds in the riot, passing most of the blame onto Oswald Mosley and his supporters. While I would strongly disagree that the author does this, I can see how a casual reader would come to such a conclusion as the chapter ends rather abruptly (as if there is nothing else to discuss).

On top of the points made by Décharné in the book, it’s important to remember that such a youth subculture would have thousands of members. By sheer weight of numbers, there will be scumbags in there who are simply following the latest fashion trend. Therefore, it’s a sad reality that there were Teds involved in the riot, but they did not dominate the anti-immigrant segment (indeed, one revelation is that in a 2003 BBC documentary about the riots, footage of Teds from the 70’s was decolourised and placed without comment in the narrative to illustrate their involvement).

As time wore on, the Teddy Boy look subsided, and the Beatles (all former Teds) took over the world. The rock n roll revival in the late 60’s/early 70’s would see a new generation of Teds emerge before they slowly metamorphosed into psychobilly and punk rock (Malcolm and Viviene ran a shop called Let it Rock before Sex plus look at this photo of John Lydon). Nowadays, the dominant image of a rock n roller is that of a quiffed up greaser in a leather jacket and Teds (even second-generation ones) have put away the brothel creepers in favour of listening to country music and going to see cover acts walking their way through once incendiary songs.

But listen to those early recordings from Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry. Despite them being nearly a century old, they still sound fresh, vibrant and raw. It’s no wonder that a generation of British youth, having come of age post WWII and seen the devastation of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, latched onto it for dear life.

Altogether now:

I'm gonna raise a fuss, I'm gonna raise a holler/About a-workin' all summer just to try to earn a dollar/Every time I call my baby, try to get a date/My boss says, "no dice son, you gotta work late.

Max Décharné, 2024, Teddy Boys: Post-War Britain and the First Youth Revolution. Profile Books. ISBN-13: 978-1846689789

⏩ 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.

Teddy Boys

Anthony McIntyre ðŸ”– As events this week have shown, albeit not as transparently as many would have wished for, the British state fought a dirty war against the Provisional IRA.


Not as vicious as the Dirty War waged from 1976-83 by the Argentine military junta, the British state nevertheless when asked to show its hands to the world, wore every type of glove imaginable to conceal its grime stained palms and fingers. When British military figures complain that they were never allowed to take their gloves of during the conflict, Richard O'Rawe in his introduction to the world of Murder Incorporated helps us more readily understand why.

Stakeknife's Dirty War introduces to the public one of the key figures relied upon by the British State to wage that war and in so doing achieves what Operation Kenova fails to - he firmly identifies the former head of the IRA's Internal Security Unit Freddie Scappaticci as the agent Stakeknife.

Why Kenova failed to confirm what everybody knows is an indication of how little the public can expect from its report. While I never thought from the outset that any prosecutions would result, I became unflinchingly convinced of that belief once the Kenova team charged Scappaticci with possession of animal porn. There seemed only one reason for that. Given what the state had swept under the carpet, the comparatively minor offence of possessing extreme pornography, could as easily have been buried in the files marked 'murder'  It is not that there was a shortage of them within which to conceal a picture of Freddie and his favourite donkey, dog or duck. There seemed one glaring reason for porn prosecution - to ensure that Scap would have been discredited as a witness should he ever turn up in a court to face his British army handlers.  That was a signpost from Kenova emblazoned with 'cul-de-sac.' So despite this week's press conference and the flashing bulbs from cameras, Kenova emitted more heat than light. 

The book sets out as it intends to go on - a compromised IRA operation which led to the commander, interviewed by the author, to assume that the hidden hand of the informer was at play. An omnipresent in the history of armed republican rebellion the type has become reviled for the damage it has wreaked in republican ranks. The ostensible task of the informer is to disrupt. If the state and its shills are to be believed then the state was the fisher of men and what it caught in its net, the saver of lives. That tall tale has been cut down to size, O'Rawe, and this week Kenova, firmly putting the myth to bed. Informers, with the approval of their State handlers, were often causing more deaths than they were preventing. 

