Brandon Sullivan ✒ I once wrote a comment under an article on The Pensive Quill saying that I had wanted to write a piece about sectarian murderers who came from the Catholic/ Nationalist/Republican community, but had not found sufficient material to work with. 

This was met with cynicism by commenters who describe themselves as loyalists. I had worded it clumsily. There are many historical sources which will describe the deliberate sectarian murders of members of the PUL community by members of the CNR community, and for students of the conflict many of these incidents are familiar: Kingsmill; Darkley; Four Step Inn, and so on. 

What I had meant, however, was that I couldn’t find interviews with the perpetrators, in those relatively rare instances where a conviction occurred, far less documentation which described their motivations and reflections for their murderous actions. The research I had done could have allowed me to write a piece on Darkley, drawing on various sources, which I felt contextualised the murders. I did not feel comfortable doing so as I felt it almost gave a form of cover for an atrocity which is simply unjustifiable. As the former INLA leader Dominic McGlinchey put it: “They were entirely innocent hillbilly folk who had done no harm to anyone.”

I have found out various bits of information on sectarian murderers from within the CNR community, but not enough I feel to write a robust piece with new information and perspective. This remains a piece of work that I want to complete.

This piece of writing, however, is based on reflections I had following criticism of Gareth Mulvenna which I noticed in Twitter. Someone, who had lost family members to the UVF Tweeted the following to him:

Gareth and with the greatest respect your motivation for writing has been to make money which is fair enough. But Ppl like me have been left to deal with the aftermath of what scum like Billy done to us & our families. You are not exactly a neutral observer, are you?

Just to get something out of the way, and I do not mean to patronise anyone as it can be a common misconception, but researching and writing books is almost always not a profitable enterprise (for the writer anyway). And for a subject as niche as militant loyalism, this will be even more so the case. There will be exceptions, of course, but if Mulvenna’s motivation was money, I’m sure he could write a book focusing on the IRA which would sell far more copies (particularly in the USA) than one about loyalism. But even then, the hours spent researching, networking, and preparing and write a book about the NI troubles is very rarely enriching financial.

But the accusation of not being a neutral observer is highly problematic. I wrote a critique of Billy Hutchinson following the publication of his memoirs (written with Mulvenna), whilst acknowledging that their existence added significantly and productively to the troubled history of Ireland. The author of the Tweet critical of Mulvenna (I’ve chosen not to name/link him) is entitled to be angry at Hutchinson and the UVF, but without a deep and sophisticated understanding of the macro and micro environments that conditioned or facilitated men like Hutchinson to murder “entirely innocent” folk is to face the future without the wisdom, not matter how painfully received, of the past.

Lost Lives featured a story about a reporter going to the home of IRA volunteer Thomas Begley who died, along with nine Protestants, in the 1993 Shankill Road bombing. Begley was one of two IRA men who planted it, the other survived. It was reported that the only book in Begley’s bedroom was a very well-thumbed copy of Martin Dillon’s The Shankill Butchers. A victim of the IRA battalion of which Begley belonged to was a son or nephew of a UVF man who featured in Dillon’s book (and a UDR member). 

Since its publication, some historians have taken issue with elements of Dillon’s writing in The Shankill Butchers. Personally, I think it’s important to keep in mind that it was first published in 1989, when loyalism was not well researched, and it - as all historical works should - opened a subject up for those interested in it to further research. As all history subjected to further and deeper analysis does, the narratives expand and sometimes change, and some information reported as fact is contradicted. It is vitally important that this happens.

Mulvenna’s research has gone further and deeper than Dillon’s, in my opinion. The Butchers attained a mythology that they would have enjoyed, I think. But what I have learned is that the reality is somewhat more mundane and also more frightening. It’s fairly well known that the Mr B referred to in Dillon’s book was Lenny Murphy’s brother, John. What is disturbing is that the Murphy brothers were not the only gang carrying out barbaric murders involving gruesome torture of politically uninvolved nationalists. There were others. Mulvenna has identified a number of individuals involved, and also their modus operandi. I know Mulvenna a little bit, and I don’t think he would mind me saying that the knowledge of how so many people from the CNR community – his, and my, community met their ends so sadistically affects him deeply. He has questioned how best to respect the families of these victims.

Truth can be a fluid concept. I have beliefs about loyalism, of which I am a strong critic, and that is my truth. I feel, like many from the CNR community, that I have a good understanding of the motivations of those who joined the republican “armed struggle.” I feel it is vital, as students of the conflict, and for those who care about Ireland (all parts) to get over the enmity I felt at those who targeted “my” community with such ferocity and try to understand them.

