Craig, known as Jim, grows up in an Ulster Protestant family on the Shankill Road. In the early 1970s, he, a former boxer, is sent to the HM Prison Maze for a criminal offence unrelated to paramilitary activities. While serving his sentence at the Maze he joins the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), and is asked by the organisation’s commander at the time, Charles Harding Smith, to take control of the UDA prisoners inside, on account of his reputation as a “hard man.”
After his release in 1976, Craig sets up a large protection racket and becomes the UDA’s chief fundraiser. By 1985, he has managed to blackmail and extort money from a number of construction firms, building sites, as well as pubs, clubs, and shops in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland, whose intimidated owners pay protection money out of fear of Craig and his associates. It is alleged that the UDA receives hundreds of thousands of pounds, some of which also find their way inside Craig’s pockets as part of his “commission.” He is acquitted on a firearm charge and Ulster Freedom Fighters (a cover name for the UDA) membership on March 18, 1982. In 1985, he is brought to court after a number of businessmen decide to testify against him, with the condition that their identities remained hidden. The case falls apart when Craig’s defence argues that his client’s rights were violated by the concealment of the witnesses’ identities.
Craig allegedly is involved in the double killing of a Catholic man and a Protestant man on the Shankill Road in 1977. The men, both colleagues, had entered a loyalist club and were later stabbed, shot and put into a car which was set on fire. By this time the UDA West Belfast Brigade no longer wants him in their ranks, as they claim they can no longer “afford him.” Craig, who is ordered to leave the Shankill Road, goes on to join forces with John McMichael’sSouth Belfast Brigade. In addition to being the principal fundraiser, he also sits on the UDA’s Inner Council. He usually travels in the company of his bodyguard, Artie Fee, a UDA member from the Shankill Road.
The rival Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) carries out an investigation after it is rumoured Craig has been involved in the death of UVF major William Marchant, who is gunned down by Provisional Irish Republican Army gunmen from a passing car on the Shankill Road on April 28, 1987. Marchant is the third high-ranking UVF man to be killed by the IRA during the 1980s. Although their inquiries reveal that Craig had quarrelled with Marchant as well as Lenny Murphy and John Bingham prior to their killings, the UVF feel that there is not enough evidence to warrant an attack on such a powerful UDA figure as Craig.
In December 1987, when UDA South Belfast brigadier John McMichael is blown up by an IRA booby-trap car bomb outside his home in Lisburn‘s Hilden estate, it is believed that Craig had organised his death with the IRA. Allegedly Craig fears McMichael is about to expose his racketeering business, thus putting an end to his lucrative operation. McMichael reportedly sets up an inquiry and discovers that Craig is spending money on a lavish scale, going on holidays at least twice a year and indulging in a “champagne lifestyle.” At the same time, it is suggested that Craig has made certain deals with Irish republican paramilitary groups, dividing up the rackets in west Belfast, and he would be doing the IRA a favour by helping them to eliminate a high-profile loyalist such as McMichael. Craig has established links with republicans during his time in prison, and the profitable deals and exchanges of information between them ensures he will most likely not be a target for IRA assassination.
Craig is named as an extortionist in Central Television’s 1987 programme The Cook Report. He plans to sue the programme’s producers for libel. In January 1988, Jack Kielty (father of future television presenter Patrick Kielty), a building contractor from County Down who had promised to testify as a key witness against Craig, is murdered by the UDA. This killing is attributed to Craig, although it is never proven.
Craig is shot dead by two gunmen from the UDA in “The Castle Inn” (later called “The Bunch of Grapes”), a pub in Beersbridge Road, east Belfast on October 15, 1988, where he has been lured in the belief that there is to be a UDA meeting. He is playing pool in the pub at the time of his fatal shooting by the two men, both of whom are wearing boilersuits and ski masks and carrying automatic weapons. Upon spotting Craig they open fire, spraying the room with gunfire. Craig dies instantly. A bystander pensioner is also murdered in the attack, and four other bystanders are wounded by stray bullets. The UDA claims the killing is carried out due to Craig’s “treason” and involvement in John McMichael’s murder as they know he had provided the IRA with information to successfully carry out the assassination. They apologise for the unintentional death of the pensioner. Craig is not given a paramilitary funeral, and none of the UDA’s command attend it.
Johnny Adair, leader of “C Company” of the Ulster Loyalistparamilitary organisation Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on October 27, 1963. He is known as Mad Dog. He is expelled from the organisation in 2002 following a violent power struggle. Since 2003, he, his family and a number of supporters have been forced to leave Northern Ireland by other loyalists.
Adair is born into a working class loyalist background and raised in Belfast. He grows up in the Lower Oldpark area, a site of many sectarian clashes during “The Troubles.” By all accounts, he has little parental supervision, and does not attend school regularly. He takes to the streets, forming a skinheadstreet gang with a group of young loyalist friends, who “got involved initially in petty, then increasingly violent crime.” Eventually, he starts a rock band called Offensive Weapon, which during performances espouses support for the British National Front.
While still in his teens, Adair joins the Ulster Young Militants (UYM), and later the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary organisation which also calls itself the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
By the early 1990s, Adair has established himself as head of the UDA/UFF’s “C Company” based on the Shankill Road. When he is charged with terrorist offences in 1995, he admits that he had been a UDA commander for three years up to 1994. During this time, he and his colleagues are involved in multiple and random murders of Catholic civilians. At his trial in 1995, the prosecuting lawyer says he is dedicated to his cause against those whom he “regarded as militant republicans – among whom he had lumped almost the entire Roman Catholic population.” Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives believe his unit killed up to 40 people during this period.
