Brandon Sullivan ✒ I set out to write a relatively short piece about the Belfast UDA post Anglo-Irish Agreement, compared to the same organisation in the 1970s. 

It’s become more complex than I first intended, more and more sources became available, and very interesting themes emerged. This piece is to explore two of those themes: Ulster Resistance, and the IRA’s 1993 Shankill bomb, which killed ten people, eight of whom were politically uninvolved civilians, including women and children.

Ulster Resistance and the UDA post Anglo-Irish Agreement

Sometime after taking control of the West Belfast UDA/UFF (hereafter referred to as the UDA), John James “Johnny” Adair met with an organisation, shadowy even by Irish paramilitary standards, in the pursuit of weaponry to step up his campaign against, he claims, the IRA. That organisation was Ulster Resistance. The number of dead nationalist civilians (and not a few unionists) and the scarcity of UDA-assassinated Belfast IRA men challenges some loyalist, and ( security force and media) narratives, that Adair and his comrades had “the IRA on the run. This is a theme that I will return to another time.

The BBC reported that the clownish Willie Frazer was Adair’s Ulster Resistance contact. Frazer lost his father, and other close relatives, to the IRA. A source said to me that Frazer’s father, Bertie Frazer, was targeted because of links to the UVF, as well as his UDR membership. The Historical Enquiries Team said there was no evidence of Bertie Frazer being a “terrorist suspect.”

Ian Cobain wrote an excellent article in The Guardian detailing the formation of Ulster Resistance, and that organisations links with the Democratic Unionist Party, up to and including leadership level. Cobain wrote:

Ulster Resistance joined forces with the two established loyalist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA), to smuggle an enormous arsenal of weapons into the province, including about 200 Czech-made assault rifles called VZ58s and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Over the next 17 years, these VZ58s would be used in the murder or attempted murder of about 70 people in Northern Ireland. In the early 90s, they were used in three massacres: gunmen stood at the doors of a bookmaker’s shop and two bars, and simply sprayed the room. Nineteen people died and 27 were wounded.

The Sunday Tribune (20/11/88) reported that:

Speaking in the context of the huge arms finds in the past week, former [DUP] Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sammy Wilson, has defended ‘the right’ of loyalists to stockpile weapons.

The DUP later officially “disassociated” themselves with Ulster Resistance. A founding member of the DUP, the brilliant lawyer Dessie Boal, told Eammon Mallie that, if he, Boal, were ever to write his memoirs, “If I did a lot of people might end up in gaol.” Interestingly, Boal “disassociated” himself from his decades long friendship with Ian Paisley over Paisley’s entering into government with Sinn Fein. Boal said he couldn’t stand the thought of Paisley governing with the men Boal had defended, often successfully, in court. Boal’s life and times would make for a fascinating biography.

When Adair met with Ulster Resistance, he put his case for access to the formidable arsenal that they possessed, writing in his autobiography:

Their ranks were filled with prison officers, landowners, RUC men, even the clergy. Although they weren’t going to go on operations, Ulster Resistance snapped up their slice of the 1987 shipment in case of a doomsday situation. C Company was able to strike up a relationship with them and tap into their stocks. The more success we had, the happier Ulster Resistance were to hand over guns.

Adair’s mention of Ulster Resistance having prison officers in their ranks is interesting, as a man who served in the prison service and UDR, was shot dead by the IRA. Charles Watson appears on a UVF Roll of Honour, and has been linked, by Martin Dillon, to Ulster Resistance.

Adair had other sources of weapons, but Ulster Resistance had a stock from a major arms shipment that loyalists received in 1987. The assault rifles, hand-grenades, and rocket launchers would feature in many UDA attacks until the 1994 ceasefires, and beyond.

Loyalists threaten violence “to a ferocity never imagined.”

On the 5th January 1993, the Independent newspaper reported that:

“ON NEW YEAR'S EVE, a violent loyalist group, the Ulster Defence Association, issued a grim warning that it intended 'to intensify and widen our campaign in 1993 to a ferocity never imagined'.”

In 1993, up to and including the 15th October, loyalist militants killed 24 members of the nationalist community, including at least one member of the IRA, and two members of Sinn Fein. The death toll also included two women.

Andrew Silke in his superb analysis of the Shankill bombing, Beyond Horror noted that:

Predictably, the relentless attacks and the mounting numbers of people killed and injured, led to an increasingly tense atmosphere in Catholic areas in general and in nationalist West and North Belfast in particular. The IRA found themselves under growing pressure to respond to the loyalist threat. Pressure to do something grew within the movement as well and IRA commanders in Belfast experienced increasing grassroots unrest, as men on the ground became more and more anxious to take some action against the loyalists.

This is in stark contrast to the belief held by some loyalists that murdering members of the nationalist community would pressurise the IRA into calling off their campaign. In fact, it appears to have had a contradictory effect.