Even if the ethics of agent handler is cast aside in a realpolitik trade-off where success is measured in terms of fewer graves, the whole exercise has proved redundant. Stakeknife, unlike one of the IRA army council figures who kept him in position, was not into the business of secret graves. His undertaking trade is quantifiable and the balance sheet is not a healthy one. Agents were merchants of death, and often the parachutes they were given failed to open because they were designed not to. Most of them were rescued only after they had died. 

Richard O'Rawe set himself the unenviable task of putting a face on the monster that was Stakeknife. He did not set out to polish a turd as the late British general John Wilsey did. The reader can figuratively smell the stench of decomposition wafting from the pages. 

Freddie Scappaticci's early life emerges to see the light of day. No one else has painted such a detailed picture of one of Britain's knives that were plunged into the heart of not only the Provisional IRA and its victims, but also eviscerated the rule of law. In short there was no rule of law, merely the rule of law enforcement. O'Rawe makes it clear that Steak was not the only type of knife brandished. The solicitor for many of the families said this week that there were many knives manufactured for cutting up the IRA's war effort. Given the desire of the British - aided by Sinn Fein leaders and agents of influence - to cover up for its abominations, the war generation will most likely not live long enough to discover those other knives: pork knives, fish knives, boning knives, bangers knives, paring knives. A catalogue of them could be put together, stamped made in Britain for sale in Ireland.

O'Rawe describes Scappaticci as 'a hugely important historical figure'. A claim hard to disagree with considering his presence in the media for almost three decades, firstly with the years of suspicion about who this top mole in the IRA might be and, then, even more pronounced after he was outed twenty years ago.

O'Rawe spoke to a range of former IRA volunteers for the work. He clearly managed to get on the inside track. Given the state security services' determination to monopolise the narrative and its penchant for pursuing those who refuse to allow it to do so by offering their own, it is understandable why O'Rawe's voices should chose anonymity. Those of us familiar with the terrain are savvy enough to grasp the authenticity behind the screen. Some of those with a Derry accent posed huge questions about the trustworthiness of former IRA chief of staff Martin McGuinness. O'Rawe declines to pass judgement on the matter but by the sheer act of allowing misgivings to be aired, he has invited the question: did McGuinness do what it said on his tin or was there something more sinister at play? It is a can Sinn Fein will want kicked down the road for some time to come. 

The author makes a point about the noncombatants who also spoke to him. They too wanted to conceal their identity such was the 'power and fear' that Scap had exercised over the nationalist community. 

Former IRA volunteers who agreed to cooperate with the book made a valuable contribution to a venture that was very much 'not a feel-good story.' When the reader is confronted with the brutal torture that the Internal Security Unit meted out to a man it had in its custody for a time, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib leap to mind. Had he not held out Kenova would this week be reporting to his family. There comes with this account a grim realisation often pointed out by Denis Faul during his sermons to the blanket protestors in the H Blocks that man's worst fate is to fall into the hands of man.

O'Rawe, never a shrinking violet, when it comes to putting matters on the record, has done both republican historiography and public understanding an immense service. When many others preferred silence over candour he came up to the plate. Unfortunately, it is a sad reflection of the nature of truth recovery that people will feel they have obtained more from reading this book than they have from perusing the Kenova Report.

Read it and weep. 

Richard O'Rawe, 2023, Stakeknife's Dirty War: The Inside Story of Scappaticci, the IRA's Nutting Squad and the British Spooks Who Ran the War. Merrion Press. ISBN-13: ‎978-1785374470.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Stakeknife's Dirty War

Christopher Owens ðŸ”– “Was it not corrupt to bury mother of 10 Jean Mc Conville. Is that acceptable to you. Selective outrage I thinks.”



Now who do you think wrote this? Some do-gooder who likes to think they’re a Good Person? An apologist for the British Army? A Twitter account that commemorates the deaths of loyalist paramilitaries without disclosing said fact?