Adair once remarks to a Catholic journalist from the Republic of Ireland upon the discovery of her being Catholic, that normally Catholics travel in the boot of his car. According to a press report in 2003, he is handed details of republican suspects by British Army intelligence, and is even invited for dinner in the early 1990s. In his autobiography, he claims he was frequently passed information by sympathetic British Army members, while his own whereabouts were passed to republican paramilitaries by the RUC Special Branch, who, he claims, hated him.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of a fish shop on the Shankill Road in October 1993 is an attempt to assassinate Adair and the rest of the UDA’s Belfast leadership in reprisal for attacks on Catholics. The IRA claims that the office above the shop is regularly used by the UDA for meetings and one is due to take place shortly after the bomb is set to explode. The bomb goes off early, killing one IRA man, Thomas Begley, and nine Protestant civilians. The UFF retaliates with a random attack on the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, County Londonderry, which kills eight civilians, two of whom are Protestants. Adair survives 13 assassination attempts, most of which are carried out by the IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
During this time, undercover officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary record months of discussions with Adair, in which he boasts of his activities, producing enough evidence to charge him with directing terrorism. He is convicted and sentenced to 16 years in HM Prison Maze. In prison, according to some reports, he sells drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy tablets and amphetamines to other loyalist prisoners, earning him an income of £5000 a week.
In January 1998, Adair is one of five loyalist prisoners visited in the prison by British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam. She persuades them to drop their objection to their political representatives continuing the talks that leads to the Good Friday Agreement in April. In 1999, he is released early as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners after the Agreement.
Following his release, much of Adair’s activities are bound up with violent internecine feuds within the UDA and between the UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groupings. The motivation for such violence is sometimes difficult to piece together. It involves a combination of political differences over the loyalist ceasefires, rivalry between loyalists over control of territory and competition over the proceeds of organised crime.
In 1999, shortly after his release from prison, Adair is shot at and grazed in the head by a bullet at a UB40 concert in Belfast. He blames the shooting on republicans, but it is thought that rival loyalists are to blame.
In August 2000, Adair is again mildly injured by a pipe bomb he is transporting in a car. He again attempts to blame the incident on an attack by republicans, but this claim is widely discounted. A feud breaks out at the time between the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leaving several loyalists dead. As a result of Adair’s involvement in the violence, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, revokes his early release and returns him to prison.
In May 2002, Adair is released from prison again. Once free, he is a key part of an effort to forge stronger ties between the UDA/UFF and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), a small breakaway faction of the UVF loyalist paramilitary organization in Northern Ireland. The most open declaration of this is a joint mural depicting Adair’s UDA “C company” and the LVF. Other elements in the UDA/UFF strongly resist these movements, which they see as an attempt by Adair to win external support in a bid to take over the leadership of the UDA. Some UDA members dislike his overt association with the drugs trade, with which the LVF are even more heavily involved. A loyalist feud begins, and ends with several men dead and scores evicted from their homes.
On September 25, 2002, Adair is expelled from the UDA/UFF along with close associate John White, and the organisation almost splits as Adair tries to woo influential leaders such as Andre Shoukri, who are initially sympathetic to him. There are attempts on Adair’s and White’s lives.
Adair returns to prison in January 2003, when his early release licence is revoked by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, on grounds of engaging in unlawful activity. On February 1, 2003, UDA divisional leader John Gregg is shot dead along with another UDA member, Rab Carson, on returning from a Rangers F.C. match in Glasgow. The killing is widely blamed on Adair’s C Company as Gregg is one of those who organised his expulsion from the UDA. Five days later, on February 6, about twenty Adair supporters, including White, flee their homes for Scotland, widely seen as a response to severe intimidation.
Adair is released from prison again on January 10, 2005. He immediately leaves Northern Ireland and joins his family in Bolton, Lancashire, where it is claimed he stays with supporters of Combat 18 and the Racial Volunteer Force.
The police in Bolton question Adair’s wife, Gina, about her involvement in the drugs trade, and his son, nicknamed both “Mad Pup” and “Daft Dog,” is charged with selling crack cocaine and heroin. Adair is arrested and fined for assault and threatening behaviour in September 2005. He had married Gina Crossan, his partner for many years and the mother of his four children, at HM Prison Maze on February 21, 1997. She is three years Adair’s junior and grew up in the same Lower Oldpark neighbourhood.
After being released, Adair is almost immediately arrested again for violently assaulting Gina, who suffers from ovarian cancer. Since this episode he reportedly moves to Scotland, living in Troon in Ayrshire.
In May 2006, Adair reportedly receives £100,000 from John Blake publishers for a ghost-written autobiography.
In November 2006, the UK’s Five television channel transmits an observational documentary on Adair made by Dare Films.
Adair appears in a documentary made by Donal MacIntyre and screened in 2007. The focus of the film centers around Adair and another supposedly reformed character, a Neo-Nazi from Germany called Nick Greger, and their trip to Uganda to build an orphanage. Adair is seen to fire rifles, stating it is the first time he has done so without wearing gloves. He also admits to being “worried sick” and “pure sick with worry” after Greger disappears in Uganda for days on end. It turns out that he had gone off and married a Ugandan lady. Adair confesses via telephone that he “thought something might have happened to Nick.”
On July 20, 2015, three Irish republicans, Antoin Duffy, Martin Hughes and Paul Sands, are found guilty of planning to murder Adair and Sam McCrory. Charges against one of the accused in the trial are dropped on July 1.
On September 10, 2016, Adair’s son, Jonathan Jr., is found dead in Troon, aged 32. He dies from an accidental overdose while celebrating the day after his release from prison for motoring offences. He had been in and out of prison since the family fled Northern Ireland. He served a five-year sentence for dealing heroin and crack cocaine. The year before, he had been cleared of a gun raid at a party and in 2012 is the target of a failed bomb plot. He was also facing trial later that year on drugs charges.
In December 2023, while recording a podcast with far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Adair surprisingly expresses a grudging respect for the IRA hunger strikers, describing the manner of their deaths as “dedication at the highest level” for a political cause and admitting that he would not have volunteered to do the same if asked.
McGeown joins the IRA’s youth wing, Fianna Éireann, in 1970. He is first arrested at the age of 14, and in 1973 he is again arrested and interned in Long Kesh Detention Centre until 1974. In November 1975, he is arrested and charged with possession of explosives, bombing the Europa Hotel, and IRA membership. At his trial in 1976 he is convicted and receives a five-year sentence for IRA membership and two concurrent fifteen-year sentences for the bombing and possession of explosives, and is imprisoned at Long Kesh with Special Category Status.