The IRA released a statement that said:

[W]e in the IRA are very clear about a number of issues. One is that no-one should respond to the activities of the loyalist death squads in anything but a disciplined manner. We in the IRA will under no circumstances play into British hands by going down the cul-de-sac of sectarian warfare, which would allow our enemy to portray itself as somehow holding the ring between warring factions in Ireland. But as we have demonstrated . . . there is no hiding place for those involved with the loyalist death squads. We are determined to exact a price from them. No one should be under any illusions. Those involved with the loyalist death squads will be held accountable for their actions.

October 1993 – the targeting of Adair

An interesting chain of events took place in mid and late October 1993, concerning Johnny Adair.

On the 19th October 1993, an armed INLA unit was apprehended close to Adair’s home. The RUC noted that this was the fourth serious attempt on Adair’s life that year. That same day, Adair was noted by the RUC going into 275A Shankill Road, which was the UDA’s HQ in Belfast. Also on that day, an article appeared in the Guardian newspaper detailing the often squalid lifestyle and antics of a man named as the “UFF commander, West Belfast.” The IRA, as well as the RUC, were satisfied that the man in the article was Johnny Adair.

On the 22nd October 1993, the Irish Independent ran an article entitled “Face to face with the UFF’s Top Assassin.” Again, the RUC, and the IRA, were satisfied that the man detailed in the article was Johnny Adair.

Johnny Adair and 275A Shankill Road

Adair was noted by the RUC of entering 275A Shankill Road on numerous occasions. Furthermore, Adair gave his address as 275A Shankill Road on over 30 instances to the RUC. An RUC file on Adair noted his:

 … propensity to give the address of UDA headquarters as his personal address on number occasions both pre and post UDA proscription.

On the 10th of August 1992, Adair and another man, Curtis Moorehead, walked into Tennant Street RUC station to announce that they had, up until that day, been members of the UDA, but no longer were. The UDA was, finally, proscribed on that particular day. The RUC were able to demonstrate that Adair’s movements and associations remained identical pre and post UDA proscription. His relationship to 275A Shankill Road was a major part of this, comprising two full appendices (out of 13) of an RUC file evidencing Adair as a “Director of Terrorism.”

The day after Johnny Adair informed the RUC that he was no longer a member of the UDA, his brother, James, and another man, convicted rapist and child murderer Trevor Hinton (both members of the UDA) were remanded following the attempted murder of a nationalist civilian. Adair and Hinton had used knives and hammers to attempt to kill the man and were later convicted of attempted murder.

Brian Rowan, in his book Living With Ghosts, described the effect of Adair on the Belfast IRA like this:

The IRA spoke of their absolute determination to made Adair ‘pay for his crimes’. He was inside their heads, inside their plans. They were chasing him, hunting him. And it was this fascination with him, that absolute determination to kill him, that led to the unthinking madness of the Shankill bomb.

Rowan is right that Adair was in the IRA’s plans, and that they were determined to kill him. Silke wrote that “The IRA had known for some time that senior members of the UDA, including Adair, met regularly on Saturdays at the West Belfast UDA headquarters.” The UDA HQ featured in a series of IRA plans to kill Adair and other UDA men involved in violence against the nationalist community.

The RUC heard from an informer that one plan was:

two IRA bombers would be dropped off by car about 20 yards from the building, and the driver would remain in the getaway car with the engine running. The two men, the coffee jars concealed under their jackets, would hurl the jars into the first floor offices and make their escape (Silke).

Another plan was to:

mount a heavy machine-gun on the back of a lorry, and rake the offices while a UDA meeting was taking place. The IRA certainly had the firepower to make this a serious threat. However, there was a rumour that the loyalists had reinforced the structure of the building, so an attack using one of the dozen or so general purpose machine-guns that the IRA possessed might not have been powerful enough.

The IRA had heavy machines, DHSKs, capable of killing everyone even in a reinforced building but, according to Silke:

 … the IRA dropped the idea, claiming the possible UDA reinforcing made the plan unworkable. However, the real reason was different. The reality was that the IRA planners realized that using a DHSK in the circumstances of the planned attack would have severely undermined the likelihood that the attackers could escape successfully.

As determined as the IRA were, they would not undertake an operation without a solid chance of their volunteers and equipment “returning to base” safely. Silke reported that the IRA considered an attack with RPGs, but that the Provisionals viewed them as generally unreliable, but:
 
bombs have been much more successful weapons for the organization. With over 20 years of bomb-making and deployment behind them, the IRA at that time were arguably the most skilled terrorist group in the world when it came to the use of explosives.

So it was that the IRA chose to use a bomb to attack the UDA HQ at 275A Shankill Road.

The Shankill Bomb

The IRA’s bomb attack on the Shankill Road on 23rd October 1993, by any standards, was a disaster. There has been debate on this blog about the intention of the bombing, but I think it's clear that it was a targeted operation against Adair in particular, and high-ranking members of the UDA in general.

I would challenge Brian Rowan's assertion that it was "unthinking madness" - arguably, it is madness to use an explosive device in a civilian area at any time, but it had been done many other times, including in two attacks on bars in loyalist areas in 1994, without death or injury.

