Read Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland Online
Authors: Ed Moloney
At the same time that Wright was expelled from the UVF, the UDA threw out one of its own alleged dissidents, Alec Kerr. Death threats were issued to both men by the CLMC but soon, Ervine
alleged, the UDA began to play ‘footsie’ with Wright, which encouraged him to set up the LVF.
…
it was the UDA who forced it, and I think the UVF leadership
were very uncomfortable at the suggestion that they were going to
put a death threat on Billy Wright. They wanted him to go away
and leave them alone, that’s effectively what it was; they wanted
him to go away and leave them alone. Of course Billy Wright being
Billy Wright was never going to do that, but shortly after the UVF
and UDA jointly said they were going to kill Alec Kerr and Billy
Wright if they didn’t behave themselves, the UDA was playing
footsie with Billy Wright, and there was never a chance that Alec
Kerr was going to get killed. So I don’t know for sure what was going
on at that time, but I feel fairly certain that the UVF leadership
were trying to keep the peace with the UDA, and clearly the UVF
had the wherewithal to kill Billy Wright and never tried to; they
had no intentions of killing Billy Wright, none, at least that’s what
it seems to me … It played right into the hands of Billy Wright and
the constitutional Unionists, of which Billy Wright was clearly an
emissary
.
It was fairly common knowledge that Billy Wright was involved
in drugs, and I watched these constitutional politicians who would
have been aware of Billy Wright’s involvement in drugs describe his
only crime as loyalty, that people were trying to drive him out of the
country that he loved … He was the first ever public terrorist; he
was the first ever TV terrorist. He’s been somewhat overshadowed
by Osama Bin Laden of late, but in Northern Ireland terms he was
the first ever public terrorist and politicians, it would seem, for their
own purposes, could align themselves perfectly well to people who
described themselves as being a very effective terrorist. Now, within
the ranks of the UVF, it is debatable whether or not he was as effective
a terrorist as he suggested
…
He certainly achieved support within the UVF, [but] thankfully
I don’t think it was widespread, I think that there were a number
of people who were probably nervous because the leadership of the
UVF in their mind had gone down the wrong road. [The type of
people who joined him] hadn’t been heard of for a long time, and
certainly when the war was on hadn’t been heard of, and then all of
a sudden they’re back again, and they in the main were the type of
people that Billy Wright took with him, or seemed to take with him.
I think there was a risk of a major challenge, but they weren’t clever
enough for it. I think the attempt came with the murder of Michael
McGoldrick when a weapon was taken from Belfast and offered to
Billy Wright … and I think that not only was it meant to suggest
that it was the UVF [who killed McGoldrick] but that the weapon
was a Belfast weapon. However, it seemed that they picked a
weapon that had no forensics; had the weapon any forensics that
were related to the Shankill it would have given the illusion that the
degree of support that Wright had was larger than was the case. I
would never know about battalion sizes – it’s a logistical issue that
the UVF would never talk about – but certainly the first battalion
of the UVF has to be a large battalion. I can’t imagine it’s a small
battalion. How many men did they lose? Five? How many men went
to the LVF and Billy Wright, maybe five? Five? As far as I’m aware,
it was a very small number. One of the people who went Billy
Wright’s direction was quite highly placed in Belfast, and you could
argue was close to the leadership, and I would have to assume that
that was more of an ego [thing]
…
Q.
Jackie Mahood,
†
I assume you’re talking about?
A.
Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn’t doubt it was him provided the
weapon. I can remember he was the liaison between the leadership
and Billy Wright … Shortly thereafter Jackie Mahood met his
demise within the UVF, but I was there that Sunday [a UVF leadership
meeting] when Jackie Mahood was overselling Billy Wright’s
power and strength and I think that there was purpose in that. I
think that he was sympathetic to Billy Wright and I think there was
scheming going on at that time. I think that there were questions
about Mahood, but as I understand it there was actually a situation
where a man, Jackson, was accused of a robbery and had his hands
broken [and] put out of the country without the capacity to wipe his
own ass. Events then became clearer, that it may not have been this
lad who was involved in the robbery but Jackie Mahood. There was
a figure of twenty thousand pounds spoken about, but I don’t think
that that was alone the issue that saw the demise of Jackie Mahood
… he’s the type of man that always struck me that if there wasn’t
a problem he’ll create one, couldn’t leave things alone, and Billy
Wright was very like that. They were kindred spirits and I think
that a number of factors forced a microscope to be focused on the
name Jackie Mahood. Now I don’t function in the higher echelons of
the UVF, no matter what anybody thinks, so what I say to you is in
my understanding. It can’t be definitive because I wasn’t party to or
privy to all of the information, but the bits and pieces that I do
know, I can’t imagine I’d be refuted on
.