Well, it was none other than Sinn Fein TD Chris Andrews.

In 2012, using a sock puppet account, he proceeded to tweet out various criticism/insults aimed at various colleagues in his then party, Fianna Fail. Unsurprisingly, he was sacked when it emerged that he was behind the account. Embarrassingly for him, he had also attacked Sinn Fein about the Northern Bank robbery and the disappearance of Jean McConville. Tellingly, he was allowed to join the party (and is currently suing The Irish Times over an article about Hamas).

While it would be easy to dismiss this as playground politics, it is notable just how little Andrews seemed to know about the history of Fianna Fail, particularly how certain TD’s had ‘disappeared’ people themselves during the War of Independence. Indeed, the “good old IRA” disappeared more people in three years than the Provos did in thirty. When considered with the south’s whitewashing of its recent history (and barmy plans to commemorate their oppressors), it’s perhaps not surprising that this fact is not universally acknowledged.

One person who has been doing their bit over the last two decades to not only separate truth from revision but also to help identify remains of the disappeared has been Padraig Og Ó Ruairc. Author of Truce: Murder, Myth and the Last Days of the Irish War of Independence his work has been praised by the likes of Ed Moloney as representing “…a refreshing, overdue and honest break with that mendacious past [of Irish revisionism]. It is to be welcomed with open arms” and his work has led to the recovery of one of the disappeared, Private George Duff Chalmers, who was killed and secretly buried in Co. Claire in June 1921.

Beginning by discussing the 1798 rebellion and the fact that many informers, loyalists and British soldiers were secretly buried after being killed before going through the various groups that the disappeared belonged to (loyalists, British soldiers, spies, RIC, identifiers etc), their name and their stories.

Going through the litany of deaths and secret burials, one can’t help but think of the Billy Batts sequence in Goodfellas transported into an Irish context, but this must be balanced out with some pathetic details about the killings (one was an alcoholic whose weakness was exploited by the British, while another wrote a letter to his commander before being executed).

Of course, it’s worth noting that the British also participated in such tactics, although admittedly not in the same volume. Ó Ruairc cites the North King Street massacre as one example, describing it as:

…the largest massacre of civilians by the British Army. In scale it outstripped the slaughter…in Croke Park in 1920…the Ballymurphy Massacre in 1971 and…Bloody Sunday in 1972. Yet the British government has never acknowledged the full role of British soldiers in perpetuating the…massacre and the Irish government has never commemorated the innocent civilians killed.

Interestingly, when it comes to the notion of such tactics being war crimes, Ó Ruairc doesn’t have much to say on the subject, more interested in tackling the hypocrisy of successive southern governments and arguing that the remains should be given back to the descendants for reburial but that “The Irish state is somewhat in denial over the level of violence used in the war of independence. They don’t want to go digging up the bodies” and that the British aren’t interested either as it would raise awkward questions.

Overall, I am quite content to declare this an important book about the Irish struggle for independence and one that:

⚰  emphasises that (as Toxic Holocaust once sang) war is fucking hell

⚰  helps fill gaps in our knowledge about certain periods of Irish history

⚰  allows for a better understanding of why they occurred

⚰  makes us realise that such actions were not an aberration within Irish republicanism

⚰  demolishes the “good old IRA playing fairly” myth.

If there is to be reconciliation, we need to be honest about the past. Pádraig Ó Ruairc has started the ball rolling. Let’s hope others come along. And let’s hope that the collection of brain-dead career politicians in the Dail do something about their own skeletons in the closet instead of sneering at the Nordies for having done the same thing.

Pádraig Og Ó Ruairc, 2024, The Disappeared: Forced Disappearances in Ireland 1798-1998. Merrion Press. ISBN-13: 978-1785375026

⏩ 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.

The Disappeared: Forced Disappearances In Ireland 1798-1998

Brandon Sullivan & Sean Bradfield 🕮 with a new review of an old book.