In their determination to kill Adair, the IRA unit definitely risked the lives of Protestant shoppers on the Shankill Road, but also their own lives. Silke wrote that:

Although the timer had failed disastrously, casualties could have been much higher but for the fact that the design of the rest of the bomb worked as the IRA had intended. The charge had been shaped so as to explode upward taking out the floors above the fish shop rather than damaging the buildings to either side. In this at least it succeeded and only two people outside of the shop were killed by the bomb.

As one senior security source put it:

The difference between that [the Shankill bombing] being a disaster and a stunning success in IRA terms was very marginal. The bomb was designed to direct the blast upwards, and it did—in the fruit shop next door the rows of oranges were hardly disturbed.

The aftermath

Silke wrote of “disarray” in the ranks of the Belfast IRA following the Shankill bomb. Loyalist paramilitaries predictably went on the rampage, so indiscriminate were their attacks that they killed two Protestants “accidently”, one of whom was a former B-Special. Looking back at statistics, CAIN notes that 26 nationalists were killed by loyalists before the Shankill bomb, whilst 16 were killed after it before the end of 1993.

Adair survived some more attempts on his life, before the RUC lifted him, and most of his UDA structure, off the streets and into remand, awaiting trial. Republicans killed eight loyalist paramilitaries in 1994, prior to calling their ceasefire at the end of August, as well as killing others ranging from Protestant cleaners to British soldiers and RUC officers.

Without the political manoeuvres which had been in place since the 1980s, an IRA ceasefire would have been highly unlikely. Silke described the internal pressure the IRA was under to “deal” with loyalist violence. I believe that the loyalist campaign, and potential republican response, could have dragged the North back to levels of violence last seen in the 1970s. I don’t think it would have been a high-intensity civil war situation, but, as ever, civilians would have borne the brunt of paramilitary excesses.

In the past few days, the media has reported that the UVF and UDA are “reviewing” their ceasefires. It is worth noting the intense misery, death, destruction and imprisonment the loyalist campaigns brought their own communities, as well as in nationalist communities.

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

Ulster Resistance, The UDA, The IRA, And The 1993 Shankill Bomb

Brandon Sullivan ✒ I set out to write a relatively short piece about the Belfast UDA post Anglo-Irish Agreement, compared to the same organisation in the 1970s. 

It’s become more complex than I first intended, more and more sources became available, and very interesting themes emerged. This piece is to explore two of those themes: Ulster Resistance, and the IRA’s 1993 Shankill bomb, which killed ten people, eight of whom were politically uninvolved civilians, including women and children.

Ulster Resistance and the UDA post Anglo-Irish Agreement

Sometime after taking control of the West Belfast UDA/UFF (hereafter referred to as the UDA), John James “Johnny” Adair met with an organisation, shadowy even by Irish paramilitary standards, in the pursuit of weaponry to step up his campaign against, he claims, the IRA. That organisation was Ulster Resistance. The number of dead nationalist civilians (and not a few unionists) and the scarcity of UDA-assassinated Belfast IRA men challenges some loyalist, and ( security force and media) narratives, that Adair and his comrades had “the IRA on the run. This is a theme that I will return to another time.

The BBC reported that the clownish Willie Frazer was Adair’s Ulster Resistance contact. Frazer lost his father, and other close relatives, to the IRA. A source said to me that Frazer’s father, Bertie Frazer, was targeted because of links to the UVF, as well as his UDR membership. The Historical Enquiries Team said there was no evidence of Bertie Frazer being a “terrorist suspect.”

Ian Cobain wrote an excellent article in The Guardian detailing the formation of Ulster Resistance, and that organisations links with the Democratic Unionist Party, up to and including leadership level. Cobain wrote:

Ulster Resistance joined forces with the two established loyalist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA), to smuggle an enormous arsenal of weapons into the province, including about 200 Czech-made assault rifles called VZ58s and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Over the next 17 years, these VZ58s would be used in the murder or attempted murder of about 70 people in Northern Ireland. In the early 90s, they were used in three massacres: gunmen stood at the doors of a bookmaker’s shop and two bars, and simply sprayed the room. Nineteen people died and 27 were wounded.

The Sunday Tribune (20/11/88) reported that:

Speaking in the context of the huge arms finds in the past week, former [DUP] Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sammy Wilson, has defended ‘the right’ of loyalists to stockpile weapons.

The DUP later officially “disassociated” themselves with Ulster Resistance. A founding member of the DUP, the brilliant lawyer Dessie Boal, told Eammon Mallie that, if he, Boal, were ever to write his memoirs, “If I did a lot of people might end up in gaol.” Interestingly, Boal “disassociated” himself from his decades long friendship with Ian Paisley over Paisley’s entering into government with Sinn Fein. Boal said he couldn’t stand the thought of Paisley governing with the men Boal had defended, often successfully, in court. Boal’s life and times would make for a fascinating biography.

When Adair met with Ulster Resistance, he put his case for access to the formidable arsenal that they possessed, writing in his autobiography:

Their ranks were filled with prison officers, landowners, RUC men, even the clergy. Although they weren’t going to go on operations, Ulster Resistance snapped up their slice of the 1987 shipment in case of a doomsday situation. C Company was able to strike up a relationship with them and tap into their stocks. The more success we had, the happier Ulster Resistance were to hand over guns.