I feel that someone from the PUL community, with Mulvenna’s credentials and qualifications, could glean from former republican activists a rich seam of history. I would very much enjoy their research. My own studies of loyalism, inspired in part by Mulvenna (with honourable mentions to Ian Turner, Ian S Wood, Peter Taylor, and others) have led me to look at republicanism differently, and also constitutional unionism and nationalism.

For those from the CNR community who criticise Mulvenna for publishing investigative works on loyalists and loyalism, we could ask, what would you prefer? A demand for them to wear sackcloth and ashes? That’s been done. It’s rhetorical and useless.

I think that for many within the CNR community, there is an almost pompous attitude, which brings relief and a degree of comfort, that although “our boys” could be bad, there weren’t as bad as the other side. I remember feeling this. To an extent, I still hold a much more complex variation of it.

The North needs far more nuanced voices, and far fewer slogans and simplistic conclusions. Mulvenna does his part to provide plenty of the former which I think means less weight to the latter.

Those who oppose him for that might do well to ask themselves why?

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left, Doors loving Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys.

The Problem With Demanding Sackcloth And Ashes

Brandon Sullivan ✒ I once wrote a comment under an article on The Pensive Quill saying that I had wanted to write a piece about sectarian murderers who came from the Catholic/ Nationalist/Republican community, but had not found sufficient material to work with. 

This was met with cynicism by commenters who describe themselves as loyalists. I had worded it clumsily. There are many historical sources which will describe the deliberate sectarian murders of members of the PUL community by members of the CNR community, and for students of the conflict many of these incidents are familiar: Kingsmill; Darkley; Four Step Inn, and so on. 

What I had meant, however, was that I couldn’t find interviews with the perpetrators, in those relatively rare instances where a conviction occurred, far less documentation which described their motivations and reflections for their murderous actions. The research I had done could have allowed me to write a piece on Darkley, drawing on various sources, which I felt contextualised the murders. I did not feel comfortable doing so as I felt it almost gave a form of cover for an atrocity which is simply unjustifiable. As the former INLA leader Dominic McGlinchey put it: “They were entirely innocent hillbilly folk who had done no harm to anyone.”

I have found out various bits of information on sectarian murderers from within the CNR community, but not enough I feel to write a robust piece with new information and perspective. This remains a piece of work that I want to complete.

This piece of writing, however, is based on reflections I had following criticism of Gareth Mulvenna which I noticed in Twitter. Someone, who had lost family members to the UVF Tweeted the following to him:

Gareth and with the greatest respect your motivation for writing has been to make money which is fair enough. But Ppl like me have been left to deal with the aftermath of what scum like Billy done to us & our families. You are not exactly a neutral observer, are you?

Just to get something out of the way, and I do not mean to patronise anyone as it can be a common misconception, but researching and writing books is almost always not a profitable enterprise (for the writer anyway). And for a subject as niche as militant loyalism, this will be even more so the case. There will be exceptions, of course, but if Mulvenna’s motivation was money, I’m sure he could write a book focusing on the IRA which would sell far more copies (particularly in the USA) than one about loyalism. But even then, the hours spent researching, networking, and preparing and write a book about the NI troubles is very rarely enriching financial.

But the accusation of not being a neutral observer is highly problematic. I wrote a critique of Billy Hutchinson following the publication of his memoirs (written with Mulvenna), whilst acknowledging that their existence added significantly and productively to the troubled history of Ireland. The author of the Tweet critical of Mulvenna (I’ve chosen not to name/link him) is entitled to be angry at Hutchinson and the UVF, but without a deep and sophisticated understanding of the macro and micro environments that conditioned or facilitated men like Hutchinson to murder “entirely innocent” folk is to face the future without the wisdom, not matter how painfully received, of the past.

Lost Lives featured a story about a reporter going to the home of IRA volunteer Thomas Begley who died, along with nine Protestants, in the 1993 Shankill Road bombing. Begley was one of two IRA men who planted it, the other survived. It was reported that the only book in Begley’s bedroom was a very well-thumbed copy of Martin Dillon’s The Shankill Butchers. A victim of the IRA battalion of which Begley belonged to was a son or nephew of a UVF man who featured in Dillon’s book (and a UDR member). 

Since its publication, some historians have taken issue with elements of Dillon’s writing in The Shankill Butchers. Personally, I think it’s important to keep in mind that it was first published in 1989, when loyalism was not well researched, and it - as all historical works should - opened a subject up for those interested in it to further research. As all history subjected to further and deeper analysis does, the narratives expand and sometimes change, and some information reported as fact is contradicted. It is vitally important that this happens.