Introduction

If studying the conflict teaches anything, it is that arriving at objective truth is deeply challenging for historians. With this in mind, this series of articles (one per chapter of the book) are not presented as the final word, but as hopefully the beginning of a conversation about the book in question and associated themes.

Anyone with a modicum of knowledge about the Troubles in Northern Ireland will be familiar with Martin Dillon, Lenny Murphy and the Shankill Butchers. Indeed, Dillon’s career as a journalist has come to be defined by his 1989 book on the subject. Regarded by many as a ground-breaking journey into the heart of sectarian darkness, there can be little doubt that in writing The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder Dillon put his life on the line to document a particularly notorious example of the subterranean violence of 1970s Northern Ireland which many other journalists wilfully avoided.

Dillon’s first book, Political Murder in Northern Ireland (1973), co-authored with Denis Lehane, exposed the Northern Irish public to some of the most extreme examples of sectarian killings; details of which mainstream newspapers had elided in their coverage of the Troubles up to that point. Dillon has written of the obstinance he experienced when trying to convince his news editor at the time to run some of the stories he had researched into the ‘romper room’ killings of the early 1970s. In his autobiography, Crossing the Line, Dillon recalls that:

Much of my time in 1972-73 was devoted to writing about some of the most ghastly killings of the Troubles. Many mornings, my news editor dispatched me to alleyways where bodies had been dumped …

Dillon’s impulse to give more attention to these killings was almost immediately stymied by his bosses:

… I wanted to know why they [sectarian murders] were becoming so prevalent, but editors had no desire to devote resources to in-depth investigations … In my view, print and broadcast journalism was becoming reflexive, with little space or time being set aside for investigative journalism.

The frustration in the young Martin Dillon is tangible and no matter the shortcomings of his research and hypotheses into the Butchers his bravery and indefatigability when so many others in his profession turned a blind eye will ensure he is rightly praised for generations to come.

Dillon’s attempts to confront these often impenetrable subjects does not preclude him from criticism however, particularly some 35 years after his most famous book was published and new facts have come to light. Conor Cruise O’Brien noted in his forward to Dillon’s book that the:

Provisional IRA – by far the most important of the various murderous organisations in Northern Ireland – never unleashed on society anyone quite like Lennie Murphy (Murphy spelled his name with an ie, although some legal correspondence issued by his solicitor in later life included the spelling of his name as 'Lenny'), the chief of the Shankill Butchers.

Dillon’s book created an almost spectral image of Murphy which was quickly lapped up by readers from across all class and religious backgrounds.

We can think of two loyalist figures who were more prolific and at least as sadistic as Murphy. It is striking that neither is mentioned in Dillon’s book. This is something that we will return to.

Numerous myths were created by Dillon in The Shankill Butchers, many of which were successfully rebutted (with next to no mainstream acknowledgement) by the researcher and author Iain Turner in his 2015 article ‘In the Shadow of the Butchers.’

For a book that has had the impact of The Shankill Butchers, there is a paucity of detailed reviews of it. Justifiable critiques have appeared, starting with Steve Bruce in his 1990 book The Red Hand. We believe it is hard to overstate the influence Dillon’s book had on some students of the Troubles. The historian and author Gareth Mulvenna described the effects of the book as a “toxic glue” on his brain. Both writers of this review read it around 25 years ago, and the effects were profound and lasting.

This is a reappraisal of a landmark book in Troubles historiography, but it is also an opportunity to take a more nuanced and in-depth look again at some of the people and events portrayed in its pages.

This series of articles will criticise some of Martin Dillon’s work, but it is important at all times to recognise and pay tribute to the work he did that was accurate and unique.

The fact that his work is being debated 35 years after publication is a tribute to the quality of some of it, but also that he brought into the public consciousness a deeply disturbing aspect of the Troubles that might otherwise not have been recognised for what it was. As a journalist in the early 1970s he was brave and passionate about unearthing the truth that so many, including those in officialdom, were keen to keep a shroud over.