Adair’s mention of Ulster Resistance having prison officers in their ranks is interesting, as a man who served in the prison service and UDR, was shot dead by the IRA. Charles Watson appears on a UVF Roll of Honour, and has been linked, by Martin Dillon, to Ulster Resistance.

Adair had other sources of weapons, but Ulster Resistance had a stock from a major arms shipment that loyalists received in 1987. The assault rifles, hand-grenades, and rocket launchers would feature in many UDA attacks until the 1994 ceasefires, and beyond.

Loyalists threaten violence “to a ferocity never imagined.”

On the 5th January 1993, the Independent newspaper reported that:

“ON NEW YEAR'S EVE, a violent loyalist group, the Ulster Defence Association, issued a grim warning that it intended 'to intensify and widen our campaign in 1993 to a ferocity never imagined'.”

In 1993, up to and including the 15th October, loyalist militants killed 24 members of the nationalist community, including at least one member of the IRA, and two members of Sinn Fein. The death toll also included two women.

Andrew Silke in his superb analysis of the Shankill bombing, Beyond Horror noted that:

Predictably, the relentless attacks and the mounting numbers of people killed and injured, led to an increasingly tense atmosphere in Catholic areas in general and in nationalist West and North Belfast in particular. The IRA found themselves under growing pressure to respond to the loyalist threat. Pressure to do something grew within the movement as well and IRA commanders in Belfast experienced increasing grassroots unrest, as men on the ground became more and more anxious to take some action against the loyalists.

This is in stark contrast to the belief held by some loyalists that murdering members of the nationalist community would pressurise the IRA into calling off their campaign. In fact, it appears to have had a contradictory effect.

The IRA released a statement that said:

[W]e in the IRA are very clear about a number of issues. One is that no-one should respond to the activities of the loyalist death squads in anything but a disciplined manner. We in the IRA will under no circumstances play into British hands by going down the cul-de-sac of sectarian warfare, which would allow our enemy to portray itself as somehow holding the ring between warring factions in Ireland. But as we have demonstrated . . . there is no hiding place for those involved with the loyalist death squads. We are determined to exact a price from them. No one should be under any illusions. Those involved with the loyalist death squads will be held accountable for their actions.

October 1993 – the targeting of Adair

An interesting chain of events took place in mid and late October 1993, concerning Johnny Adair.

On the 19th October 1993, an armed INLA unit was apprehended close to Adair’s home. The RUC noted that this was the fourth serious attempt on Adair’s life that year. That same day, Adair was noted by the RUC going into 275A Shankill Road, which was the UDA’s HQ in Belfast. Also on that day, an article appeared in the Guardian newspaper detailing the often squalid lifestyle and antics of a man named as the “UFF commander, West Belfast.” The IRA, as well as the RUC, were satisfied that the man in the article was Johnny Adair.

On the 22nd October 1993, the Irish Independent ran an article entitled “Face to face with the UFF’s Top Assassin.” Again, the RUC, and the IRA, were satisfied that the man detailed in the article was Johnny Adair.

Johnny Adair and 275A Shankill Road

Adair was noted by the RUC of entering 275A Shankill Road on numerous occasions. Furthermore, Adair gave his address as 275A Shankill Road on over 30 instances to the RUC. An RUC file on Adair noted his:

 … propensity to give the address of UDA headquarters as his personal address on number occasions both pre and post UDA proscription.

On the 10th of August 1992, Adair and another man, Curtis Moorehead, walked into Tennant Street RUC station to announce that they had, up until that day, been members of the UDA, but no longer were. The UDA was, finally, proscribed on that particular day. The RUC were able to demonstrate that Adair’s movements and associations remained identical pre and post UDA proscription. His relationship to 275A Shankill Road was a major part of this, comprising two full appendices (out of 13) of an RUC file evidencing Adair as a “Director of Terrorism.”

The day after Johnny Adair informed the RUC that he was no longer a member of the UDA, his brother, James, and another man, convicted rapist and child murderer Trevor Hinton (both members of the UDA) were remanded following the attempted murder of a nationalist civilian. Adair and Hinton had used knives and hammers to attempt to kill the man and were later convicted of attempted murder.

Brian Rowan, in his book Living With Ghosts, described the effect of Adair on the Belfast IRA like this:

The IRA spoke of their absolute determination to made Adair ‘pay for his crimes’. He was inside their heads, inside their plans. They were chasing him, hunting him. And it was this fascination with him, that absolute determination to kill him, that led to the unthinking madness of the Shankill bomb.

Rowan is right that Adair was in the IRA’s plans, and that they were determined to kill him. Silke wrote that “The IRA had known for some time that senior members of the UDA, including Adair, met regularly on Saturdays at the West Belfast UDA headquarters.” The UDA HQ featured in a series of IRA plans to kill Adair and other UDA men involved in violence against the nationalist community.