Mulvenna’s research has gone further and deeper than Dillon’s, in my opinion. The Butchers attained a mythology that they would have enjoyed, I think. But what I have learned is that the reality is somewhat more mundane and also more frightening. It’s fairly well known that the Mr B referred to in Dillon’s book was Lenny Murphy’s brother, John. What is disturbing is that the Murphy brothers were not the only gang carrying out barbaric murders involving gruesome torture of politically uninvolved nationalists. There were others. Mulvenna has identified a number of individuals involved, and also their modus operandi. I know Mulvenna a little bit, and I don’t think he would mind me saying that the knowledge of how so many people from the CNR community – his, and my, community met their ends so sadistically affects him deeply. He has questioned how best to respect the families of these victims.

Truth can be a fluid concept. I have beliefs about loyalism, of which I am a strong critic, and that is my truth. I feel, like many from the CNR community, that I have a good understanding of the motivations of those who joined the republican “armed struggle.” I feel it is vital, as students of the conflict, and for those who care about Ireland (all parts) to get over the enmity I felt at those who targeted “my” community with such ferocity and try to understand them.

I feel that someone from the PUL community, with Mulvenna’s credentials and qualifications, could glean from former republican activists a rich seam of history. I would very much enjoy their research. My own studies of loyalism, inspired in part by Mulvenna (with honourable mentions to Ian Turner, Ian S Wood, Peter Taylor, and others) have led me to look at republicanism differently, and also constitutional unionism and nationalism.

For those from the CNR community who criticise Mulvenna for publishing investigative works on loyalists and loyalism, we could ask, what would you prefer? A demand for them to wear sackcloth and ashes? That’s been done. It’s rhetorical and useless.

I think that for many within the CNR community, there is an almost pompous attitude, which brings relief and a degree of comfort, that although “our boys” could be bad, there weren’t as bad as the other side. I remember feeling this. To an extent, I still hold a much more complex variation of it.

The North needs far more nuanced voices, and far fewer slogans and simplistic conclusions. Mulvenna does his part to provide plenty of the former which I think means less weight to the latter.

Those who oppose him for that might do well to ask themselves why?

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left, Doors loving Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys.

12 comments:

  1. This piece is being so well read already.

    Gareth Mulvenna is a studious writer and erudite researcher. His work is pioneering and I have found it immensely rewarding when reading it. I found his recent book with Billy Hutchinson excellent.

    That is not to say that I don't get why the relative of those killed by Loyalism can be angry. But a victim's perspective and freedom of inquiry are difficult concepts to marry. And if a victim's perspective is allowed to turn into a veto on intellectual exploration, then public understanding is subverted.

    I recall back in the prison people being appalled at the loyalist killing of young teenage women serving in a shop in Lurgan along with a guy in his 20s. It was a terrible killing but the view seemed to be what sort of people can do this?

    I wrote a short poem about it pointing out that a good friend of ours on the same wings (I'll refer to him as X) had been convicted of killing a teenage Protestant girl in similar circumstances. The words were something like:

    They are just like X
    And X is just like us.

    While I think there is a lot which can be said in terms of mitigation (I no longer try to justify it) of the IRA campaign that can't be said of the loyalist one, I retain the view that there is an attempt from within our perspective to morally elevate on stilts our own motivations. While there is more latitude for doing this at the macro level, Gareth Mulvenna by drilling down to the micro level shows that this is not as easy a task or as laudable an endeavour as we often make out.

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  2. Interestingly, the 1991 mobile shop killings were discussed when I met up with a couple of guys, both of whom are working on a book on the Troubles at the moment. One compared the killings to the IRA's campaign of murdering contractors engaged on military installations, on the grounds that the mobile shop refused to serve security force personnel. I countered this by saying that businesses in nationalist areas were intimidated (either implicitly or explicitly) into not serving security force personnel, and that those murders were simply mass sectarian murder. However, I simply cannot find any moral difference to the murder of Eileen Duffy, Katrina Rennie, and Brian Frizzell (Craigavon 1991) and the murder of a man employed as a cleaner in an RUC station, Fred Anthony, in 1994, and the serious injuries suffered in the car-bomb inflicted on his infant child. The murder of Fred Anthony brings to mind a senior RUC officer's comment about the 90s IRA being engaged in "a pathetic, grubby, but lethal little war."

