Brandon Sullivan ✒ I recently chanced upon a series of films on YouTube – Firing Line, with right-wing intellectual William Buckley interviewing a series of political leaders from Northern Ireland.

A 22 year old Bernadette Devlin dealt masterfully with Buckley, who later on in the interview was flanked by some Tories straight out of central casting. John Hume was asked questions by Nell McCafferty, Vincent Browne, and Kevin Myers, after the initial interview with Buckley. It was the question that Myers asked that led to me to researching a few violent days in 1974. Myers questioned Hume’s opposition to internment without trial, given that one of the alleged murderers of SDLP founding member Paddy Wilson was off the streets and in Long Kesh. This is probably a reference to John White, who later confessed to, and was convicted of, the savage double murder of Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews.

Myers said to Hume that there was “violence yesterday” and the date he referred to was the 11th February 1974. I decided to have a look at the events of that day.

11th February 1974

The day before the Buckley/Hume interview, as reported in the Belfast Telegraph, two men armed with a sub-machine gun and a pistol leapt out of a Hillman Minx call (stolen from an RUC officer in Rathcoole the previous month), and opened fire on a car containing five Catholic civilians on their way to Abbey Meats, where they were employed. One 16 year old male died that day (Thomas ‘Tucker’ Donaghy), and wounding the other four occupants of the car, one of whom, 18 year old Margaret McErlean, died of her injuries a week later. The gunmen’s bullets also struck a car behind the intended targets, seriously injuring two young people: Marion Rafferty, and her boyfriend, Mark McGowan, who was the son of a Newtownabbey unionist councillor.

The car had been waiting for them for a period of time, reported as an hour in the contemporaneous press, and half an hour in Lost Lives. The RUC were on their way to the scene when the shooting happened, responding to a call from a security guard from Abbey Meats.

13th February 1974

The day after Buckley interviewed Hume, a meeting took place between the Northern Ireland Office and UDA leaders Andy Tyrie and Hugh David Cecil “Davy” Payne, and a senior NIO official, James Allan. Allan brought up responsibility for recent sectarian murders by loyalists. Payne and Tyrie not only denied authorising the murders, but claimed to have no idea who was responsible. Kevin Myers was not the only person thinking about the internment of John White. Davy Payne challenged senior NIO official James Allan about White’s continuing detention, blaming the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Francis Pym, for this, claiming that Pym had told the SDLP that the man responsible for murdering their colleague, Paddy Wilson, was imprisoned. A minute taker at the meeting noted that Payne “hovered in a rather crazy way by Mr Allan declaring that even he, Davy, had been accused of this murder.”

We can only speculate on the effect that Payne’s “hovering” had on Mr Allan, but it does seem that Allan, and the NIO, were concerned with loyalists murders.

The aftermath of the Abbey Meats murders

Lost Lives reported that the UDA members suspected of the murders at Abbey Meats were interned. A man, William James Miskelly, then 27, of Rathcoole stood trial for the murders in January, 1982. He was found not guilty but was, however, jailed for eight years for taking part in a “UDA ambush of an army patrol” in 1973, in which a soldier and a civilian were injured. Miskelly was also found guilty, along with two other UDA men, of robbing a bank. Associates of Miskelly were found guilty of burning down a cinema in Rathcoole. It is unclear what motivation lay behind that particular brave blow for Ulster.

Six months after the Abbey Meats murders, Miskelly was one of 30 UDA men arrested as they returned from Ballymena to Rathcoole, having ransacked the town, murdered two Catholic brothers, and assaulted and intimidated other Catholics unfortunate enough to encounter the lawless loyalists whose orgy of violence was apparently part of the Ulster Worker’s Council strike. Miskelly, then 19, was charged with grievous bodily harm of Brendan Byrne, who was 45 years old, and murdered along with his brother Sean in front of other members of the Byrne family. Miskelly was part of a group of loyalists who had decided to attack Catholic pubs to intimidate them into closing during the UWC strike. So drunk were this group of sectarian thugs that they did not notice a police car following them, and they continued into a roadblock, where the RUC arrested all of them. Miskelly was jailed for three years for wounding Brendan Byrne, presumably before he was murdered. Most of the other men involved in the drunken, sectarian violence were sentenced to two years. One man, Thomas McClure, was convicted of murdering the Byrne brothers.