Chapter One – The Making Of A Killer

Dillon focuses a lot of the first chapter, 'The Making of a Killer', by theorising a motive for Lenny Murphy’s evolution into a sadistic murderer. This is understandable - it is human nature to try and rationalise or find a thread of logic behind brutality when we are confronted with it, but we are quite convinced that he got it wrong. Dillon wrote that the family surname, Murphy, marked them out as “different” to the Protestant community that they lived among, and resulted in Lenny being bullied – referred to as “Murphy the Mick.” There was also, Dillon alleges, community gossip about how Lenny’s father, William Snr., could have been a Catholic.

The Balaclava Street blog had this to say on this:

One of the most enduring theories concocted by Dillon … is that Murphy developed a pathological hatred of Catholics as a result of being taunted about his “Taig” surname. This is a classic piece of amateur psychology and one for which there is no real supporting evidence. Murphy is a faintly uncommon name amongst Protestants but it is not unusual by any means. A glance at a list of UVF prisoners in Long Kesh from the 1970s reveals plenty “Taig” names, such as Galway, McCracken, Quinn, Kirkpatrick, McCartney, O’Neill, even an O’Malley…presumably all incarcerated for fits of nominative homicidal rage. He also claims that Murphy used the name Len or Lenny over Hugh as the former sounded less Catholic!”

A quick search of a Belfast street directory in 1960 has the following Murphys living in strongly loyalist areas, or in close proximity to Orange Halls or Protestant churches:

Annie Murphy (Newcastle Street), James Murphy (Newtownards Road), Margaret Murphy (Nile Street), Noel Murphy (Norwood Street), N.K. Murphy (Oberon Street)

Ellen Murphy (Old Lodge Road), Marion Murphy (Oldpark Avenue), Hugh Murphy (Orangefield Avenue), John Murphy (Parkgate Parade), Edward Murphy (Pisa Street), A. Murphy (Pity Street), Wm. Murphy (Prestwick Park), John Murphy (Ainsworth Avenue), Elizabeth Murphy (Albertbridge Road), N. Murphy (Albertbridge Road), Albert Murphy (Alloa Street), James Murphy (Alloa Street).

And then there was Samuel Murphy, the UDA “Brigadier” who was charged with the murder of Ann Ogilby, and later jailed for 439 years and described as a loyalist “terrorist Godfather.” And there was a leading UDA man convicted of various serious terrorist offences in 1975 named Walter Murphy.

We believe that Dillon’s theory on the supposed impact of the Murphy surname had a structural effect on the book. As early as 1973 he and Lehane had focused on Murphy as being a loyalist with a Catholic surname: “Murphy - the Protestant with a Catholic name" (Political Murder, p127) yet even the most light-touch research at the time (street directories, phone books) would have thrown up a plethora of Murphys in loyalist areas as well as Molloys and other Catholic-sounding surnames in neighbourhoods such as the Shankill. Attaching such significance to something that doesn’t stand up under the lightest interrogation cannot fail to subtract from the historical value of the work. We do not wish to spend much more on this theory, except to note that we consider it debunked, and that Dillon advanced the same theory about Michael Stone in a biography of him.

Dillon is on more solid ground revealing the criminal background of Lenny Murphy. Petty crimes, not unusual for a young man of his social class in that era came to characterise his evolution from a boy into a young man. Murphy is remembered as a bully at school, disinterested in studies, and prone to throwing his weight around using as back-up the threat of his two older brothers, William Jnr. and John. John was two year older than Lenny, and William about four years older. Both were physically more imposing than Lenny.

Dillon writes that as he entered his late teens, and political violence became more intense:

Lenny was regularly seen frequenting two bars on the Shankill Road, the Gluepot and the Bayardo, the latter being a haunt for men connected with the UVF. It was at this time, as events in Northern Ireland were beginning to make headlines, that he joined the junior wing of the UVF. He was observed associating more openly with prominent figures in the community, unlike his brother, William, who was regarded as a loner, and his other brother, John, who had a small circle of friends but did not visit bars where trouble was easily found.

