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6

REGIMENTAL LOYALTY

‘The UVF was not formed to deal with interfaces, it was formed because they believed there was a sell-out, there was a rebellion which had to be stopped, whether you were from the Shankill or East Antrim you had the one enemy – the IRA, indeed the nationalist community as most UVF volunteers didn’t distinguish between the IRA and those they fought for.’

Billy Mitchell, UVF Brigade Staff Officer in 19751

Newington Avenue, North Belfast, 7 April 1975

The large furniture removal truck rattled along the narrow North Belfast street, before coming to a sharp halt, throwing the occupants in the front cab forward in their seats. In big bold letters along the side was written Gillespie and Wilson, a furniture company based on the Upper Newtownards Road in East Belfast. The men on board were making their routine deliveries of carpets and bedding to customers on the other side of Belfast Lough. The driver – a tall, older man – applied the handbrake before switching off the engine and taking out the keys. The doors of the cab were flung open as the driver and his young helper, much shorter than his colleague, jumped out and walked to the back of the truck.2 They opened the roll-up door a couple of feet before they were surprised by the sound of footsteps behind them, followed by a guttural voice. ‘Get your fucking hands up.’ Without much hesitation, they raised their hands and turned around, to be greeted by a group of armed men. The delivery driver and his young helper were promptly frog-marched to a waiting car, where they were bundled in and driven a few miles north of the city to be interrogated. Nobody would ever see or hear from the two men again.3

The next day, a Monkstown man, twenty-nine-year-old Norman Cooke, received a knock on his door by another man who asked Cooke to accompany him to a two-door Vauxhall Viva car parked outside his house. Inside the vehicle were two other men. All four men drove down onto the Shore Road and along the coast road to Carrickfergus where they headed towards Whitehead, before heading towards the Gobbins in Islandmagee, a breathtakingly beautiful, if incredibly isolated, spot overlooking the County Antrim coast. As they neared their destination, Cooke turned around in his seat when he noticed a blue transit minibus following them closely behind. Its headlights burned brightly, dazzling him. He averted his eyes, turning to the man sat next to him to ask what was going on. He was told he ‘would find out later’. A short time later the car and van slowed down, pulling into a lay-by. Two men in the front of the minibus got out and walked around to open its rear doors. ‘I then seen them taking two men out of the back of the van,’ said Cooke. ‘These two men were walked from the van across the Gobbins Road, they then got over a fence and into a field by the two men who had been in the front of the van. I did not know who the men were who were in the back of the van, but one was a young man and one was an older man.’ Cooke emerged from the car with the other men and followed them across the road, climbing down from the fence. ‘As I was walking I heard two shots,’ he recalled, adding, ‘I didn’t know what was happening. I just turned round and ran towards the car, two other fellows ran out behind me. As I was running I heard two more shots.’ Cooke said he was ‘sickened’ by what he had witnessed, and claimed to have entered ‘a state of shock at what had taken place’. He maintained his innocence when questioned by police about the episode, making it clear that he ‘didn’t know that the men were going to get shot’.4

The truth of what had actually transpired was shocking. Sometime on 7 April, the second-in-command of the Islandmagee UVF was called to a meeting with his Officer Commanding, thirty-one-year-old unemployed fitter Sydney Corr, in the Brown Trout pub in Carrickfergus. Also in attendance was the military commander of the Carrick UVF, thirty-one-year-old George (Geordie) Anthony and his second-in-command.5 They were accompanied by the commander of the area’s Special Services Unit, thirty-five-year-old Geordie Sloan. It appears that another man was also in attendance along with UVF Brigade Staff member Billy Mitchell who had travelled all the way from Belfast to arrange the execution of two UDA men who were earlier abducted in North Belfast. ‘You go along with them too,’ Anthony allegedly told his second-in-command and Sloan, as they accompanied Corr and another UVF man6 to dig a hole in a secluded part of the countryside. The hole they dug was roughly five-foot long by five-foot wide and four-foot deep. Corr claimed that he was only told that it was for ‘stuff coming from Tiger’s Bay’, which he took to mean weapons and ammunition.7 It would seem that most of the volunteers were not fully aware of what was about to transpire.

Later that evening, the two UDA men were transferred to a minibus used by the UVF to take families on prison visits to Long Kesh. As the welfare minibus passed through Carrick, it continued on in the direction of the coast road towards Whitehead, where it picked up speed on Cable Road before turning right onto the Larne Road and towards Ballycarry. It caught up with a car, which it followed to the Gobbins, where both vehicles stopped. As the men got out they could hear the tide lapping against the shore down below. It was in this picturesque part of East Antrim that they had brought their captives to their place of execution.