The RUC did a pretty good job of rounding up the Rathcoole UDA, even if it took them a few years to put Miskelly, and others, behind bars for a considerable period of time.

In 2013, the Irish News carried an article that made two allegations. The first was that a UVF member convicted of multiple murders as part of the “Shankill butchers” could have been involved. The second allegation, was that:

Staff at the meat plant had reported a suspicious car sitting close to the entrance of the factory for more than half an hour before the shooting took place. However, police didn't arrive on the scene until the gunmen had already fled.

The article also said that “the RUC investigation was raised at the time by then MP Gerry Fitt in the House of Commons who demanded an inquiry” and “Paul Butler of Relatives for Justice said: "There has been concern that the killing of Thomas Donaghy and Margaret McErlean involved collusion.”

19th February 1974

A telegram was sent by someone in the UK Government to the US State Department, the objective of which seems to have been soliciting for business for Abbey Meats. The telegram goes on:


“NEWTOWNABBEY AREA IN GENERAL HAS HISTORY CONSIDERABLE

VIOLENCE SINCE 1969. THERE 24 MURDERS OF POLITICAL NATURE

SINCE 1972. TWO OF THESE WERE WORKERS AT ABBEY MEAT PLANT

WHO KILLED FEBRUARY 1974 AND WHO, ACCORDING RUC, HAD HISTORY

IRA INVOLVEMENT. RUC OFFICIALS ASSERT IT HIGHLY UNLIKELY

AMERICAN CITIZENS POTENTIAL TERRORIST TARGETS NEWTOWNABBEY.

THEY STRESSED AREA ABBEY PLANT PATROLLED REGULARLY PARTICULARLY AT

BEGINNING AND CLOSE BUSINESS."

Promoting businesses is standard diplomatic soft-power politicking, of a type carried out by diplomats across the world. This work is obviously made much harder for government entities in a situation where people are being killed and bombs are going off. This will be entirely lost on troglodytes like William James Miskelly and Thomas McClure, but is true. But what caught my attention was the RUC asserting that the two murder victims had “IRA involvement.”

Neither Thomas Donaghy nor Margaret McErlean were members of the IRA. Ms McErlean’s brother, John, was a member of the IRA’s Third Battalion, and died when a bomb he was making with two other IRA members exploded prematurely. Ms McErlean’s father, John Joseph McErlean had been in the UDR, and the territorial army. Mr McErlean was convicted of firearms offences, but the judge accepted that he was not part of any illegal organisation, and commended him for his “service to the community.”

Collusion is a term that appears frequently in the media. I think it has been used so often as to be close to meaningless. The RUC arriving on the scene after the murderers had fled the scene of the Abbey Meats murders could be because of a number of reasons. Working backwards, the UDA team would have had to have been colluding with a number of people, possibly from emergency services dispatchers, to logistics managers at a local RUC station.

But the RUC apparently did say that the two politically uninvolved teenagers murdered by the UDA had “IRA involvement.”

Could this be true? There is no evidence to prove this. Did the RUC believe this? Did the RUC actually express this belief to the authors of the telegram to the US State Dept? Could the US State Dept have taken reassurance that two murdered members of staff at a meat plant they were considering using were republican paramilitaries?

It could well be that UKG and/or the RUC made a call that besmirching the name of two murdered Catholic teenagers was a price worth paying for the possibility of winning contracts that improved the crippled economy of Norther Ireland. Or, it could have another explanation. Investigating the content of the telegram seems more worthwhile than speculating over why it took an RUC patrol more than half an hour to investigate a suspicious car, during one of the most violent years of the Troubles.

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

Loyalist Murders, NIO Diplomacy, RUC Actions ✑ February 1974 Revisited

Brandon Sullivan ✒ I recently chanced upon a series of films on YouTube – Firing Line, with right-wing intellectual William Buckley interviewing a series of political leaders from Northern Ireland.