The RUC heard from an informer that one plan was:

two IRA bombers would be dropped off by car about 20 yards from the building, and the driver would remain in the getaway car with the engine running. The two men, the coffee jars concealed under their jackets, would hurl the jars into the first floor offices and make their escape (Silke).

Another plan was to:

mount a heavy machine-gun on the back of a lorry, and rake the offices while a UDA meeting was taking place. The IRA certainly had the firepower to make this a serious threat. However, there was a rumour that the loyalists had reinforced the structure of the building, so an attack using one of the dozen or so general purpose machine-guns that the IRA possessed might not have been powerful enough.

The IRA had heavy machines, DHSKs, capable of killing everyone even in a reinforced building but, according to Silke:

 … the IRA dropped the idea, claiming the possible UDA reinforcing made the plan unworkable. However, the real reason was different. The reality was that the IRA planners realized that using a DHSK in the circumstances of the planned attack would have severely undermined the likelihood that the attackers could escape successfully.

As determined as the IRA were, they would not undertake an operation without a solid chance of their volunteers and equipment “returning to base” safely. Silke reported that the IRA considered an attack with RPGs, but that the Provisionals viewed them as generally unreliable, but:
 
bombs have been much more successful weapons for the organization. With over 20 years of bomb-making and deployment behind them, the IRA at that time were arguably the most skilled terrorist group in the world when it came to the use of explosives.

So it was that the IRA chose to use a bomb to attack the UDA HQ at 275A Shankill Road.

The Shankill Bomb

The IRA’s bomb attack on the Shankill Road on 23rd October 1993, by any standards, was a disaster. There has been debate on this blog about the intention of the bombing, but I think it's clear that it was a targeted operation against Adair in particular, and high-ranking members of the UDA in general.

I would challenge Brian Rowan's assertion that it was "unthinking madness" - arguably, it is madness to use an explosive device in a civilian area at any time, but it had been done many other times, including in two attacks on bars in loyalist areas in 1994, without death or injury.

In their determination to kill Adair, the IRA unit definitely risked the lives of Protestant shoppers on the Shankill Road, but also their own lives. Silke wrote that:

Although the timer had failed disastrously, casualties could have been much higher but for the fact that the design of the rest of the bomb worked as the IRA had intended. The charge had been shaped so as to explode upward taking out the floors above the fish shop rather than damaging the buildings to either side. In this at least it succeeded and only two people outside of the shop were killed by the bomb.

As one senior security source put it:

The difference between that [the Shankill bombing] being a disaster and a stunning success in IRA terms was very marginal. The bomb was designed to direct the blast upwards, and it did—in the fruit shop next door the rows of oranges were hardly disturbed.

The aftermath

Silke wrote of “disarray” in the ranks of the Belfast IRA following the Shankill bomb. Loyalist paramilitaries predictably went on the rampage, so indiscriminate were their attacks that they killed two Protestants “accidently”, one of whom was a former B-Special. Looking back at statistics, CAIN notes that 26 nationalists were killed by loyalists before the Shankill bomb, whilst 16 were killed after it before the end of 1993.

Adair survived some more attempts on his life, before the RUC lifted him, and most of his UDA structure, off the streets and into remand, awaiting trial. Republicans killed eight loyalist paramilitaries in 1994, prior to calling their ceasefire at the end of August, as well as killing others ranging from Protestant cleaners to British soldiers and RUC officers.

Without the political manoeuvres which had been in place since the 1980s, an IRA ceasefire would have been highly unlikely. Silke described the internal pressure the IRA was under to “deal” with loyalist violence. I believe that the loyalist campaign, and potential republican response, could have dragged the North back to levels of violence last seen in the 1970s. I don’t think it would have been a high-intensity civil war situation, but, as ever, civilians would have borne the brunt of paramilitary excesses.

In the past few days, the media has reported that the UVF and UDA are “reviewing” their ceasefires. It is worth noting the intense misery, death, destruction and imprisonment the loyalist campaigns brought their own communities, as well as in nationalist communities.

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

22 comments:

  1. I think that, on the face of it, the bombing could be described as madness: planting a bomb in a busy shop on a Saturday afternoon while clearing out the ground floor and then escaping a hostile crowd sure seems like madness to me. However it was one of those operations that, had it achieved its purpose, would have been the greatest success the IRA had against loyalists. The fact that such a seemingly ludicrous operation, where the risks were vast, was approved is an example of just how determined the Provos were to wipe out Adair and co.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I bet Boals biography, should it ever be published, would be a very interesting read.

    Caoimhin O'Muraile

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very good piece Brandon.
    Not sure Silke is right about disarray in the ranks of the Belfast Brigade after the bombing. I have no doubt there were a lot of questions asked but do not feel disarray existed. I think it more likely that there were tensions between the A/C and the BB but nothing that amounted to any radical change or new people being appointed. And if the A/C signed off on it . . .
    The stuff on Adair I found very interesting. In the end Johnny wanted to be a British drug dealer rather than an Irish one.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ AM

    Silke wrote:

    "The political fallout was just as bad. Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, understood immediately the impact the bombing would have: “I was shattered when I heard the news. There was a sense of shock at what had happened.” Serious concerns were
    raised about whether a split had occurred in the organization—or was in the process of occurring—between Sinn Fein moderates and IRA hard-liners."