Billy Mitchell followed two of the UVF men down a path on the other side of the road, to the secluded spot where his underlings had prepared a shallow grave. He was closely followed by Sloan, who was frogmarching the older man. Another man held Douglas by the shoulder so that he couldn’t make a run for it. Both of the prisoners had their hands tightly bound behind their backs. ‘Go ahead, you’ll be alright,’ the UVF man told the younger man. Out of the side, another UVF member quickly ran over to the youth and grabbed him by the neck, putting a gun to the back of his head. The boy groaned as the man pulled the trigger. His lifeless body collapsed onto the ground in a crumpled heap next to the hole in the ground. ‘You nearly got me there,’ snapped the man who had held Douglas, before losing his balance and falling over. Panicking, he hurriedly picked himself up and ran off back up to the road. As he made good his escape, the unknown gunman took a few steps over to the older man, levelling his pistol at him, he pulled the trigger at point-blank range. Sloan, who had been gripping the older man by the neck, flew into blind panic and ran off. ‘Jesus Christ,’ blurted Corr, as he took in the scene unfolding around him. The gunman then levelled his pistol at the heads of the two captives and pulled the trigger another couple of times. Billy Mitchell looked on, the only witness to what had unfolded. The gunman then handed the weapon to Corr for safekeeping.8 Corr was later sentenced to two five-year jail terms for removing the gun from the scene and also burying the bodies of the two UDA men.9

East Antrim was one of the most ruthless units within the UVF in 1975. Most of its members lived in Rathcoole, Monkstown, Carrickfergus, and as far north-east as Islandmagee and the port town of Larne. Many of its members were employed, typically in unskilled, semi-skilled and, occasionally, skilled labouring roles. Norman Cooke joined the UVF in 1972 and was interned for his activities from October 1973 until May 1974. He had been arrested on 7 September 1972 along with Geordie Sloan and another prominent UVF man, twenty-nine-year-old Billy Greer, when police raided their social club at Jack’s Lane, an old farm with outbuildings, which lay across a narrow footbridge over the Belfast to Londonderry railway line. Police discovered a veritable arsenal, including five rifles, three revolvers, a pistol, one sub-machine-gun, 14 magazines, 6,260 rounds of assorted ammunition, a blast bomb, two flares, 30lbs of explosives, detonators and fuse wire, as well as medical supplies. They also discovered a military training manual on guerrilla warfare.10 After his release, Cooke became involved in the Welfare section of the East Antrim UVF. Like everyone else who joined the organisation at the time, regardless of whether they opted for an auxiliary role or not, Cooke was tasked with all sorts of activities in support of the group. He soon proved to be a dedicated volunteer. Other members of the unit had only been in the UVF a matter of months when the killings at the Gobbins took place. The Carrick commander, Geordie Anthony, had been involved for a longer period of time. Anthony was a stickler for administration, and kept meticulous records on every member of the unit; how much membership dues they had paid, and what their role was within the unit.

Most of the East Antrim UVF’s training took place at Jack’s Lane and in the Royal British Legion premises in Carrickfergus, effectively the group’s headquarters. Like the Shankill UVF, which a decade earlier had met and trained in the Standard Bar, the East Antrim UVF chose these places on the basis of the rigid code of omertá it could enforce upon its members, their supporters and sympathisers, and also on the local people in their area. Another tool that the East Antrim UVF had in its armoury was the involvement of several serving UDR soldiers. Two of these men were imprisoned for giving UVF members training and instruction in how to use firearms in the British Legion.11

***

Houston Park, Lurgan, County Armagh, Evening, 27 July 1975

Forty-five-year-old Billy Hanna was returning home from a night out at the British Legion in Lurgan. Accompanying him was a close friend and comrade. As Hanna pulled up into his driveway, two men, Robin Jackson and Harris Boyle, took out their handguns and approached the vehicle on the driver’s side. They had gone to Hanna’s home with the express purpose of killing him. After parking the vehicle, Hanna climbed out to be greeted by Jackson, who casually walked up to him and pointed his pistol at the older man’s temple. Without hesitating, he pulled the trigger. As Hanna dropped to the ground Jackson stood over him and fired another shot into his head to finish him off. A veteran of the Korean War, Hanna had subsequently joined the B-Specials and, in 1970, became a Permanent Staff Instructor with his local UDR battalion. The Security Forces suspected that he held dual membership of the UDR and the outlawed UVF and, as a result, had placed him under surveillance. This was strenuously denied at the time by the RUC and army.12 Rumours persisted nonetheless, and he was believed to have been the leader of the Mid Ulster UVF from 1972 to his death.