A 22 year old Bernadette Devlin dealt masterfully with Buckley, who later on in the interview was flanked by some Tories straight out of central casting. John Hume was asked questions by Nell McCafferty, Vincent Browne, and Kevin Myers, after the initial interview with Buckley. It was the question that Myers asked that led to me to researching a few violent days in 1974. Myers questioned Hume’s opposition to internment without trial, given that one of the alleged murderers of SDLP founding member Paddy Wilson was off the streets and in Long Kesh. This is probably a reference to John White, who later confessed to, and was convicted of, the savage double murder of Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews.

Myers said to Hume that there was “violence yesterday” and the date he referred to was the 11th February 1974. I decided to have a look at the events of that day.

11th February 1974

The day before the Buckley/Hume interview, as reported in the Belfast Telegraph, two men armed with a sub-machine gun and a pistol leapt out of a Hillman Minx call (stolen from an RUC officer in Rathcoole the previous month), and opened fire on a car containing five Catholic civilians on their way to Abbey Meats, where they were employed. One 16 year old male died that day (Thomas ‘Tucker’ Donaghy), and wounding the other four occupants of the car, one of whom, 18 year old Margaret McErlean, died of her injuries a week later. The gunmen’s bullets also struck a car behind the intended targets, seriously injuring two young people: Marion Rafferty, and her boyfriend, Mark McGowan, who was the son of a Newtownabbey unionist councillor.

The car had been waiting for them for a period of time, reported as an hour in the contemporaneous press, and half an hour in Lost Lives. The RUC were on their way to the scene when the shooting happened, responding to a call from a security guard from Abbey Meats.

13th February 1974

The day after Buckley interviewed Hume, a meeting took place between the Northern Ireland Office and UDA leaders Andy Tyrie and Hugh David Cecil “Davy” Payne, and a senior NIO official, James Allan. Allan brought up responsibility for recent sectarian murders by loyalists. Payne and Tyrie not only denied authorising the murders, but claimed to have no idea who was responsible. Kevin Myers was not the only person thinking about the internment of John White. Davy Payne challenged senior NIO official James Allan about White’s continuing detention, blaming the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Francis Pym, for this, claiming that Pym had told the SDLP that the man responsible for murdering their colleague, Paddy Wilson, was imprisoned. A minute taker at the meeting noted that Payne “hovered in a rather crazy way by Mr Allan declaring that even he, Davy, had been accused of this murder.”

We can only speculate on the effect that Payne’s “hovering” had on Mr Allan, but it does seem that Allan, and the NIO, were concerned with loyalists murders.

The aftermath of the Abbey Meats murders

Lost Lives reported that the UDA members suspected of the murders at Abbey Meats were interned. A man, William James Miskelly, then 27, of Rathcoole stood trial for the murders in January, 1982. He was found not guilty but was, however, jailed for eight years for taking part in a “UDA ambush of an army patrol” in 1973, in which a soldier and a civilian were injured. Miskelly was also found guilty, along with two other UDA men, of robbing a bank. Associates of Miskelly were found guilty of burning down a cinema in Rathcoole. It is unclear what motivation lay behind that particular brave blow for Ulster.

Six months after the Abbey Meats murders, Miskelly was one of 30 UDA men arrested as they returned from Ballymena to Rathcoole, having ransacked the town, murdered two Catholic brothers, and assaulted and intimidated other Catholics unfortunate enough to encounter the lawless loyalists whose orgy of violence was apparently part of the Ulster Worker’s Council strike. Miskelly, then 19, was charged with grievous bodily harm of Brendan Byrne, who was 45 years old, and murdered along with his brother Sean in front of other members of the Byrne family. Miskelly was part of a group of loyalists who had decided to attack Catholic pubs to intimidate them into closing during the UWC strike. So drunk were this group of sectarian thugs that they did not notice a police car following them, and they continued into a roadblock, where the RUC arrested all of them. Miskelly was jailed for three years for wounding Brendan Byrne, presumably before he was murdered. Most of the other men involved in the drunken, sectarian violence were sentenced to two years. One man, Thomas McClure, was convicted of murdering the Byrne brothers.