In March 1978, McGeown attempts to escape along with Brendan McFarlane and Larry Marley. The three have wire cutters and dress as prison officers, complete with wooden guns. The escape is unsuccessful, and results in McGeown receiving an additional six-month sentence and the loss of his Special Category Status.
McGeown is transferred into the Long Kesh Detention Centre’s H-Blocks where he joins the blanket protest and dirty protest, attempting to secure the return of Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners.He describes the conditions inside the prison during the dirty protest in a 1985 interview:
“There were times when you would vomit. There were times when you were so run down that you would lie for days and not do anything with the maggots crawling all over you. The rain would be coming in the window and you would be lying there with the maggots all over the place.“
In late 1980, the protest escalates and seven prisoners take part in a fifty-three-day hunger strike, aimed at restoring political status by securing what are known as the “Five Demands:”
The right not to wear a prison uniform.
The right not to do prison work.
The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits.
The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week.
Full restoration of remission lost through the protest.
The strike ends before any prisoners die and without political status being secured. A second hunger strike begins on March 1, 1981, led by Bobby Sands, the IRA’s former Officer Commanding (OC) in the prison. McGeown joins the strike on July 9, after Sands and four other prisoners have starved themselves to death. Following the deaths of five other prisoners, his family authorises medical intervention to save his life after he lapses into a coma on August 20, the 42nd day of his hunger strike.
McGeown is released from prison in 1985, resuming his active role in the IRA’s campaign and also working for Sinn Féin, the republican movement’s political wing. In 1988, he is charged with organising the Corporals killings, an incident where two plain-clothes British Army soldiers are killed by the IRA. At an early stage of the trial his solicitor, Pat Finucane, argues there is insufficient evidence against McGeown, and the charges are dropped in November 1988. McGeown and Finucane are photographed together outside Crumlin Road Courthouse, a contributing factor to Finucane being killed by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in February 1989. Despite suffering from heart disease as a result of his participation in the hunger strike, McGeown is a member of Sinn Féin’s Ard Chomhairle and is active in its Prisoner of War Department. In 1993, he is elected to Belfast City Council.
McGeown is found dead in his home on October 1, 1996, after suffering a heart attack. Sinn Féin chairman Mitchel McLaughlin says his death is “a great loss to Sinn Féin and the republican struggle.” McGeown is buried in the republican plot at Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery. His death is often referred to as the “11th hunger striker.” In 1998, the Pat McGeown Community Endeavour Award is launched by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, with Adams describing McGeown as “a modest man with a quiet, but total dedication to equality and raising the standard of life for all the people of the city.” A plaque in memory of McGeown is unveiled outside the Sinn Féin headquarters on the Falls Road on November 24, 2001, and a memorial plot on Beechmount Avenue is dedicated to the memory of McGeown, Kieran Nugent and Alec Comerford on March 3, 2002.
Wright attracts considerable media attention at the Drumcree standoff, where he supports the Orange Order‘s desire to march its traditional route through the Catholic/Irish nationalist area of Portadown. In 1994, the UVF and other paramilitary groups call ceasefires. However, in July 1996, Wright’s unit breaks the ceasefire and carries out a number of attacks, including a sectarian killing. For this, Wright and his Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade are stood down by the UVF leadership. He is expelled from the UVF and threatened with execution if he does not leave Northern Ireland. Wright ignores the threats and, along with many of his followers, defiantly forms the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).
In March 1997, Wright is sent to the HM Maze Prison for having threatened the life of a woman. While imprisoned, he continues to direct the LVF’s activities. On December 27 of that year, he is assassinated at the prison by Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners as he is led out to a van for a visit with his girlfriend. The LVF carries out a wave of sectarian attacks in retaliation.
Owing to his uncompromising stance as an upholder of Ulster loyalism and opposition to the Northern Ireland peace process, Wright is regarded as a cult hero, cultural icon, and martyr figure by hardline loyalists. His image adorns murals in loyalist housing estates and many of his devotees have tattoos bearing his likeness.
Wright’s funeral procession moves at a snail’s pace on a grey and windy day. Groups of mourners take turns carrying the coffin. Women carry a wreath that simply says “Billy.” Twenty men with tight haircuts and white shirts with black armbands flank the cortège. There is heavy security. Troops stand guard on bridges and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Land Rovers prowl the housing estates. A spotter plane flies overhead. A lone piper plays “Abide with Me” before a banner bearing the letters “LVF.”
Wright is buried at Seagoe Cemetery, Portadown, Northern Ireland.
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 loyalistparamilitary 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.
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]
Fulton is born in Portadown, County Armagh in 1961, one of the children of Jim Fulton, a former British soldier who works as a window cleaner. His mother, Sylvia (née Prentice), comes from a family of wealthy car dealers. He grows up in the working classProtestant Killycomain area.
Fulton leaves school early and promptly joins the Mid-Ulster UVF, being sworn in at the age of 15. His early activity includes being part of the UVF gang that opens fire on a Craigavon mobile sweetshop on March 28, 1991, killing two teenaged girls and one man, all Catholics. The attack is allegedly planned by Robin Jackson.
In the early 1990s, Billy Wright, also from Portadown, takes over command of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade from Jackson. The Mid-Ulster Brigade, founded in 1972 by its first commander, Billy Hanna, operates mainly in the Lurgan and Portadown areas. Fulton soon becomes Wright’s closest associate and right-hand man and has an “extreme fixation and obsession over Wright.” He even has an image of Wright tattooed over his heart.
Fulton is alleged to have perpetrated twelve sectarian killings in the 1990s, and reportedly is implicated in many other attacks. His victims are often questioned about their religion prior to their killings, and sometimes they are killed in front of their families. He is very violent and has a quick temper. Wright is the only person who is able to control him. A Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detective who knows both of them says that whenever they are stopped by the police in the 1990s, Wright is “coolness personified,” while Fulton rage’s, shouts and makes threats.