It’s worth discussing Lenny’s brothers as they are significant figures in the book. John, as is widely known, was the “Mr B” who appears many times throughout the book. John Murphy was a member of the UVF and was allegedly involved in many of the “Shankill butcher” crimes. John was a powerfully built man and worked as a plumber. In 1982 he was employed a team of men, mostly UVF members, to complete plumbing contracts. Some of this team were extremely violent men with short fuses. Dillon’s claim about John Murphy “avoiding bars were trouble could easily be found” is especially strange considering he was convicted of a serious assault in the late 1970s, and served time in prison. William, far from being a loner, managed a popular loyalist club on the Shankill Road. The Murphy brothers' father, William, was also a UVF man, who died in 1990 and was honoured an a UVF “roll of honour.”

In relation to family matters, Dillon provides a fascinating vignette about how Lenny's mother Joyce arrived at a disco one evening in the spring of 1969 to remove Lenny - dragging the drunk youth by the hair from the crowd and trailing him home. Murphy's relationship with Joyce isn't developed, but those who the authors of this article have spoken to knew Joyce Murphy (née Thompson) to be a formidable woman who wrapped Lenny up in cotton wool. Many killers have unhealthily close relationships with their mothers, but this isn't a psychology article. Suffice to say that Joyce Murphy was outspoken, dominant and potentially encouraging of her son's propensity for violence. Future studies of the Butchers might do well to probe into this sort of family history with more texture like Gordon Burn did in his magnificent deep-dive into the community from which Peter Sutcliffe emerged.

Dillon also states that Lenny Murphy had joined the Young Citizen Volunteers (YCV), the “youth wing” of the UVF in 1970. This is untrue. While Murphy certainly joined the UVF at an early stage, there was no YCV until 1972. The YCV was formed in the summer of 1972 by young Shankill loyalists including Billy Hutchinson who were self-starters galvanised by the restructuring of the UVF led by Gusty Spence then on the run. Hutchinson also revealed in his 2020 autobiography that Murphy was keen to take over the YCV and ended up poaching one or two members from the organisation Hutchinson had helped to create at the age of 16.

So, not for the first time, Dillon get important details wrong, whilst still being able to accurately describe the man in question. Other than his brothers, Dillon details two of his later to be infamous associates:

(Lenny Murphy) was in the UVF and was surrounding himself with a group of people loosely known as the ‘Murphy gang … among them were two young men, Robert Bates and Samuel McAllister, two nonentities ideally suited to be Murphy’s cohorts, and who were to figure prominently and infamously in Murphy’s later life.

We have never heard any mention in any history of the Troubles of the “Murphy gang” though Lenny was a member of the pre-Troubles teenage Ant Hill Mob gang which included other future prominent Shankill loyalists.

Robert “Basher” Bates was many things, but nonentity is a strange description for him. He was well-known and well-regarded in paramilitary circles, and gave interviews to the press under the anonymity afforded to him on behalf of the UVF in 1971. Bates had also been called to testify publicly to the Scarman Tribunal in 1971 which sought to assess the tumult of August 1969 when parts of Northern Ireland had quite literally gone up in flames. Along with Davy Payne, a former UVF member, Bates had been an early member of Tara and the UDA during the fluid nascent years of loyalist militancy when regimental loyalty was not the important concept it later came to be.

McAllister could perhaps more fairly be described as the nonentity type, though it is notable that Dillon fails to mention the fact that his brother, Joe, was convicted of the murder of drink salesman Barney Moane in 1972. Like Bates, Joe McAllister was well-regarded within paramilitary circles. Interestingly the investigation into Moane's brutal murder revealed that McAllister became angry when goaded on by some of his co-accused during the murder, stating that he would deal with the person who lied about Moane being a republican; unlike his more infamous brother Sam, Joe may well have possessed the ability to feel remorseful for what he had become involved in.