    I wonder if it simply exacerbated tensions between the A/C and BB. I think I remember reading somewhere that the South Armagh brigade were aghast that loyalists hadn't been "dealt with" in Belfast. I seem to recall that South Armagh offered to help in the efforts to kill Billy Wright.

    In terms of republican actions against loyalist paramilitaries, 1994 was a stunningly successful year. Loyalists, if they'd killed eight IRA/INLA men in eight months would herald it as evidence they'd beaten republicanism. I've always found it strange the disparity in analysis between loyalist attacks on republicans and republican attacks on loyalists. In researching this piece, I've discovered that republicans in Belfast are still adamant that some of those the IRA (and INLA) killed were loyalist militants, despite their names not appearing on UVF/UDA Roll of Honours, and never been reported as paramilitaries. The reverse is also true, of course.

    I think Adair wanted to be whatever it was that would give him the greatest amount of narcissistic supply. I remember talking to an academic about Adair and suggesting that Adair's frequent claim that he'd have been an IRA man if he'd been born on the Falls was nonsense; the IRA wouldn't have accepted a personality like him. The academic said "the INLA would have taken him."

    The files on Adair were interesting. Him and his friends were societal misfits. Suspects in housebreaking, rampant glue-sniffers, and all round feral degenerates. Adair in his autobiography says that he lost interest in work as he could make more engaged in UDA criminality.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Adams would have had the ability to discern what a disaster it was. Most republican activists thought the same. The Taoiseach at the time defended Adams against criticism for carrying the coffin, saying words to the effect that if he couldn't carry the coffin he was of no use to the governments. Adams would have known instantly the threat to his ability to deliver if the governments rebuffed him as a result. But if the A/C signed off on it . . .

      Delete
    2. Brandon,

      "In terms of republican actions against loyalist paramilitaries, 1994 was a stunningly successful year. Loyalists, if they'd killed eight IRA/INLA men in eight months would herald it as evidence they'd beaten republicanism. I've always found it strange the disparity in analysis between loyalist attacks on republicans and republican attacks on loyalists."

      Because, although the Provos emerged primarily to defend nationalists, their main enemy was always the British. Whereas loyalists always saw the IRA as the enemy. Researchers viewing the conflict through that lens probably attribute IRA killing of loyalists as an extension of the war with the British, due to the oft-repeated phrase "state sponsored death squads."

      "In researching this piece, I've discovered that republicans in Belfast are still adamant that some of those the IRA (and INLA) killed were loyalist militants, despite their names not appearing on UVF/UDA Roll of Honours, and never been reported as paramilitaries. The reverse is also true, of course."

      It could very well be that some of those people 'helped out' the various loyalist paramilitaries without actually being members. Unless someone comes forward, we'll probably never know.

      Delete
  5. @ Christopher Owens

    I think you're right. I think this is where Barney Rowan was wrong - madness it might have been, but very carefully conceived and considered. The operation was highly dangerous to the IRA ASU, who would, as you said, have had to escape a hostile crowd. Ultimately, of course, using explosives in a built-up civilian area is always reckless and dangerous.

    Adair for his part seemed to think a heavily pregnant woman acted as a scout for the IRA ASU.

    @ Caoimhin O'Muraile

    I'd love to read one - but I don't think it will happen. From what I can gather, he was a fairly secretive man. I'm also not sure anyone would take on the project - I can't imagine it being financially viable.

    @ AM

    Would it have been the A/C that signed off on it, or Northern Command? I seem to remember reading somewhere (possibly TheBrokenElbow) that an attack on a loyalist paramilitary would only have required sign-off from N/C rather than the A/C.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think at that time given Hume/Adams and everything else that was going on, it would have required A/C authorisation.

      Delete
  6. "In the past few days, the media has reported that the UVF and UDA are “reviewing” their ceasefires. It is worth noting the intense misery, death, destruction and imprisonment the loyalist campaigns brought their own communities, as well as in nationalist communities."

    The spooks reporting to the current head of PSNI seem think that no such threat is imminent. I would tend to agree with them. Loyalist paramilitiaires were perhaps at their most cohesive just prior to the 1994 ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement. Now them seem to have splintered into endless factions and knee deep in gangsterism. Granted it only a few members to carry out a shooting or elaborate bomb hoax, but it is difficult to imagine them having the ability to return to the level of activity that was witnessed in the early '90s.

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  7. Nothing happened in Belfast without Adams OK. "Nary a sparrow falls from a tree that Adams wouldn't know about beforehand." Sure as hell if the AC signed off on it first. All he'd have to do was ask himself.

    But sure he was never in the IRA.

    " I remember talking to an academic about Adair and suggesting that Adair's frequent claim that he'd have been an IRA man if he'd been born on the Falls was nonsense; the IRA wouldn't have accepted a personality like him. The academic said "the INLA would have taken him."

