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Tag Archives: Chlorane Bar Attack


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Death of Robert Bates, Member of the Shankill Butchers

Robert William Bates, Northern Irish loyalist, dies in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on June 11, 1997. He is a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the infamous Shankill Butchers gang, led by Lenny Murphy.

Bates is born into an Ulster Protestant family and grows up in the Shankill Road area of Belfast. He has a criminal record dating back to 1966, and later becomes a member of the Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Bates, employed as a barman at the Long Bar, is recruited into the Shankill Butchers gang in 1975 by its notorious ringleader, Lenny Murphy. 

The gang uses The Brown Bear pub, a Shankill Road drinking haunt frequented by the UVF, as its headquarters. Bates, a “sergeant” in the gang’s hierarchy, is an avid participant in the brutal torture and savage killings perpetrated against innocent Catholics after they are abducted from nationalist streets and driven away in a black taxi owned by fellow Shankill Butcher, William Moore.

The killings typically involve grisly-throat slashings preceded by lengthy beatings and torture. Bates is said to have been personally responsible for beating James Moorhead, a member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), to death on January 30, 1977, and to have played a central role in the kidnapping and murder of Catholic Joseph Morrisey three days later.  He also kills Thomas Quinn, a derelict, on February 8, 1976, and the following day is involved in shooting dead Archibald Hanna and Raymond Carlisle, two Protestant workmen that Bates and Murphy mistake for Catholics.

Martin Dillon reveals that Bates is also one of the four UVF gunmen who carries out a mass shooting in the Chlorane Bar attack in Belfast city centre on June 5, 1976. Five people (three Catholics and two Protestants) are shot dead. The UVF unit bursts into the pub in Gresham Street and orders the Catholics and Protestants to line up on opposite ends of the bar before they open fire. He later recounts his role in the attack to police; however, he claims that he never fired any shots due to his revolver having malfunctioned. Forensics evidence contradicts him as it proves that his revolver had been fired inside the Chlorane Bar that night. Lenny Murphy is in police custody at the time the shooting attack against the Chlorane Bar takes place.

Bates is arrested in 1977, along with Moore and other “Shankill Butcher” accomplices. His arrest follows a sustained attack by Moore and Sam McAllister on Catholic Gerard McLaverty, after which they dump his body, presuming him dead. However, McLaverty survives and identifies Moore and McAllister to the Royal Ulster Constabulary who drive him up and down the Shankill Road during a loyalist parade until he sees his attackers. During questioning both men implicate Bates, and other gang members, leading to their arrests. Following a long period spent on remand, he is convicted in February 1979 of murder related to the Shankill Butcher killings and given ten life sentences, with a recommendation by the trial judge, Justice Turlough O’Donnell, that he should never be released.

At the start of his sentence, Bates is involved in a series of violent incidents involving other inmates. He later claims that he had perpetrated these acts in order to live up to his “Basher” nickname. He serves as company commander of the UVF inmates and becomes noted as a stern disciplinarian.

However, while in the Maze Prison, Bates is said to have “found God,” and as a result becomes a born again Christian. He produces a prison testimony, which is later reprinted in The Burning Bush, and, after publicly advocating an end to violence, is transferred to HM Prison Maghaberry.

In prison, Bates forms a friendship with Provisional IRA member and fellow detainee Brendan Hughes. Bates foil a UVF assassination plot on Hughes.

It has been alleged that his image appears on the cover of Searching for the Young Soul Rebels by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

In October 1996, eighteen months prior to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Bates is cleared for early release by the Life Sentence Review Board. He is given the opportunity of participating in a rehabilitation scheme, spending the day on a work placement and returning to prison at night. As he arrives for work in his native Shankill area of Belfast early on the morning of June 11, 1997, he is shot dead by the son of a UDA man named James Curtis Moorehead, who Bates had killed in 1977. The killer identifies himself to Bates as the son of his victim before opening fire. The Sutton Index of Deaths attributes his assassination to a feud between the UVF and the UDA. Bates had been working at the Ex-Prisoners Interpretative Centre (EPIC), a drop-in centre for former loyalist prisoners.

