Читать книгу None Shall Divide Us - Michael Stone - Страница 18

WITH HERRON’S DEATH, THE BRANIEL UDA WAS DECIMATED. FOR ME IT WAS TIME TO BECOME ANONYMOUS AND INVISIBLE. I’d listened to Herron’s advice, and now I made a decision to disappear. I never resigned or left the UDA; I removed myself from the picture by seconding myself to the Red Hand Commando’s newly formed unit in the Braniel. The Red Hand Commando, founded in 1972, was close to the UVF and limited its territory to Belfast.

Sammy Cinnamond was the Commander of the Red Hand Commando on the estate. He was a good Loyalist and a good friend. He made the initial approach by saying he was sorry to hear about the death of Tommy Herron. He then asked me what my immediate plans were. I told him I didn’t have any. He persisted with his questioning and asked if I was staying in the area. He then came straight to the point: was I interested in crossing over to the Red Hand Commando?

The Red Hand Commando met in Braniel Community Centre once a week and its midweek slot was sandwiched between disco-dancing classes and other community activities. They called themselves the Braniel Fishing and Shooting Club and had a notice pinned up in the reception area. There were thirty men in the group, including an RUC reservist and a former British Army soldier.

I went along to a meeting, but that first night I told Sammy Cinnamond that I couldn’t swear an oath of allegiance to the Red Hand because I’d already sworn to remain a member of the UDA until the day I died. But he said that was fine and I could make a solemn promise to the Red Hand instead. He explained that he’d fixed it with a UDA brigadier ‘up the country’ so that I could be seconded to the Red Hand for as long as I wanted. All Cinnamond insisted on was that I put my hand on the Bible, pick up the Walther gun and swear an oath to ‘never betray my Loyalist comrades’.

I did make that promise. I swore on the open Bible to never betray my brothers-in-arms. I thought of Tommy Herron and hoped he wouldn’t think I had let him down by moving sideways. And as I said those words I hoped he understood that although I was now ‘UDA deactivated’, my promise to protect my community and my people would continue under a different guise. It was January 1974, four months after Herron’s death.

After the ceremony a suitcase was dragged from behind a chair. Inside was a tartan blanket and underneath the blanket was an assortment of ‘old rattlies’ that had been secretly made at the Harland & Wolff shipyard. Cinnamond nodded at them and said, ‘That’s your equipment, that’s what you need to do your job.’ I was introduced to another man, called ‘the Armourer’ because he was in charge of the unit’s weapons. He was a former British Army soldier and an expert bomb maker. The IRA was targeting Protestant bars almost every night and the Braniel Red Hand Commando retaliated. The Armourer masterminded the unit’s city-centre bombing campaign, including attacks on the nationalist bars Paddy Lamb’s and the Hillfoot. He was very skilled and didn’t need large amounts of explosives to create a big bang. He looked at the building to assess exactly what type of explosive and how much was needed and where it should be placed for maximum impact. The Armourer could ‘car park’ buildings with the smallest bombs.

The Red Hand Commando had a small office on the Upper Newtownards Road and one of my first duties for the group was protecting William Craig, the leader of the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party. Craig had no idea I shadowed him. I was always ‘suitably attired’ and for a year I shadowed him when he attended and addressed VUPP meetings. The party was mostly ex-members of the Ulster Unionist Party who were disillusioned with the policies of its leaders, Terence O’Neill, James Chichester Clarke and Brian Faulkner. Craig, an MP for East Belfast, was also a former Home Affairs Minister in the 1966 Stormont government.

In 1976, I married Marlene Leckey. Together we had three sons – Michael, Jason and Gary – but within two years the marriage started to break down. I was away a lot on active service, and, with all the late nights and weekends away, it became very difficult for her. I left the marital home after two years of marriage and move into rented accommodation. We could not be officially divorced until a legal timeframe had elapsed, and in 1983 we divorced on the grounds of my unreasonable behaviour. By then, I was living with the woman who would become my second wife, Leigh-Ann Shaw.

In 1978, I took six months off from the Red Hand and joined the Royal Irish Regiment at Ballymena. I did so with the permission of my superiors and to do a specific job. I joined to learn how to use anti-tank weaponry because a shipment was due, although at the time I did not know this. When the Army asked me why I wanted to join, I said I fancied a change of career. When I asked if we could train on anti-tank weapons, I was told those munitions were at least a year away. Six months was the minimum amount of service permitted, and I made a decision to use my time wisely to forge a network of contacts that I could call on in the months and years ahead.