When you talk to me about dissident Loyalism, these are the
people who got stopped with drugs and no charges are proffered,
these are the people who walk about like larger-
than-
life cardboard
cut-out characters breaking every law known to man including
murder and not being charged with them. These are the type of
people who got found with police officers, sitting having private
chats, one-to-
one private chats. There’s a whole host of areas where
you have to question the engine that was so-called Loyalist dissent.
I have questioned the so-called leader of Loyalist dissent and
accused him clearly and, by the way, before his death, of being an
agent of the Crown. Of that I have absolutely no doubt
…
The three or four years that followed Billy Wright’s death were violent, confusing ones for Loyalism. The UVF and the LVF, now in the hands of Billy Wright’s deputy, Mark Fulton, would feud bloodily in 2000. There would also be fighting between the UVF and the Shankill UDA, led by Johnny Adair, a muscled veteran gunman motivated, his critics would allege, by criminal greed as much
as by politics, once described by an associate as having ‘a lethal combination of ego and adrenalin’.
55
The UDA and the LVF, which called a ceasefire in 1998, resumed killing, sharing the cover names ‘Orange Volunteers’ and ‘Red Hand Defenders’ to hide responsibility for violence and to escape government sanctions. But each group would in turn be ‘delisted’ by the British government, their ceasefires officially declared over and their political wings obliged to forfeit the privileges and rights such a status brought, albeit briefly in most instances. By 2002, however, a calm of the sort brought by exhaustion was restored between the UDA and the UVF with the forced exile of Adair, although violence would again flare up between the UVF and Billy Wright’s group in 2005 after which the LVF formally ‘stood down’. Some twenty people were killed during this turbulent time, most of them rival Loyalists but some, like eighteen-year-old Bernadette Martin, a Catholic killed by the LVF in Lurgan, County Armagh, guilty merely of dating a Protestant boyfriend.
By the time Billy Wright was killed, the peace process had been put back on the rails. The IRA had renewed its ceasefire in July 1997, almost coinciding with the election of British and Irish governments that were more favourably disposed towards the peace process than their predecessors – one led by Tony Blair, the other by Bertie Ahern – and Sinn Fein was readmitted to the process. Political talks resumed at Stormont in mid-September with all the parties present except Ian Paisley’s DUP and Bob McCartney’s small UK Unionists who boycotted them in protest at Sinn Fein’s presence. The road to the Good Friday Agreement had been opened up.
The UVF and the UDA had been talking to the British on an ‘exploratory’ basis since December 1974 and attended meetings at Stormont as a joint delegation from the CLMC. Those were difficult days for David Ervine. He and Billy Hutchinson were part of a UVF/PUP team that included two allies of Billy Wright, then in the early stages of his revolt against the UVF leadership. One was Jackie Mahood, the North Belfast UVF leader whose presence at the talks forced Ervine to resign briefly from the PUP team. The other was
Lindsay Robb,
‡
from Lurgan, a member of Wright’s ‘Rat Pack’ in Mid-Ulster, who was suspected of leaking the PUP’s secrets to Ian Paisley’s DUP and helping to sow dissension in UVF ranks on behalf of Wright. Within a year, Robb was beginning a ten-year jail term for smuggling weapons from Scotland and eighteen months later Wright was back in jail. By late 1997, with Billy Wright safely dead, the UVF and the PUP were preparing their approach at the inter-party talks that, thanks to Sinn Fein’s return, were about to take a serious turn.
The structure and shape of the talks conformed broadly to the all-Ireland conference envisaged by Father Reid and Gerry Adams back in the late 1980s. Chaired by the former US Senate leader George Mitchell, the two governments and most of the North’s parties, even the tiny Women’s Coalition, were involved and committed, in theory at least, to reaching and abiding by an agreement that would determine ‘the future of Ireland’, as one of Father Reid’s documents put it.