The Mid-Ulster Brigade calls themselves the “Brat Pack,” which journalist Martin O’Hagan of the Sunday World altered to “Rat Pack.” After the nickname of “King Rat” is given to Wright by local Ulster Defence Association commander Robert John Kerr as a form of pub bantering, O’Hagan takes to describing Wright by that term. This soubriquet is thereafter used by the media, much to Wright’s fury. This leads him to issue threats against O’Hagan and all journalists who work for the newspaper. The unit initially welcomes the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire in October 1994; however, things change drastically over the next few years.
Following the order given in August 1996 by the UVF’s Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership) for Wright and the Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade to stand down, Fulton remains loyal to Wright and defies the order. This comes after the Mid-Ulster UVF’s killing of a Catholic taxi driver, Michael McGoldrick, while the UVF are on ceasefire. After Wright defies a UVF order to leave Northern Ireland, he forms the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force, taking the members of the officially-disbanded Portadown unit with him, including Fulton.
Fulton, as Wright’s deputy, assumes effective control of the LVF when Wright is sent to the Maze Prison in March 1997. When Wright is shot dead by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) in December 1997, in a prison van while being taken to the Maze’s visitor block, Fulton assumes control of the LVF. He is deeply affected by Wright’s death, and reportedly spends many nights alone by his grave. In May 1998, the LVF calls a ceasefire. It is accepted by the Northern Ireland Office six months later.
Fulton is arrested in 1998 after shooting at an off-duty soldier in Portadown. He is heavily intoxicated at the time and sentenced to four years imprisonment. While he is out on compassionate leave in early 1999, he allegedly organises the killing of Catholic lawyer Rosemary Nelson. During the Drumcree standoff, Nelson had represented the Catholic Portadown residents who opposed the Orange Order‘s march through the predominantly nationalist Garvaghy area. She is blown up by a car bomb on March 15, 1999, outside her home in Lurgan. The bomb is allegedly made by a man from the Belfast UDA but planted by Fulton’s associates acting on his orders.
Colin Port, the Deputy Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary who heads the investigation into Nelson’s death, says “without question” Fulton is the person who had masterminded her killing. Although he is back in prison at the time, he is excited when he hears the news of her death on the radio. He is linked to the killing by police informers but not forensics. It is also revealed that prior to his own death, Wright had threatened to kill Nelson in the belief she had defended Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers. Fulton is released from prison in April 2001.
On June 10, 2002, Fulton, who has been held on remand in HM Prison Maghaberry since December 2001, is found dead in his prison cell with a leather belt around his neck. He is found on his bed rather than hanging from the ceiling, leading to speculation that his death had been accidentally caused by autoerotic asphyxiation. Friends claim he had expressed suicidal thoughts due to both his failure to recover from his close friend Wright’s death, as well as his fears that he was suffering from stomach cancer. Some reports suggest his unstable mental state had seen him stand down as leader several weeks before his death, with the LVF’s power base transferred to Belfast. He was also afraid that rival loyalist inmates wished to kill him inside the prison.
At the time of his death, Fulton is awaiting trial, having been charged with conspiracy to murder Rodney Jennett, a member of a rival loyalist paramilitary organisation, in connection with an ongoing feud. He leaves behind his wife, Louise and two children, Lee and Alana. His funeral is attended by 500 mourners, including a number of senior loyalist paramilitaries, including Johnny Adair and John White, who act as pallbearers alongside Fulton’s brother Jim and son, Lee. After a service at St. Columba’s Parish Church, he is interred in Kernan Cemetery in Portadown.
Conway is born on January 22, 1913, in Belfast, the eldest of four sons and five daughters of Patrick Joseph Conway and Annie Conway (née Donnelly). His father, a self-employed housepainter, also has a paint shop in Kent Street off Royal Avenue. His mother, who survives her son, is born in Carlingford, County Louth. He attends Boundary Street Primary School, St. Mary’s CBS (now St. Mary’s CBGS Belfast). His academic successes are crowned by a scholarship to Queen’s University Belfast. He decides to study for the diocesan priesthood. In 1933 he is conferred with an honours BA in English literature and goes on to read a distinguished course in theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.
Conway is ordained on June 20, 1937, and awarded a DD (1938). On November 12, 1938, he enters the Pontifical Irish College in Rome, and in 1941 he receives the DCL degree at the Pontifical Gregorian University. When Italy enters World War II in June 1940, he returns to Belfast to take up duty in the Diocese of Down and Connor. He is appointed to teach English and Latin in St. Malachy’s College in Belfast, but after one year he is named professor of moral theology and canon law in Maynooth. He contributes regular ‘Canon law replies’ to the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, which are later collected as Problems in canon law (1950), the only book published by him.
In 1957 Conway becomes vice-president of Maynooth, and in 1958, he is named Ireland’s youngest bishop, Titular Bishop of Neve, and auxiliary bishop to Cardinal John D’Alton, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He is consecrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh on July 27, 1958. He serves as administrator of St. Patrick’s Church, Dundalk, for the next five years, gaining valuable pastoral experience, and also uses these years to familiarise himself with his new diocese, especially its geography. On the death of D’Alton, he is chosen to succeed him in September 1963, and is enthroned on September 25 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh by the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Sensi. At the end of 1964, Pope Paul VI chooses him as Ireland’s seventh residential cardinal, and he receives the red hat in the public consistory of February 22, 1965.
The thirteen-odd years of Conway’s ministry as primate are dominated firstly by the Second Vatican Council and secondly by the Troubles in Northern Ireland. His primary concern is the church, to steer it through testing times. He is a very active bishop in a diocese of 160,000 Catholics, with fifty-seven parishes and some 167 priests. He carries the burden alone until 1974 when he is given an auxiliary in the person of his secretary, Fr. Francis Lenny (1928–78). Two new parishes are created, five new churches are built, and many others are renovated to meet the requirements of liturgical reform. Twenty new schools are also provided. He attends all four sessions of the Vatican council (1962–65), as auxiliary bishop and as primate. On October 9, 1963, he addresses the assembly, making a plea that the council might not be so concerned with weightier matters as to neglect to speak about priests. He also makes contributions on the topics of mixed marriages, Catholic schools, and the laity. On the topic of education, he is convinced that integrated schools will not solve Northern Ireland’s problems.