    And Begley was known as a thug who's unveiling as a Provo caused surprise among his neighbours. Adair is a no good degenerate scumbag with the IQ not much above that of one of his Alsatians. He brought wholesale drug selling into Belfast via Newcastle and Dublin and started the cartels we have today.

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  8. Adair "met with an organisation, shadowy even by Irish paramilitary standards, in the pursuit of weaponry to step up his campaign against, he claims, the IRA."

    The shadowy figures in Adair's life were not Ulster Resistance but his handlers in the security forces. And the shadows cast by Ulster Resistance were feasily traced to its members in the DUP. Adair would have gotten the weapons regardless because that was why MI5 shipped them into the north.

    It was the rare occassion that any IRA bomb was not in a civilian area -be that behind a garden wall in West Befast or a litter bin in Britain, to large bombs in city centres or outside barracks -so the Shankill bomb was not an anomaly. I doubt there was anything wrong with the timing device that triggered the bomb -I imagine time was of the essence from when the bomb was placed and detonation. The bomber's nerves could have caused him to trigger it premnaturely in his haste to prime it and get away -leaving as little time to give the UDA the chance to jump out windows or something to escape -especially in light of other failed attempts. The threshold between failure and success was slim, bearing in mind that a success was that anyone in the shop may have gotten out -but the large number of thos injured in the vacinity would probably still have occured -and were probably factored in during the planning.



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  9. @ Christy Walsh

    I actually think Adair was one of a comparative few high-ranking loyalists who wasn't a paid asset, agent, or informer. He obviously had relationships with agents, and also with security force members who gave him information, but I don't think he knowingly or wittingly danced to anyone else's tune. At least one branch of the security services seemed fairly relaxed about killing him as well. A lot of rank & file RUC harassed him, too.

    One of the men who was an asset, agent, or informer around him was Davy Payne, I believe. Whether he was still working for a branch of the security forces when he drove the UDA's share of the Lebanese weaponry into an RUC roadblock, I have no idea. John White, a creepy fuck-up of a human-being, with a burning hatred of the UVF (as well as for nationalists, was named as an informer by Barney Rowan. White was one of a few sadistic middle-aged misfits who got out of gaol and went on to play a shadowy role alongside a much younger loyalist killer. Kenny McClinton played this role alongside Billy Wright. White, Payne, and McClinton were all either early, founding, and/or leading members of the UDA's C Company.

    I believe Winky Dodds had an existing intelligence network that pre-dated Adair, and that wasn't substantially added to during. Adair's ascent.

    Dodds had access to Brian Nelson's files. Dodds was named by Lister & Jordan as being nicknamed "Big Evil." John Ware's 1989 documentary into collusion described how a gunman, nicknamed Big Evil, using Brian Nelson's intelligence files, shot and wounded an IRA suspect named Fitzsimmons (iirc).

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    1. Adair was also hated by a large section of the PUL community too. He had the Shankill in fear of him. None of us would have shed a tear if he'd been offed, least of all the cops who utterly despised him.

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    2. It is practically safe to assume that Loyalist Paramilitaries recruited exclusively from the rank of informers. When a documentary threatened to expose him, he quickly left the Loyalist wings in the Blocks for the safety of Magaberry, only to return a few days later when the documentary failed to deliver.

      The idea that the RUC or Intell groups would not use him because they thought his character was unsavoury is really laughable. His lack of scrupples probably made him all the more appealling --need we go over the moral standards of many informers --guys, just think Kincora before you defend the morals of the security forces and people they will recruit.

      In fact the post revision of how bankrupt the security forces were on integrity and morals is sickening. They were full of scum -the Jonty Browns were rare.

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  10. @ Stevie R

    Do you know if the UVF ever had any serious intentions to bump him off? I think undercover British soldiers wanted to. RUC CID wanted him off the streets. He seemed to have a degree of support from some within RUC Special Branch. He claims to have had widespread support from individual British soldiers. I think the intelligence services attached to UKG would have seen him as a threat to an IRA ceasefire (which is all they really cared about). Adair himself writes of RUC officers basically pointing him out to republicans.

    And of course, the IRA and INLA were determined to kill him (and Bratty, Elder, and others). Bratty had some close escapes as well, and his brother was shot and wounded in mistake for him, I think by the INLA. C Company lost three men to republican attacks, and quite a few others were badly injured in attacks. I don't think, though I am open to be corrected, that C Company killed a single active Belfast IRA or INLA man. Alan Lundy was ex-IRA, Sinn Fein, and close to leading republicans, but he wasn't active militarily.

    But Adair did have significant support from various parts of the PUL community, including some elements (a minority) within the RUC. I don't dispute that large sections of the PUL community hated him. I think most of the UVF despised him, as well as plenty of ordinary working people. Adair's father apparently disliked flamboyant UDA members, scathingly commenting that they "never worked nor wanted in their lives." Adair was a particularly gauche example of this

    I'm surprised that Adair giving his address as, and frequently visiting, 275A Shankill Road (Frizzell's was 273 Shankill Road) hasn't been covered by journalists/writers before. Adair often claimed, as part of his hyperbole justifying his sordid campaign, that he had the IRA on the run, and that they wouldn't live in their own houses. Given the frenzy of republican and media activity around him in October 1993, Adair, in the first instance, and the people of the Shankill, and indeed across the north, would have been safer if Adair took himself offside.