56
The agenda was split into three strands, one devoted to internal Northern Ireland arrangements, another dealing with North–South relations and a third, the least controversial, considered the East–West relationship as it was called, between the island of Ireland and Britain. The UVF and the PUP found themselves in a curious position, at one with the Ulster Unionists on the issues dear to both their hearts, such as the consent principle, but on the same side as their Republican enemies on the question of prisoner releases, which they both favoured, and paramilitary decommissioning, which they together opposed. Only on the conditions for prisoner releases did the UVF differ from the other two paramilitary groups, the UDA eager to swap guns for prisoners, Sinn Fein seeking a speedy release date and the UVF/PUP pushing for a deal that wouldn’t alarm mainstream Unionist opinion. The PUP, which brought the UVF and Red Hand Commando leaderships into the negotiating room, also held something of a sword
over David Trimble’s head on issues such as North–South relations. If Ervine and his colleagues withheld their approval, Trimble could find himself dangerously isolated. With Ian Paisley and Bob McCartney roaring ‘traitor’ at Trimble from outside the conference rooms, that gave Ervine’s team not a little leverage.
…
our agenda was simple: ‘Northern Ireland shall remain part of
the United Kingdom for as long as it is the wish of the greater number
of people so to do.’ It’s called the principle of consent, and again
us Neanderthals, the scumbags, the gangsters as we’re called on a
constant basis, were way ahead of the game. From our point of view
the issue fundamentally was about adhering to democratic principles.
Way back into the 1980s we issued papers like
Sharing Responsibility in Northern Ireland
, advocating proportional representation
and positions in government as of right for both sections of our
society … [but] the issue of Strand Two was the nightmare for us.
It’s all very well having accountability within Northern Ireland, but
… does your accountability collapse when you have a relationship
with the Irish government? We were very conscious that all the
soundings from the Republicans, the Irish government and the
SDLP were: ‘Oh aye, more or less a road to a united Ireland and
that’s the way it’s going to be and we’ll create these hawser wires to
link Dublin to Belfast and meanwhile back at the ranch it’ll be a
one millimetre piece of string between Belfast and London.’ Those
were the issues that were very much on our mind, and again we
attacked them only on the basis of the principle of consent, that the
process of accountability had to be such that there was clear consent
by the people of Northern Ireland. Some people have argued, including
people in the UVF, that this was a weakness because ‘What happens
if they outbreed us?’ Well, the difficulty with that of course is
that you can’t be an à-la-
carte democrat … There were a number
of things that the UVF was interested in achieving. First and foremost
was the principle of consent, and secondly was the absence of
violence in that the threat from the Republican movement had to
end, the war needed to be over … but again really it’s back to the
principle of consent, and every single argument that we have relates
back to that principle, including the Provos’ capacity to frighten our
community … either democracy rules or it doesn’t. If democracy
doesn’t rule you’ve got a war on your hands, it’s as simple as that,
I think that’s still the UVF’s position
…
There were a number of difficulties that we had, and one of them
was our association with the Ulster Democratic Party [the UDA’s
political wing]. Two members of the UDP were very capable people,
one spectacularly capable. A number of others were more military
connected than they were, and they were a nightmare. When for
instance the British government wanted to play games with decommissioning,
they were actually prepared to trade prisoners for
weapons. That was unbelievable; we were shocked to our foundations
at the notion that they would trade prisoners for weapons.
‘What would you trade next?’ This was not about prisoners and it
wasn’t about weapons, it was about consolidating Northern Ireland’s
position within the United Kingdom, and by this time of course the
relationship between the UDP and the Progressive Unionist Party,
whilst never fully comfortable, was now fairly polluted. We were
polite at best, and we didn’t know what games they were playing
behind closed doors, and you could argue, in fairness to them, they
didn’t know for sure what we were playing behind our closed doors,
but the difference between us is that we were operating from a series
of documents that had been created as far back as 1978, 1982, 1985,
1989, updated in 1992. We had a core political process and I think
that we stuck to it as tight as we could. Prisoners weren’t part of the
issue; prisoners were part of the issue in terms of the making of
peace – there’s no question about that – but they certainly weren’t
high on our agenda
.
Another nightmare concerned the preferential treatent given to
the Women’s Coalition. They were highly intelligent and capable
people. I have a great admiration for them, which I didn’t think I’d
ever have. I didn’t know them, but I learned to appreciate the talent
that they had, no question about that, but I was finding that even
though they had no paramilitary organisation to worry about, the
Women’s Coalition were getting documents before we were. A document
would be circulated inside this so-called equal negotiation
process and we would only find out about it a day later. We went
absolutely bonkers, we were angry, we were frustrated; we had to
have a special meeting to decide whether to stay in the talks because
of this treatment. When we voiced our anger, Gary McMichael, who
was the leader of the Ulster Democratic Party, said, ‘Well, everything
is all right with us
.’