Bates’s killing had not been sanctioned by the UDA leadership but nevertheless they refuse to agree to UVF demands that the killer should be handed over to them, instead exiling him from the Shankill. He is rehoused in the Taughmonagh area where he quickly becomes an important figure in the local UDA as a part of Jackie McDonald‘s South Belfast Brigade.

Bates’s name is subsequently included on the banner of a prominent Orange Lodge on the Shankill Road, called  Old Boyne Island Heroes. Relatives of Shankill Butchers victim Cornelius Neeson condemn the banner, stating that “it hurts the memory of those the butchers killed.” A fellow Lodge member and former friend of Bates defends the inclusion of his name to journalist Peter Taylor: “I knew him very well and he’d been a personal friend for twenty or thirty years and to me he was a gentleman.” He goes on to describe him as having been “an easy-going, decent fellow, and as far as the Lodge is concerned, a man of good-standing.”

Bates is buried in a Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster ceremony by Reverend Alan Smylie. His funeral is attended by a large representation from local Orange Lodges. Peace activist Mairead Maguire is also among the mourners, arguing that Bates had “repented, asked for forgiveness and showed great remorse for what he had done,” while a memorial service held at the spot of his killing two days after the funeral is attended by Father Gerry Reynolds of Clonard Monastery.[8]


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The Ramble Inn Attack

The Ramble Inn attack is a mass shooting that takes place at a rural pub on July 2, 1976, near Antrim, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is believed to have been carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary organisation. Six civilians, five Protestants and one Catholic, are killed in the attack and three others are wounded.

The mid-1970s is one of the deadliest periods of the Troubles. From February 1975 until February 1976, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and British Government observe a truce. This, however, marks a rise in sectarian tit-for-tat killings. Ulster loyalist paramilitaries, fearing they are about to be forsaken by the British Government and forced into a united Ireland, increase their attacks on Irish Catholics and nationalists. Under orders not to engage British forces, some IRA units concentrate on tackling the loyalists. The fall-off of regular operations causes serious problems of internal discipline and some IRA members also engage in revenge attacks. The tit-for-tat killings continue after the truce ends. On June 5, 1976, the UVF shoots dead three Catholics and two Protestants in an attack on the Chlorane Bar. This is claimed as revenge for the killing of two Protestants in a pub earlier that day.

On June 25, 1976, gunmen open fire inside a Protestant-owned pub in Templepatrick, County Antrim. Three Protestant civilians die. The attack is claimed by the “Republican Action Force“, which is believed to be a cover name used by some members of the IRA.

The Ramble Inn lies just outside Antrim, on the main A26 Antrim to Ballymena dual carriageway, near the village of Kells. The pub is owned by Catholics but in a rural area of County Antrim which is mostly Protestant. Most of its customers are Protestants from the surrounding area.

On the night of Friday July 2, 1976, a three-man UVF unit consisting of a driver and two gunmen steal a car from a couple parked in nearby Tardree Forest. The couple are gagged and bound before the men make off in the car. At about 11:00 PM, just before closing time, two masked gunmen in boilersuits enter the pub and open fire with machine guns, hitting nine people. Three die at the scene and a further three die later. The victims are Frank Scott (75), Ernest Moore (40), James McCallion (35), Joseph Ellis (27) and James Francey (50), all Protestants, and Oliver Woulahan (20), a Catholic.

On July 3 at 12:30 PM, an anonymous caller to the News Letter claims the attack is in retaliation for the earlier attack in Templepatrick. It is widely believed that the UVF are responsible for the Ramble Inn attack. In the weeks that follow, a number of people are interviewed by police in relation to the shooting but are subsequently released without charge. To date, no one has been convicted of the attack.

In 2012 the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), a body which has been set up in Northern Ireland to re-investigate unsolved murders of the Troubles, meets with the family of James McCallion to deliver their findings. The probe concludes that the then Northern Ireland police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), had conducted a thorough investigation and the detectives working on the case did their best to bring the killers to justice.