Dillon writes that:

the UVF and UDA recognized that they could not acquire the weapons or perhaps the expertise to fight ‘the enemy’. So they decided it was better to engage in a ‘dirty war’ of indiscriminate terror which would prove that the IRA was incapable of defending its own people. Such a view is simplistic, though there is little doubt that by the summer of 1972 a decision had been made by the UDA/UVF to conduct a sectarian assassination campaign.

In fact, sectarian murders of Catholics by Protestants started prior to the summer. And the raison d'etre usually given by loyalists is less that the IRA couldn’t defend “its own people” and more that killing Catholics would, somehow, drive Catholics to pressurise the IRA into stopping its campaign. But Dillon misses some important information. The IRA had carried out some murders that could be described as sectarian assassinations. One of them, a man named Thomas Kells, was a close friend of Murphy, as well as a criminal associate. The killing of Thomas Kells is covered in Political Murder in Northern Ireland, but Dillon and Lehane’s account of it is inaccurate. This has previously been written about the Kells killing on TPQ:

19 year old Thomas Henry Kells was found dead … shot by the IRA. Rumours abounded that Kells and McFarland had been viciously tortured before being killed. Mulvenna reported Stormont MP Johnny McQuade saying in parliament:

Nobody in the Shankill or Woodvale areas will believe anything other than that young Kells had a tattoo on his arm cut off before the bullets were used on him.

These rumours, and Kells' friendships with later-to-be infamous loyalist paramilitaries such as Stewart Robinson and Lennie Murphy, had a radicalising effect on young loyalists.

Dillon and Lehane allege that Kells was killed by the IRA for spying on them. Information emerged rebutting Dillon and Lehane’s theory, and noting that Kells had in fact fired a shotgun through the door of a house on Clifton Park Avenue where some republicans were attending a party. That particular road had a number of houses in decline that were being rented out for the purposes of hosting parties and drug-taking. In some ways, similar to AirBnB now-a-days. Lenny Murphy and Thomas Kells attended many of these parties in the 1960s, and took LSD, and other drugs. At one of these parties, Murphy is alleged to have raped a young woman from Bangor, who was aged 16. Murphy is also alleged to have burgled houses along the Antrim Road. None of these allegations would appear out of place alongside the details of Murphy’s other crimes, pre and during the Troubles.

Dillon ends the chapter by discussing the effects of the absence, through imprisonment, of “older men” such as Gusty Spence on young men like Lenny Murphy. He wrote:

The absence of the older men paved the way for Lenny Murphy, ‘Basher’ Bates, ‘Big Sam’ McAllister and many others like them to develop their own type of warfare in alliance with the omnipresent UDA, which was prepared to flex its muscles to establish credibility as a paramilitary force.

On the Shankill Road at that particular time were two men who would commit sadistic murders with knives. They were two or three years older than Murphy – at the age of 19 or 20, however, a 22 or 23 year old can appear far more worldly. The two men were John White and Davy Payne. It is impossible to say if they influenced Murphy directly, but he must have known about their crimes.

An intriguing article from the Belfast Telegraph, 21st October 1970, describes how “nine members of the Pride of the Shankill flute band” were convicted of “aiding and abetting the holding of a public procession” and, despite being defended by Desmond Boal, were fined. Among the nine were William Murphy, and Lenny Murphy. Also convicted was Henry Victor Matthews, who would feature in a number of loyalist trials. We could not find anything else related to the Murphy brothers time in a flute band.

‎Martin Dillon, 2009, The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder. Cornerstone Digital.
ASIN: ‎B003RRY608

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

⏩Sean Bradfield is a Former researcher who shouldn't care about this stuff so much but can't help himself.

Martin Dillon’s The Shankill Butchers 🔖 A Reappraisal – Part One

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