The RUC did a pretty good job of rounding up the Rathcoole UDA, even if it took them a few years to put Miskelly, and others, behind bars for a considerable period of time.

In 2013, the Irish News carried an article that made two allegations. The first was that a UVF member convicted of multiple murders as part of the “Shankill butchers” could have been involved. The second allegation, was that:

Staff at the meat plant had reported a suspicious car sitting close to the entrance of the factory for more than half an hour before the shooting took place. However, police didn't arrive on the scene until the gunmen had already fled.

The article also said that “the RUC investigation was raised at the time by then MP Gerry Fitt in the House of Commons who demanded an inquiry” and “Paul Butler of Relatives for Justice said: "There has been concern that the killing of Thomas Donaghy and Margaret McErlean involved collusion.”

19th February 1974

A telegram was sent by someone in the UK Government to the US State Department, the objective of which seems to have been soliciting for business for Abbey Meats. The telegram goes on:


“NEWTOWNABBEY AREA IN GENERAL HAS HISTORY CONSIDERABLE

VIOLENCE SINCE 1969. THERE 24 MURDERS OF POLITICAL NATURE

SINCE 1972. TWO OF THESE WERE WORKERS AT ABBEY MEAT PLANT

WHO KILLED FEBRUARY 1974 AND WHO, ACCORDING RUC, HAD HISTORY

IRA INVOLVEMENT. RUC OFFICIALS ASSERT IT HIGHLY UNLIKELY

AMERICAN CITIZENS POTENTIAL TERRORIST TARGETS NEWTOWNABBEY.

THEY STRESSED AREA ABBEY PLANT PATROLLED REGULARLY PARTICULARLY AT

BEGINNING AND CLOSE BUSINESS."

Promoting businesses is standard diplomatic soft-power politicking, of a type carried out by diplomats across the world. This work is obviously made much harder for government entities in a situation where people are being killed and bombs are going off. This will be entirely lost on troglodytes like William James Miskelly and Thomas McClure, but is true. But what caught my attention was the RUC asserting that the two murder victims had “IRA involvement.”

Neither Thomas Donaghy nor Margaret McErlean were members of the IRA. Ms McErlean’s brother, John, was a member of the IRA’s Third Battalion, and died when a bomb he was making with two other IRA members exploded prematurely. Ms McErlean’s father, John Joseph McErlean had been in the UDR, and the territorial army. Mr McErlean was convicted of firearms offences, but the judge accepted that he was not part of any illegal organisation, and commended him for his “service to the community.”

Collusion is a term that appears frequently in the media. I think it has been used so often as to be close to meaningless. The RUC arriving on the scene after the murderers had fled the scene of the Abbey Meats murders could be because of a number of reasons. Working backwards, the UDA team would have had to have been colluding with a number of people, possibly from emergency services dispatchers, to logistics managers at a local RUC station.

But the RUC apparently did say that the two politically uninvolved teenagers murdered by the UDA had “IRA involvement.”

Could this be true? There is no evidence to prove this. Did the RUC believe this? Did the RUC actually express this belief to the authors of the telegram to the US State Dept? Could the US State Dept have taken reassurance that two murdered members of staff at a meat plant they were considering using were republican paramilitaries?

It could well be that UKG and/or the RUC made a call that besmirching the name of two murdered Catholic teenagers was a price worth paying for the possibility of winning contracts that improved the crippled economy of Norther Ireland. Or, it could have another explanation. Investigating the content of the telegram seems more worthwhile than speculating over why it took an RUC patrol more than half an hour to investigate a suspicious car, during one of the most violent years of the Troubles.

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

1 comment:

  1. Having re-read this piece, and got a bit of feedback from others, I don't think I really pressed home the points I was trying to illustrate.

    The claim of collusion based on the response time of the RUC is in my opinion very weak. It misappropriates where the responsibility should lie for these killings, namely the Rathcoole UDA desperadoes who did it.

    What interested me was the after-the-fact depiction of the killings by the British to the American establishment. That merits discussion and speculation. The word collusion is, in my opinion, becoming an obstacle to that.

    ReplyDelete