Conway represents the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference at each assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, at first with Bishop Michael Browne of the Diocese of Galway and Kilmacduagh, his former professor in Maynooth, and later with the Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan. With Cardinals Jean-Marie Villot and Pericle Felici, he is chairman of the first synod in 1969, a signal honour conferred on him by Pope Paul VI. He addresses the assembly, opposing the ordination of married men as a move that would release a flood of applications from around the world for dispensations from priestly celibacy. His experience of violence in Northern Ireland is reflected in contributions he makes to later synod assemblies, especially in 1971 and 1974.
Apart from the synod, Conway travels a few times each year to Rome for meetings of the three Roman congregations on which he is called to serve (those of bishops, catholic education, and the evangelisation of peoples) and the commission for the revision of the code of canon law. He also travels further afield in a representative capacity to the International Eucharistic Congress at Bogotá, also attended by Pope Paul VI, and to Madras (1972), where he acts as papal legate for the centenary celebrations in honour of St. Thomas. In 1966 he is invited by the bishops of Poland to join in celebrations for the millennium of Catholicism in that country but is refused an entry visa by the Polish government. In January 1973 he feels obliged to forgo participation in the Melbourne eucharistic congress because of the troubled situation at home. Within Ireland he accepts invitations to become a freeman of Cork and Galway (1965) and of Wexford (1966). In 1976 the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers on him an honorary LL.D.
Conway is acknowledged as an able and diligent chairman of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The core problem in the early years is how to lead the Irish church into the difficult new era that follows the council. He shows exceptional leadership qualities in the manner in which he promotes firm but gentle progress, avoiding sudden trauma and divisions. A major event in his term as Archbishop of Armagh, and one that gives him much satisfaction, is the canonization of Oliver Plunkett, his martyred predecessor, in the holy year 1975. He follows with great interest the final stages of the cause from 1968 and is greatly disappointed when grounded by his doctors six weeks before the event. He does however take part, concelebrating with Pope Paul VI at the ceremony on October 12, 1975. He also presides the following evening at the first mass of thanksgiving in the Lateran Basilica, receiving a tumultuous applause from the thousands of Irish present.
More than anything else, the Troubles in Northern Ireland occupy Conway during the second half of his term as archbishop and primate. He is the leading spokesman of the Catholic cause but never fails to condemn atrocities wherever the responsibility lay. He brands as ‘monsters’ the terrorist bombers on both sides. In 1971 he denounces internment without trial, and the following year he is mainly responsible for highlighting the ill-treatment and even torture of prisoners in Northern Ireland. He repudiates the idea that the conflict is religious in nature, emphasising its social and political dimensions, and is openly critical of the British government over conditions in Long Kesh Detention Centre, and of ‘the cloak of almost total silence’ surrounding violence against the Catholic community.
In January 1977 Conway undergoes surgery in a Dublin hospital, and almost immediately comes to know that he is terminally ill. It is the best-kept secret in Ireland until close to the end. On March 29, he writes to his fellow bishops informing them that the prognosis regarding his health is ‘not good, in fact . . . very bad,’ and that he is perfectly reconciled to God’s will. He is still able to work at his desk until Good Friday, April 8, 1977.
Conway dies in Armagh on Low Sunday night, April 17, 1977. Seven countries are represented at his funeral by six cardinals and many bishops. The apostolic nuncio, the bishops of Ireland, the president and Taoiseach, six Irish government ministers, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland are also among the mourners. The cardinal is laid to rest in St. Patrick’s Cathedral Cemetery, Armagh. The red hat received from Pope Paul VI is suspended from the ceiling of the Lady chapel, joining those of his four immediate predecessors.
(From: “Conway, John William,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, contributed by J. J. Hanley)
Although nobody is ever charged in connection with the killings, it is widely believed by nationalists and much of the press that the attack had been planned and led by Billy Wright, the leader of the Mid-Ulster Brigade’s Portadown unit. Wright himself takes credit for this and boasts to The Guardian newspaper, “I would look back and say Cappagh was probably our best,” though some sources are sceptical about his claim.
On the evening of Sunday, March 3, 1991, a unit of the UVF’s Mid-Ulster Brigade drive into the heartland of the East Tyrone IRA, intent on wiping out an entire IRA unit that is based in the County Tyrone village of Cappagh. One team of the UVF men wait outside Boyle’s Bar, while a second team waits on the outskirts of the town. At 10:30 p.m. a car pulls into the car park outside the bar and the UVF gunmen open fire with vz. 58assault rifles, killing Provisional IRA volunteers John Quinn (23), Dwayne O’Donnell (17) and Malcolm Nugent (20). The victims and car are riddled with bullets. According to author Thomas G. Mitchell, Quinn, O’Donnell and Nugent are part of an IRA active service unit (ASU). The gunmen then attempt to enter the pub but are unable to after the civilians inside realise what is happening and barricade the door. Unable to get into the bar, a UVF gunman shoots through a high open toilet window killing local civilian, Thomas Armstrong (50) and badly wounding a 21-year-old man. Their intended target, IRA commander Brian Arthurs, escapes with his life by crouching behind the bar during the shooting. According to the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), the three IRA volunteers chose to go to the pub “on the spur of the moment,” thus are unlikely to be the UVF’s original target.
After the attack, the UVF issues a statement: “This was not a sectarian attack on the Catholic community, but was an operation directed at the very roots of the Provisional IRA command structure in the Armagh–Tyrone area.” The statement concludes with the promise that “if the Provisional IRA were to cease its campaign of terror, the Ulster Volunteer Force would no longer deem it necessary to continue with their military operations.” Privately the UVF are hugely pleased with the attack in a republican heartland and Billy Wright, leader of the Portadown unit of the UVF’s Mid-Ulster Brigade, who is alleged to be centrally involved, tells Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald the killings were “one of things we did militarily in thirty years. We proved we could take the war to the Provos in one of their strongest areas.” Cusack and McDonald assert that a wealthy UVF supporter with a business in South Belfast helped the UVF purchase the cars used in the attack at auctions in the city.