Sammy Cinnamond was a quiet and logical man. He once asked me how I felt about the Catholic families who lived on the Braniel. Even though it was a Protestant housing estate, thirteen Catholic families were still choosing to live there. In my eyes, I told him, those families were not a problem, and I was being truthful. I was thinking of the Maines, an old couple who lived near my mother. I told Sammy that I didn’t want anyone touching them because they were quiet, good, church-going people. Sammy agreed and said, ‘The thirteen Roman Catholic families are very welcome in the Braniel. No harm will come to them and they are safe – that is until the day the IRA comes into this area and ambushes a Protestant family. They are my insurance policy and, just like an insurance policy, if I have to cash it in I will.’ Sammy didn’t elaborate but I got his drift. I knew he was talking about retaliation if anything happened to a Loyalist family on the estate.

Through Sammy Cinnamond and the Red Hand Commando I was introduced to two other men, John McKeague and John Bingham. I met McKeague just once, in a Loyalist club on the Ravenhill Road. Sammy introduced us and McKeague and I spoke for a few minutes. I was initially taken aback by his shock of blond hair but immediately understood why people said he was a member of the Red Handbag Commando. McKeague was blatantly homosexual. A hard-working Loyalist, he even printed his own political papers on his own press and he ran the Woodvale Defence Association like a military operation.

John Bingham was a different sort of operator. He was the West Belfast Commander of the UVF, which had strong links to the Red Hand Commando. Sammy had made the initial introductions but then given me free rein to initially liaise and work with him. Bingham was a pigeon fancier and our first meeting was conducted in the pigeon shed at the back of his home in Ballysillan. He wanted to exchange ideas with me. As we chatted we discovered we had a mutual interest in dogs and operationally our work had crossed over in previous years. We had a lot in common. He asked me to be present at a meeting scheduled for the following week. He added that it was important for me to meet this group of people. I agreed. I wanted to work with this man.

One weekday morning Bingham took me to a house on the outskirts of Belfast. As we travelled there he told me I had to make a presentation to three educated, wealthy, right-wing, German businessmen. They had travelled from Munich and were interested in the Loyalist cause. I had no time to prepare. I had to speak off the cuff. Bingham briefed me further, saying they had considerable funds at their disposal and were prepared to funnel the cash in our direction if we said the magic combination of words. The funding would be ours if we could give them harrowing first-hand accounts of our war with the IRA. It was my job to convince these men that Loyalist paramilitaries were a good investment.

We arrived at the designated place and the Germans were already waiting for us. I was initially taken aback by them. They had word-perfect English and were intelligent and articulate. I told them about Republican violence. I told them about Harry Beggs being blown to bits in the electricity showroom where he worked. I told them about his sister Doreen and her two kids, mutilated by a no-warning blast in the Abercorn restaurant. I told them about indiscriminate bombs and bullets and the targeting of our police force. They listened. They never spoke, except to say thank you. My presentation must have worked. The money was donated.

Three weeks later John Bingham, Sammy Cinnamond and I made another journey. It was a to a secret location on the outskirts of Belfast nicknamed ‘The Farm’. By the time we arrived two Israeli visitors were already present. It was the second part of a two-tier deal first negotiated with the Germans. The two men were members of the elite Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and, like the three German businessmen, wanted to help us. They told us that if we could supply the cash, they would supply the munitions. Already the funding had been confirmed and received from the Germans and we could now choose and pay for what we needed.

Bingham wanted me to go to Israel and link up with the two Mossad men to complete the deal. I told him I couldn’t make the journey because I didn’t have a passport. He opened the small case he was carrying. ‘Which nationality do you want to be?’ he said, and showed me seven passports with the official seals and stamps from the country of origin. There were two British, one Irish, two German and two from the Middle East. Bingham said he wanted to go but couldn’t because MI5 were watching him. I declined the trip to Israel. If MI5 were watching Bingham, then I would be putting myself in the spotlight if I went in his place. He also tried to tempt me with a shorter trip, saying he needed someone to go to Brussels. I told him I was a military man and my job was working as an operative, on the road on active service. I said intelligence and research were not what I wanted to do.