Cross-border relationships became the make-
or-
break issue for us.
You’ve got to remember that Sinn Fein would not talk about Strand
One, although they were doing so privately with the Irish government
and the Irish government was probably building an understanding
of how far they could go in that. A lot of this was done by
proxy, the Irish government virtually dealing with the Unionists on
behalf of Sinn Fein and the British government dealing with Sinn
Fein on behalf of the Unionists in many respects, so there was a lot
of it unseen and a lot of it unknown, and it was only when you had
a formalised mass draft [of the Agreement] that you began to realise
that shifts had taken place. The mechanisms for the election of ministers
was something the Nationalists were hell bent on achieving.
We had previously had arguments about whether you should have
executive authority or whether should we operate in the form of
committees but all that was kicked into touch, because clearly we
couldn’t get agreement until you could close the gaps on the cross-
border stuff. Even up until the last day, the mechanisms and the role
that the cross-border secretariat would play vis-à-vis the Northern
Ireland parliament was of major concern. Initially the creation of
the secretariat was to be in the hands of Westminster and Dail
Eireann. But … if our partner in this North–South stuff is goin
g to
be Dail Eireann then there had to be an equal partnership between
Belfast and Dail Eireann and therefore Westminster would have to
butt out. We needed as much control of that secretariat as the Irish,
and there was also the dream by the Irish that they would create
this massive and very proactive secretariat that would plan
agendas; these would be civil servants, these wouldn’t be politicians
.
I remember having blazing rows with the Irish on the last day or, or
the last evening, and I think it was [Bertie] Ahern who accepted and
acknowledged that we would not go with what was suggested. Now
we were a small party, and if we didn’t go, Trimble couldn’t go. It
was as simple as that. If we’d have said no, Trimble would have had
to have jumped back
…
At times there was a way of ensuring that the UVF leadership
were aware of what was going on inside Castle Buildings at
Stormont. When we moved to an intensified period, effectively the
last week we had two offices, and I can remember counting fifty-
three people in the two offices. Let’s be open and honest with
everybody because I don’t think there’s any point in telling lies.
A substantial number of those people were members of the Ulster
Volunteer Force, the Red Hand Commando, let’s not kid ourselves,
because whilst the Progressive Unionist Party in fairness to the UVF
had always been given a substantial degree of latitude in where it
could go and how far it could go, as far as relating the understanding
of the UVF’s position in relation to Northern Ireland’s constitution,
it would be foolish to have left ourselves having to run back
and forward to the UVF. So they were there, they sat round and
read the documents just as much as we did, and we did it together,
and I can remember people being dispatched from Castle Buildings
in Stormont up to Long Kesh where a special visit was arranged at
night to try and explain to the prisoners … what the position was
and where the UVF leadership and the PUP leadership was on the
issue of prisoners. The prisoners were more interested in the major
deal, and that that explanation had to be given as well … there was
a constancy of relationship that meant we virtually slept together,
and that would be not putting it too dramatically
.
The prisoners issue was a piece of the required material for an
agreement, so let’s not kid ourselves that we believed that without
prisoners you could get nothing. That’s not true. You could have
gotten things without prisoners, but we believed prisoners needed to
be part of it. Clearly the Republicans did, and I remember … we’d
talked to the British and they thought that three years was probably
the best that they could come up with, that over a period of three
years all the political prisoners would be released, and we felt that
was too long. The British government acknowledged that they
understood that and the very best they could move to was two years.
Gerry Kelly came and rapped the PUP’s door, much to the chagrin
of the assembled Ulster Volunteer Force members, and I went outside
and spoke to him. He said, ‘Look, we’ve got the Brits on the run
here, we can get the prisoners down to a year’, and my answer very
simply was: ‘A year, no. This has to be a sellable deal, two years is
as short as it needs to be.’ Now some prisoners would probably say,
‘Davy Ervine could have got a better deal for us’, but it wasn’t about
prisoners; you also had to have a sellable commodity, and I can
remember coming back into the room and the attitude among the
UVF was the same: ‘It was as good as you could go for; it was as
good as it dared be.’ Having given my initial response to Kelly, I then
went looking for him and I found Adams instead, and I related
what was clearly by that time the expressed view of the assembled
PUP, UVF and Red Hand, and made it clear that the Progressive
Unionist Party was happy to go for two years because we felt that
any more was to push the boat out
.