    It goes without saying, however, that responsibility, for the deaths, destruction, and injuries on 23/10/93 sits squarely with the IRA and nobody else, just as the UDA/UVF are responsible for the wave of murder that followed it.

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    1. "Do you know if the UVF ever had any serious intentions to bump him off? "

      Definitely Brandon. If they could have got him in the early 2000 he'd have been dealt with there and then. The piece of shit fled to Portadown and Troon when they got close. I'm only sorry they didn't get the chance.

      I can't speak about the Branch but ordinary coppers I knew would have fingered him in a heartbeat to republicans and did so.

      Adair's support was almost entirely from the lower Shankill with pockets in Portadown and the Waterside. The rest of us hated him and still do. I personally knew Bratty and Elder and disliked both of them for the same reasons, they were squalid, petty sectarian thugs more interested in drug money than their own communities. I didn't shed a tear when they got taken out.

      "I'm surprised that Adair giving his address as, and frequently visiting, 275A Shankill Road (Frizzell's was 273 Shankill Road) hasn't been covered by journalists/writers before"

      That's an old trick to wind the cops up. Billy Wright when interviewed by the cops used to give responses in the third person, so on a transcript it looked stupid. Another I knew had memorized the first few pages of the cops booklet on interviews and used to say it back to them just for sheer fuckery.

      "It goes without saying, however, that responsibility, for the deaths, destruction, and injuries on 23/10/93 sits squarely with the IRA and nobody else, just as the UDA/UVF are responsible for the wave of murder that followed it."

      Horrible day. Pity civilians died and he was missed.

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  11. @ Christy Walsh

    Because he wasn't run, Adair wasn't the tool of anyone particularly high-up. Aside from the scummy bloodthirsty outsiders among RUC detectives, whose agenda was he serving? The IRA were moving towards a ceasefire, and Adair's campaign was a disruptive factor. I think most the security forces wanted Adair off the streets, or dead, before he actually was.

    Detective Superintendent Brian McArthur signed off on the file of evidence to prosecute him for Directing Terrorism, and the files are full of RUC officers who put their names to collated pieces of evidence.

    And then there's the ambush that C Company drove into in 1992, Adair and one of his knuckle-draggers being wounded by undercover cops, Adair being charged with several murders prior to the 1994 Directing Terrorism charge.

    UKG wanted the IRA to stop bombing London. The IRA wanted a ceasefire. Adair's campaign, as I think I've demonstrated, far from compelling the IRA to call a ceasefire, actually propelled towards keeping the war going.

    I think there's strong evidence to suggest that not only was Adair not an informer, his actions were in direct contradiction to the strategic aims of UKG. Again, that's not to say that more than a few security force personnel didn't collude with him, but I think getting him off the streets was the aim of most RUC and British security entities.

    I think the IRA might well have called a ceasefire earlier than they did if the CLMC didn't call off their 1991 ceasefire. It's conjecture, but if loyalists weren't murdering nationalists, and the British army presence was reduced, and the RUC behaved, conditions would have been better earlier.

    Interesting debate nonetheless, and one that ties in with the Quillversation.

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  12. Thomas “Bootsy” Begley wasn't a known thug and Sean Kelly isn't a murdering sectarian.....(use any adjetive you want).....My opinion for what it is worth, they were products of the conflict and got caught up ...Both the Begley and Kelly families lived a few doors up from my grandparents, I played football with Thomas Begley's older brother , I was in the same year at school with Sean's older brother..my memories of both Thomas and Sean ...."Thuggish sectarian.....( put in your own adjective )......." is not my memory...

    As for being surprised about both of them being members of the PIRA....I know several people who I was very surprised in finding out they were members of the PIRA.

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    1. Frankie,

      I was referring to comments made by neighbours who knew him and expressed surprise that the Provo's would have him in their ranks. If memory serves they called him a standover man. I'll see if I can find the link later. But I agree, they were all products of the conflict.

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  13. Brandon

    Adair pre-dates the 1994 ceasefire and his inconvenience to it does not rule him out as an informer. When he left the Loyalist wings out of fear that he was going to be outted as an informer only to return when that threat did not materialise is persuasive that he was. I accept what both you and Steve say about cops not liking him --maybe they didnt but that in a way is meaningless to his role as an informer for many reasons. You assume that there were not others who liked him or run him while having contempt for him or thatthere werent securocrates that thought him useful to test or antagonise the IRA.

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    1. Adair didn't need to be an informer because the cunt never shut up.

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  14. @ Christy Walsh

    The only occasion I know of him leaving the loyalist wings when a documentary came out about him and he was worried how stupid he'd look.

    Who do you think he was informing to? And about what?

    I'm genuinely interested in the debate - but I simply don't see how or why he'd be of use to most mainstream security force entities.

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