    There is a rigid, dogmatic, political argument, but it I find it frankly demeaning to engage with.

    Mulvenna's work starkly illustrates what happened (and could happen) in loyalist areas when circumstances, internal and external, created and facilitated a lawless culture with vengeful cohorts. It distils the media-friendly slogan "loyalist backlash" and demonstrates that what that means in practical terms.

    "While I think there is a lot which can be said in terms of mitigation (I no longer try to justify it) of the IRA campaign that can't be said of the loyalist one, I retain the view that there is an attempt from within our perspective to morally elevate on stilts our own motivations. While there is more latitude for doing this at the macro level, Gareth Mulvenna by drilling down to the micro level shows that this is not as easy a task or as laudable an endeavour as we often make out."

    I think that this gets right to the heart of the matter. Both communities indulge in moral elevation when judging the other. The man who challenged Mulvenna on Twitter is entitled to be angry, and even entitled to question why Billy Hutchinson be allowed to rationalise the murders he committed, but he didn't allow himself to see a bigger picture. Mulvenna's blog acts as a devastating response to the juvenilia published on the It's Only Thursday blog, for example. The former offers reality whilst the latter offers squalid apologia.

    I wonder if someone from the PUL community would a/ be able to make contacts within republicanism on a similar level as Mulvenna has within loyalism, and b/ find similar/better/worse levels of suspicion (and perhaps more than that) from within their host community.

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  3. "I wonder if someone from the PUL community would a/ be able to make contacts within republicanism on a similar level as Mulvenna has within loyalism, and b/ find similar/better/worse levels of suspicion (and perhaps more than that) from within their host community."

    That would be a worthy endeavor indeed but I fear the reprisal by my own community would be stark, and any brave soul undertaking it would best be of irreproachable credentials within it.

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  4. @ Steve R

    Sadly, I think you're right. I think that the reasons for that are worthy of exploration.

    By the same token, and paradoxically, I don't think someone from outwith NI could have made the contacts and secured the first hand accounts Mulvenna has - and I wonder, also, if someone from within the PUL community would have been able to do the same.

    These questions are worthy of studies themselves.

    I find that former loyalist paramilitaries can be capable of the most candid revelations about their terrorist actions in a way that is far more unusually found with republicans.

    With the Boston tapes being lost, history and by extension the future has been denied an invaluable resource.

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  5. "I find that former loyalist paramilitaries can be capable of the most candid revelations about their terrorist actions in a way that is far more unusually found with republicans."

    A lot of the actions were taken in the heat of rage and retaliation. When peace became apparent that it was hanging around and the Provos were serious about it, a lot of combatants had time on their hands to think things over. With no obvious conflict to immerse in a lot of them regret what they did, particularly the taking of innocent lives. The desire to confess is a very human trait.
    But the Loyalist combatants didn’t have the political leadership that the Provos had when they could don a suit in Sinn Fein. Subsequently a lot of them drifted into the world of gangsterism, drug dealing and racketeering. A few of the older ones excepted of course, some of which got involved (and still are) in community work.
    The problem any author would have would be legion, not least of which would be the severe threat from the new young gang members who most certainly do not want a spotlight on them or their criminal activities.
    I believe traditional Loyalism is now dead or in it’s death throws. The criminal element runs the remains as a cartel, Loyalist in name only, pathetically hijacking buses to protest against something they have no clear view or understanding of in the NI Protocol. No political guidance, no idea for the future, defining itself solely by saying what its not.
    Carson would be turning in his grave.

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  6. It's a delicate and messy scenario.

    Having had a distant relative killed by the UVF (and seeing the devastation that remains nearly 40 years on), I am very sympathetic to the original commentator. However, I am someone who feels that every area of life and history should be studied and up for debate, so I am utterly sympathetic to Gareth (who is an excellent researcher and academic). Gareth fought his corner well, but there will always be those who are suspicious of such acts (look at the tweets sent to Lesley Stock because she decided to write for the Quill).

    In a post conflict society, there are contradictions that prove impossible to resolve. One such angle is legacy as there are three separate schools of thought on how to address it:

    - ignore it
    - study it
    - prosecutions

    These three do not sit well together, and there are destined to be mini conflicts over these until the immediate participants/victims/families die off. Such is the price of living in Northern Ireland.

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  8. Henry Joy Comments

    When reduced to it's most base, all conflict has it's genesis in impositions of will. Conflict survives and thrives, escalates or de-escalates dependent upon intensities of response.