The Provisional IRA initially does not acknowledge that three of the victims are within its ranks, apparently with the aim of garnering sympathy from the wider world, particularly in the Republic of Ireland, toward nationalists in Northern Ireland.
The first reprisal takes place on April 9, 1991, when alleged UVF member Derek Ferguson, a cousin of local MP Reverend William McCrea, is shot and killed in Coagh by members of the East Tyrone Brigade. His family denies any paramilitary links. In the months following the 1991 shootings, two former UDR soldiers are killed by the IRA near Cappagh. One of them is shot dead while driving along Altmore Road on August 5, 1991. The other former soldier is blown up by an IRA bomb planted inside his car at Kildress on April 25, 1993. It is claimed that he has loyalist paramilitary connections. The 1993 bombing leads to allegations that the IRA is killing Protestant landowners in Tyrone and Fermanagh in an orchestrated campaign to drive Protestants out of the region. There are at least five botched IRA attempts against the life of Billy Wright before the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) succeeds in killing him in 1997 inside the Maze Prison.
This is not the first time the UVF carries out an attack on Boyle’s Bar in Cappagh. On January 17, 1974, at around 7:40 p.m. two masked UVF gunmen enter the pub and open fire indiscriminately on the customers with a Sterling submachine gun and a Smith & Wessonrevolver, firing at least 35 shots. A Catholic civilian and retired farmer Daniel Hughes (73) is shot eleven times and killed in the attack and three other people are injured. A group calling itself the “Donaghmore-Pomeroy Battalion of the UVF” claim responsibility for the shooting. The attack is linked to the notorious Glenanne gang.
(Pictured: The scene of the UVF attack outside Boyle’s Bar in Cappagh in March 1991. Photo: Pacemaker Archive Belfast 153-91-BW)
The Tandragee killings take place in the early hours of Saturday, February 19, 2000, on an isolated country road outside Tandragee, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Two young Protestant men, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, are beaten and repeatedly stabbed to death in what is part of a Loyalist feud between the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and their rivals, the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). The men are not members of any loyalist paramilitary organisation. It later emerges in court hearings that Robb had made disparaging remarks about the killing of UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Richard Jameson by an LVF gunman the previous month. This had angered the killers, themselves members of the Mid-Ulster UVF, and in retaliation they lure the two men to the remote lane on the outskirts of town, where they kill and mutilate them. The UVF’s Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership) does not sanction the killings.
The origins of the lethal 2000–01 loyalist feud which erupts between the UVF and the LVF begins when a brawl breaks out in the Portadown F.C. Society Club on December 27, 1999. The leader of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade, Richard Jameson, is jostled and insulted by members of the LVF who are holding a celebration at the club to commemorate the second anniversary of the shooting death of their former leader and founder, Billy Wright, inside the Maze Prison by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
Shortly after Jameson leaves the club, he returns with a number of UVF men armed with baseball bats and pickaxe handles. A violent altercation breaks out in which 12 people are seriously injured including three LVF prisoners out on Christmas parole. The LVF decides to retaliate and sends a gunman to assassinate Jameson in the driveway outside his home on January 10, 2000. The UVF’s Brigade Staff in Belfast immediately convenes a “war council” at “the Eagle,” their headquarters over a chip shop on the Shankill Road, where they discuss plans to avenge Jameson’s killing. The LVF’s leader, Mark “Swinger” Fulton, who is imprisoned at the time, claims to no avail that his organisation is not involved in the shooting.
At 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, February 19, 2000, Protestant acquaintances, Andrew Robb, a 19-year-old unmarried father, and David McIlwaine, an 18-year-old graphic design student at Lurgan Tech, both of Portadown, leave “The Spot” nightclub in Tandragee together with three others after spending Friday night out. The club is managed by Willie Frazer, well known as a loyalist victims’ advocate and political activist, who has since suggested that the killings were linked to a threat posed to him by the UVF. Billy Wright had reportedly frequented the nightclub before his imprisonment and death.
The group of three men and two women attempt to enter a taxi, but regulations stipulate that no more than four passengers can travel together. Robb and McIlwaine get out of the vehicle and head in search of a house party. The pair knocks on the door of a house in Sinton Park belonging to Mid-Ulster UVF member Stephen Leslie Brown, 19, also known as “Stephen Leslie Revels.” They are invited inside where other UVF members Noel Dillon and Mark Burcombe are also present. Alcoholic beverages are consumed at the party.
The atmosphere inside the house suddenly turns ugly when Dillon asks the teenagers how they feel about the LVF killing of UVF Mid-Ulster brigadier Richard Jameson. McIlwaine remains silent, however Robb replies, “So fucking what, it’s got fuck all to do with me,” to which Dillon takes exception. When he informs Robb that Jameson had been his good friend, Robb makes further disparaging comments which also anger Brown. Brown, out of earshot of the teenagers, decides to assault Robb in retaliation, saying he will “punch the head off Andrew.” Neither Robb nor McIlwaine has been a member of any loyalist paramilitary organisation, although Robb has tenuous links to the LVF having been an associate of Billy Wright and even photographed in 1996 at a march led by Wright. Writers Henry McDonald and Ian S. Wood allege that, unknown to the teenagers, a UVF unit had gone to “The Spot” to seek out two known LVF individuals rumoured to have been involved in Jameson’s killing; however, they had already left the nightclub by the time the UVF arrived. The UVF men encounter Robb and McIlwaine instead and target them as LVF members implicated in Jameson’s death.
Under the pretense of another party elsewhere, Brown lures Robb and McIlwaine into his car along with Dillon and Burcombe. Brown drives off toward Druminure Road where he stops the car at a gate leading to a field and orders the passengers to get out. Burcombe leads McIlwaine away from the vehicle. As they are walking downhill, Burcombe informs McIlwaine that the other two men are going to “give Andrew Robb a beating for slabbering about Richard Jameson. Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing to do with you.” Brown and Dillon proceed to attack Robb with a series of savage kicks. He is then stabbed deeply in the abdomen and throat and dies instantly. He also sustains wounds and gashes to his face and head.