To be honest, I was now getting involved in a different league and I felt out of my depth. I had seconded myself to the Red Hand in order to stay anonymous, not parade myself in front of the security and intelligence agencies. When I told Bingham that both of the trips were out of the question, he accepted my decision with no further questions. He made the journey to Israel himself. It was both a fact-finding mission and the final part of the arms deal. Bingham was so well organised that he was even furnished with ‘end-user’ certificates to help him get the munitions through customs.

Years later, after I was released from prison, an Israeli journalist interviewed me about the Peace Process. The reporter, a man in his sixties, said he knew me and that we had met previously. I shook my head and told him he must be mistaken because I didn’t know any Israeli journalists. He whispered in my ear, ‘I was one of the two men you met in the 1970s to discuss weapons.’

John Bingham was a humble man. He wasn’t into the trappings of power and wealth, unlike many of the Loyalists holding rank at the time. Bingham was intelligent and astute. He lived in a working-class area and drove a clapped-out old banger. He liked to walk in the Black Mountain with his mother’s Labrador and I would occasionally join him for walks, taking my pitbull terrier, Buster, with me. It was during one of these walks that the security forces photographed us. I didn’t know about the picture until my arrest and the snap of us walking our dogs was shown to me by detectives.

I was coming up to twenty-three when the IRA bombed the La Mon House Hotel in February 1978. I was horrified at the slaughter of innocent people caused by the blast, which came without warning. The La Mon bombing was an important step in a journey that would eventually lead me to the Republican Plot at Milltown cemetery, almost ten years later, with grenades around my waist and a Browning in my hand. Twelve people were killed. Seven of the dead were women and there were three married couples among the toll. All the victims were attending the annual dinner dance of the Irish Collie Club. The hotel was packed with four hundred people enjoying a Friday night out when the place was turned into a fireball after the IRA attached cans of petrol to the window grilles. The device, set to go off in fifty-eight minutes, was designed to sweep through the room like a flame-thrower. As it went off, it blew out the window and sprayed the room with blazing petrol, which had been mixed with sugar to make sure it stuck to whatever it touched. The people inside didn’t have a chance. Some stumbled out of the hotel or jumped out of the windows with their hair, skin and clothes on fire. Those who didn’t survive shrivelled in the intense heat, so that their bodies looked like tiny children. It took two hours for six units of the fire brigade to bring the blaze under control. They were removing the bodies when I arrived on the scene.

I had been ordered to La Mon by my Red Hand superiors to see what I could do to help the emergency services. As I walked through the car park and saw the sad procession as firemen carried body after body from the charred and smoking building, I realised there was nothing I could do to help the living or the dead. Tarpaulin covered the dead. I wanted to see the carnage for myself. I don’t know how I managed to get past the RUC patrol and through the cordoned-off area, but suddenly I was standing by a row of covered bodies. I gently pulled back one cover and quickly replaced it. It was a horrific sight. What I saw in those five seconds has stayed with me for the rest of my life. I can only describe it as looking like a lump of charred wood. I couldn’t tell what gender the person was, there were no limbs and what was left of the face was a mouth wide open in a silent scream. I wondered what sort of person would do this to a human being. I could feel anger rising in the pit of my stomach. I wanted revenge. I wanted retribution of a similar kind. I was burning with rage and hatred for the people who had done this. I wanted the Republican community to pay dearly for this atrocity. I knew then that picking off a Catholic here or a nationalist there wasn’t revenge. It had to be retaliation in kind, something with a massive body count and deaths in double figures. Republicans had brought war to our doorstep. I wanted to bring war to their doorsteps and I could find people to help me.

I spoke to Sammy Cinnamond and he advised me to sit tight, but I didn’t agree with him. I told him about the charred remains of the young men and women. I told him La Mon was a sectarian strike and as Loyalists we were duty-bound to retaliate. He cautioned me to be patient and to not sink to the same depths as the IRA because that wasn’t ‘our style’.

Weeks went by. There was the sickening cycle of tit-for-tat shootings but nothing to match the horror of La Mon. In truth, the Red Hand was frightened of the public consequences of a big strike on the Republican community. In the late 1970s IRA bombs were going off at an alarming rate. I was frightened for my family and friends. When you left your home you ran the serious risk of getting injured or killed. I didn’t want loved ones to live like this. The IRA had to be stopped. I saw the Provos as rabid dogs, and in civilised countries rabid dogs are destroyed on the spot. I didn’t see my government or the authorities doing anything to stop these evil dogs of war. I thought back to when I was sixteen and had promised to defend my community in its hour of need.

My community was crying out for help. It was time for me to honour my promise.