    The responses of political Unionism in all it's collective guises has been for by the greatest and largest part disproportionate. Whether it was in their original response to the Third Home Rule Bill or in their subsequent violent responses to an emerging peaceful Civil Rights Movement, at Unionism's heart it's polity has been one of supremacy.

    This is the culture and tradition from which the loyalist combatants arose. Hardly surprising then that they used false flag operations from as early as 1969 to militarise the conflict nor that they would wage a campaign, with the support of British securocrats that had a similar intent as that of Allied bombings at the end of WW2. Random sectarian murder would be utilised to undermine the morale of the CRN population and bring pressure on the leadership of the Republican Movement to desist from their campaign. As with the Allies' bombing of German cities and towns the Loyalists' terror campaign of mostly random murder led to victory.

    The history of Loyalism and its modus operandi, no matter who might write about it, is quantifiably and qualitatively different to that of Republicanism in the degree that raw sectarianism was either motivational or strategised.

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  9. @ Henry Joy

    I think that the loyalists campaigns of sectarian murderer had a minimal effect on the decision of the Provo Army Council to call off their campaign. I actually believe that the sectarian murder of nationalists by loyalists sustained and emboldened republican violence. The subject of Mulvenna's critic on Twitter, Billy Hutchinson, acknowledged that sectarian attacks on nationalists increased support for the IRA.

    I agree that raw sectarianism was a much greater motivation behind loyalist violence than republican - but that is not to suggest that republicans can, have, and could again commit the very worst excesses of sectarian crime.

    In my research and writing, I've tried to explore the societal structures that facilitated loyalist violence. I have the twin luxuries of a pseudonym and almost exclusively using secondary sources. Mulvenna has managed to obtain a significant and substantial, possibly peerless, number of primary source testimonies that record how people react within certain societal strata to various factors.

    Christopher Owens makes excellent points. This is a messy business, and for the injured and bereaved it must be maddening and hurtful to see a platform being given to those who committed and/or excused the acts which affected them.

    Reading Malachi O'Doherty's recent book, an account was given of a Catholic victim with the same name as one of the Red Hand members detailed in TGAP. The sectarian gun-man led a full life, having served a jail term, whilst it seems his 18 year old victim was left paralysed.

    Stephen Travers Tweeted graciously that his murdered fellow band members, and the UVF/UDR murderers, should still be alive and playing with their grandchildren.



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    Replies
    1. Henry Joy Comments

      Brandon,

      thanks for clarifying and acknowledging that raw sectarianism was a much greater motivation for Loyalists' actions than it was for Republicans. That Loyalism's campaign impacted on the Provo AC decision to capitulate is indeed unproven but you can be sure Alex Reid, Hume et al were leveraging the consequences of the random murder campaign waged by the Orangies on Adams.

      Secondly, I agree with Christopher's comment too.
      It was, and as is with all conflicts, a messy business. But here's the thing, and it needs to be remembered that conflict, like that which we experienced generally only arises as a result of the failure of politics. (and where does responsibly fall for that?)

      Peace building if it is to be effective, needs truth telling too (truth telling is not the same as apportioning blame). What appears at least to me, as anodyne acquiescence is unlikely to have little, or if any, real purchase. Complexities are undoubtably there and yet on a day when a new super space telescope is launched much of the behavioural stuff you draw attention to is largely parochial and readily enough understood and explainable by social & political psychologists.

      Finally, I for one am not asking them to wear sack cloth and ashes. In the unlikely event though that I were asked for an opinion I could offer some suggestions.

      In the meantime, best to let them continue banging their heads against the wall. Pain, as the man says, is a great teacher.

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  10. HenryJoy,

    But here's the thing, and it needs to be remembered that conflict, like that which we experienced generally only arises as a result of the failure of politics. (and where does responsibly fall for that?)

    At a guess the voters. They say one of the signs of madness is doing the same over and over and expecting a different result each time. Voters keep voting the same faces/political parties in and like signs of madness expecting a different result...

    Maybe voters should either not vote or at the very least vote in new faces/parties. One thing that will happen is the outcome will be different....

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    1. Henry Joy Comments

      Yeah, all that's true Frankie, though the point I was attempting to make was somewhat different. I like Petersen's thinking about the tension that exists between chaos and order. Implicit in such thinking is that political systems ideally evolve to meditate the chaotic and that governments ideally govern for the purpose of firstly establishing and then maintaining order.

      Unionism was and remains a failed polity. It has for the greatest part by far fueled chaos rather than order. Unfortunately for Loyalists they now bare the brunt of all that.

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