The two perpetrators return, both “walking with a swagger” to where McIlwaine waits downhill from the parked car with Burcombe. McIlwaine makes an attempt to run away but Brown, Dillon, and Burcombe catch up with him as he falls to the ground. Brown gives him a severe kicking, mostly in the head. Dillon produces a butcher’s knife and cuts McIlwaine’s throat while Brown shouts encouragement and Burcombe overlooks the scene from about five feet away. Brown and Dillon leave McIlwaine still breathing on the ground. Once they are back inside the car, Brown proposes to drive the car over his head, but Dillon dissuades him. Brown halts the vehicle, takes the knife and walks back over to where McIlwaine is lying on the road making a “wheezing” sound. Brown stabs McIlwaine repeatedly in the face and chest. When he notices that McIlwaine appears to be looking up at him, Brown stabs him deeply in his left eye, the wound penetrating his brain, killing him. According to Burcombe’s later testimony, Brown appears “crazed” as he hands the knife back to Dillon and says he is “buzzing.” He subsequently goes on to recount stabbing McIlwaine in the eye. He threatens to cut Burcombe’s throat or kill a member of his family if he tells anyone what happened.
Several hours later, at 9:30 a.m., the mutilated bodies of Robb and McIlwaine are discovered lying in pools of blood on the roadside 100 metres apart from one another by a woman taking her children to dancing lessons. Because of the devastating stab wounds inflicted upon the teenagers, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) assumes that McIlwaine had received a shotgun blast to his face. Both of their throats are slashed so deeply that the teenagers are nearly decapitated. The RUC immediately sets up an inquiry into the killings. Postmortems reveal that Robb had sustained a severe cut to the neck and three penetrating wounds to the abdomen. There are no defence injuries. McIlwaine received a severe throat injury, seven penetrating wounds to the chest and penetrating wounds to the face and to the left eye. Both teenagers were intoxicated at the time of their deaths.
The killings deeply shock the community and are strongly condemned by local politicians. The young men’s funerals attract hundreds of mourners. They are buried in adjacent graves at Kernan Cemetery in Portadown.
After the attacks Adair brands the UVF “Protestant killers” and even produces a newssheet in which he lists McIlwaine and Robb as Protestant victims of the UVF along with the likes of the murdered Frankie Curry and regular targets Jackie Mahood, Kenny McClinton and Clifford Peeples. The UVF Brigade Staff in Belfast does not sanction the killings of Robb and McIlwaine. The LVF leadership, however, maintains that the blame for the killings lies with the UVF and threatens to strike back against carefully selected targets in the Belfast UVF.
The day after the homicides, a number of people are arrested in connection with the crime, including Noel Dillon. The arrests are not made under anti-terrorist legislation, and the suspects are all released unconditionally the same evening. On February 27, 2000, Stephen Brown is brought before the Armagh magistrate’s court after he is charged with both murders. The police tell the court they have plenty of forensic evidence connecting him to the homicides. Ten months later, Brown is released on bail after the court is told the prosecution has expressed doubts about their principal witness and the forensic evidence is not sufficient to secure a conviction. On February 6, 2001, the charges against Brown are unexpectedly dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions. In April 2001, Mark Burcombe is arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in relation to his UVF activities but is released without charge.
David McIlwaine’s father, Paul, campaigns for nine years to obtain justice for his son. He enlists the aid of a nationalist human rights group and sets up his own online support group, “Justice for David McIlwaine.”
On November 2, 2005, the Tandragee double killing is reconstructed and featured on the BBC One programme Crimewatch in which a £10,000 award is offered. After viewing the programme, Mark Burcombe consults a clergyman and solicitor and subsequently presents himself to police outside Hillsborough Castle to give them information regarding the events which took place on February 19, 2000. He is interviewed about the killings over a period of four days and admits to having known both Robb and McIlwaine. He is arrested and charged with the murders along with Stephen Brown, who had also been arrested on November 7, 2005, in connection with the double killing. Noel Dillon had committed suicide in January of that same year. When Detective Chief Inspector Tim Hanley charges Brown with the murders, the latter pleads not guilty to each charge. In January 2008, shortly before his trial is due to start, Burcombe decides to turn “Queen’s evidence.” He formally agrees to admit to and give a full account of his own role in the murders and to give evidence against Stephen Brown. He signs an Agreement under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 to receive a reduced sentence in return for giving evidence against his co-defendant.
Burcombe pleads guilty to the offence of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm to Andrew Robb and is sentenced to 28 months’ imprisonment with two months consecutive for an unrelated suspended sentence. The Robb and McIlwaine families are outraged and disappointed at the leniency shown to Burcombe. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams asks Patricia Scotland, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, the Attorney General for Northern Ireland, to review the case and consider an appeal to impose a heavier sentence, writing that “all records before the courts on this crime verify it was a barbaric act.” Adams also goes on to affirm that he shares the McIlwaine family’s belief that a state agent was involved in the homicides and was being protected. Lady Scotland, however, backs the plea bargain deal.
Stephen Brown is found guilty of the murders on March 3, 2009. The trial, which commences on November 25, 2008, is held at the Belfast Crown Court without a jury. The prosecution relies upon three pieces of evidence to prove Brown’s culpability. These are the testimony of Mark Burcombe, the forensic material found by the RUC at the crime scene, and the hearsay evidence of Brown’s former girlfriend who claims he had admitted to her that he had killed McIlwaine. Burcombe declares that McIlwaine was murdered because he had witnessed Robb’s killing.
One month later, April 3, Brown is sentenced to 35 years in prison for each count of murder. The trial judge, who had passed sentence on Brown, declares that the murders are “among the most gruesome of the past 40 years.” He goes on to add, “they represent unbridled mindless violence and a total disregard for the value and dignity of human life.” Brown makes an unsuccessful appeal to have his murder conviction overturned on May 24, 2011.