The reason that Jackson assassinated Hanna was simple. He believed the rumours that the war veteran had been a high-level informer or agent working to put the Mid Ulster UVF out of business. What had apparently sealed Hanna’s fate was the allegation that he had passed on specific information to British military intelligence implicating Jackson in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. ‘There was always the belief they were probably working for British Intelligence. Mid Ulster leaked. You were never sure who was British Intelligence. It leaked like a sieve,’ one UVF leader later told journalists.13 Consequently, Hanna was disowned by the UVF.14 In a bid to stop loyalist paramilitary groups from carrying out further attacks, the British Army attempted to infiltrate the organisation. In doing so they were able to call upon former or serving soldiers who were explicitly tasked with joining illegal armed groups with the intention of preventing attacks.15

It would later be alleged that Jackson was at worst an agent, and at best an informer, working for the intelligence services.16 It is impossible to say for certain whether Jackson was working for the state, simply because none of the intelligence agencies would ever confirm or deny this. The lack of a paper trail also leaves much to conjecture. What can be inferred from the killing of Billy Hanna is that, by eliminating his rival, Jackson was demonstrating to his UVF comrades that he could be ruthless and efficient when he needed to be. This would greatly aid his bid to assume overall command of the Mid Ulster UVF.17 As a sign of the twisted nature of loyalist paramilitarism at the time, Jackson even turned up to Hanna’s funeral to pay his respects to the dead man’s wife, Ann, who had witnessed the murder of her husband. The man who had pulled the trigger took his place amongst the mourners.

***

Buskhill Road, A1, 11km north of Newry, 2:10 a.m., 31 July 1975

The Miami Showband were busy playing the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge. The dance finished at 1 a.m. and the band left in their light blue and cream Volkswagen van around 1:45 a.m. and headed south towards Newry on their way back home to Dublin. Five members of the band were on board. Twenty-nine-year-old Fran O’Toole, a married man with two children, twenty-three-year-old Anthony Geraghty, thirty-two-year-old Brian McCoy, twenty-four-year-old father-of-one Des McAlea and twenty-four-year-old Stephen Travers.18 The van was stopped at Buskhill, Donaghmore, Newry on 31 July 1975 at 2:10 a.m. One of the survivors recalled what happened next:

As we went along the second dual-carriageway we were stopped by what appeared to be an army patrol. They used a red light to stop us. As far as I can remember there was only one man on the road with the red light. When we stopped I saw two or three more men come out onto the road from the nearside hedge. They were all wearing combat gear and some were wearing green and some black berets. The man with the torch was carrying what appeared to be a sub-machine gun. He went to the driver’s window and spoke to Brian. He asked Brian his name and also to produce his driving licence. I heard Brian give his name and tell the man with the torch that we were the Miami Showband. This same man then asked us all to get out of the minibus. We all got out and went to the rear of the bus. One of the men was Brian McCoy and he appeared to be dead. The other was [name redacted] and he was alive but could not speak as he was badly shot up. I then said to [name redacted] that I was going to get help and I got out over the hedge onto the road. I ran across the road to the opposite side of the dual carriageway where a lorry was stopped. I asked the driver for help as we had been shot but I don’t think he believed me and would not let me into the cab. I again begged him to take me to the police station and he eventually let me into the cab.19

The force of the explosion was so intense that one of the survivors was blown through a hedge by the roadside. The RUC’s Senior Investigating Officer gradually pieced together what happened:

They were stopped by what they believed to be an army road stop. It transpired that the persons operating this road stop were in fact terrorists. There were five members of the Showband in the minibus at the time. All were ordered out of the minibus and were told to stand along the side of the road, where they were asked to answer a number of questions relating to their identity. At this stage an explosion occurred, and it is surmised that this was as a result of a bomb being placed in the minibus by the terrorists. This was followed by a number of shots being fired by the terrorists at the Showband members. As a result of this attack there were three members of the Showband fatally injured. In relation to the other two bodies found at the scene i.e. the two previously mentioned as being badly mutilated – these persons were later claimed by the Ulster Volunteer Force as members of their organisation and were named as follows: (1) Harris Boyle, [address redacted] and (2) William Wesley Somerville, [address redacted].20

After the bomb exploded the other UVF men present opened fire on the surviving band members. Fran O’Toole was shot over twenty-two times in the head, neck and chest, and Brian McCoy had bullet wounds to the neck and lower body. Anthony Geraghty had bullet wounds to the head and body. The viciousness of the attack shocked the whole of Ireland.