Jameson is born in Portadown to a ProtestantChurch of Ireland family in about 1953, one of five sons. He has a twin brother, Stuart. A former reservist in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) (1973-81), he works as a manager in the Jameson Group, a building firm which is a family-owned business. The building firm is regularly awarded government contracts to carry out work for the security forces and it is for this reason that his brother David loses a leg in a 1991 Provisional Irish Republican Army bombing attack. He is a member of the Orange Order‘s Drumherriff Star of Erin LOL 8 Portadown district.
It is not known exactly when Jameson becomes a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) nor the leader of its Mid-Ulster Brigade. The Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade had been officially stood down by the Brigade Staff in Belfast in August 1996 when it carried out an unauthorised sectarian killing while the UVF were on ceasefire. The Mid-Ulster Brigade’s commander at the time, Billy Wright, was expelled from the UVF. Wright brazenly defies a Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) order to leave Northern Ireland or face execution by establishing the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), taking most of the Portadown Mid-Ulster UVF with him. The units of the Mid-Ulster Brigade that remain loyal to the Brigade Staff continue to operate and Jameson becomes commander. He is said by The Guardian to be a “staunch supporter of the Good Friday Agreement.”
In the weeks prior to his killing, Jameson is in a violent street altercation with LVF member Muriel Gibson, whom he accuses of involvement in drugs and slaps forcefully in the face. This is followed by a fracas at the Portadown F.C. Social Club on December 27, 1999, where LVF members are commemorating the death of their comrade Billy Wright, shot and killed inside the Maze Prison by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) exactly two years previously. When he enters the club, several LVF men begin to push and jostle him and challenge him to a fight, telling him to hit them instead of women. Deeply offended, he leaves and soon returns with a UVF gang armed with pickaxe handles and baseball bats. In the violent brawl that ensues, twelve people, including three LVF prisoners out on Christmas parole, receive severe injuries. The LVF leaders subsequently make the decision that Jameson is to pay for the attack with his life.
One of the LVF members, who lives near Dungannon, gets in touch with a family of north Belfast loyalists who had been members of the UVF but who had left after Wright’s expulsion. From these former UVF members the LVF obtains the gun with which to shoot Jameson. On the evening of January 10, 2000, Jameson returns from work and drives his Isuzu Trooper jeep into the driveway outside his home on the Derrylettiff Road near Portadown. Waiting in ambush, a single gunman suddenly approaches from the passenger side of the parked jeep. Before Jameson can emerge from the vehicle and with the engine still running, the gunman opens fire through the window with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, shooting Jameson five times in the head and chest. His assassin escapes to a nearby getaway car. He is rushed to Craigavon Area Hospital but dies of his wounds minutes after his arrival. The RUC immediately begins a murder inquiry. Within hours of the killing, the UVF Brigade Staff convene an emergency meeting at “the Eagle,” their headquarters on the Shankill Road, where they compile a list of all those they believe to be involved in Jameson’s death and plan their retaliation against the LVF.
Among those who condemn the killing is Northern Ireland’s First MinisterDavid Trimble who releases the following statement: “This is exactly the sort of thing we thought we had finally put behind us. I’m shocked by the news.”
Jameson’s funeral is held on January 13 at the Tartaraghan Parish Church and attended by several thousand mourners including Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) leaders David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson. Drumcree Orangeman Harold Gracey and Gary McMichael, the son of slain Ulster Defence Association (UDA) brigadier John McMichael, also attend as does local politicians representing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The service is officiated by Reverend David Hilliard who speaks out against vengeance and describes Jameson as a “man admired and loved by many” and who “had been so cruelly murdered.” He is buried in the adjacent churchyard.
Despite Reverend Hilliard’s pleas and LVF leader Mark “Swinger” Fulton‘s claim that his organisation had nothing to do with Jameson’s shooting, the UVF/LVF feud intensifies. In the immediate aftermath members of Jameson’s family are filmed angrily defacing LVF murals in Portadown. A month after his killing, two Protestant teenagers, Andrew Robb (19) and David McIlwaine (18), are savagely beaten and repeatedly stabbed to death in a country lane outside Tandragee, County Armagh by a local UVF gang. The young men, believed to have been LVF members, are targeted by their UVF killers after they leave a nightclub together in search of a party. However, neither teenager is part of any paramilitary organisation and only Robb had tenuous links to the LVF. It is reported in the Belfast Telegraph that according to court hearings Robb had made disparaging remarks about Jameson’s death. Two of the UVF men, Stephen Leslie Brown and Noel Dillon, are infuriated by the comments and afterward Brown drives the victims to Druminure Road where he, Dillon and another man carry out the double killing. One of Jameson’s brothers, Bobby, is among the mourners at David McIlwaine’s funeral. The West Belfast Brigade of the Ulster Defence Association, whose brigadier Johnny Adair is close to the LVF, briefly becomes involved in the feud after Adair attends Andrew Robb’s funeral and joins LVF members at the Drumcree conflict. After the UVF track down Jameson’s killer to the Oldpark area of Belfast and attempt to shoot him, he is taken away under the protection of the West Belfast Brigade. The tit-for-tat killings continue intermittently until 2005 when the UVF makes a final assault against the LVF, leaving four members dead and the LVF leadership with no alternative but to order its military units to permanently disband.
Jameson’s family has persistently denied that he was a UVF member. They maintain that he was a vigilante who was murdered in retaliation for the firm stand he had taken against drug dealing in the Portadown area. The late PUP leader David Ervine expressed the same opinion the day after the killing by stating, “Mr. Jameson had been murdered by drug dealers masquerading as loyalists because he had been a bulwark in his community against dealers.” Ervine also described him as having been a “fine and honourable man, widely respected in the community.” Northern Ireland security sources, however, have repeatedly named Jameson as the Mid-Ulster UVF commander. He is listed as a UVF member in the CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths, an online University of Ulster-sponsored project which chronicles the Northern Ireland conflict. It also emerges that for several days prior to his killing, he had been working at the BallykinlerBritish Army base. Immediately after his murder by the LVF, his family begins an anti-drug campaign in Portadown by putting up posters and handing out leaflets to passing motorists.
seamus dubhghaill 