Chapter Two – A Killer is Blooded
(Intro & Chapter One is here).
Note – due to the density of materiel in A Killer is Blooded, this article is split into two sections. The second part will follow soon.
The atmosphere in 1972
This chapter begins with an interesting and well-presented overview of the political temperature of Northern Ireland at the beginning of 1972, and how it increases throughout that year. The malignant nature of politicians like Bill Craig is analysed, as well as the impact of IRA actions on sections of the PUL community. Quotes are used to describe a growing extremism with militant loyalism, with Dillon noting that a: “phrase which frequently found its way into Loyalist news sheets and bulletins was ‘the Provos and their passive sympathizers’. A lack of any proper definition of the enemy encouraged many Loyalists to believe that all Catholics were IRA sympathizers, if not actual supporters.” Other quotes are now infamous, Bill Craig’s call to “liquidate the enemy” and “God help those who get in our way.”
Notes on Lenny Murphy’s personality
Focusing back onto Lenny Murphy, Dillon again offers insight into his personality:
In the first six months of 1972 Lenny Murphy was preparing for his terrorist career in a most unusual fashion by attending many of the murder trials being held in Belfast’s Crumlin Road courthouse. He not only appeared in the public gallery at the trials of those UVF members whom he knew but also at trials involving members of the IRA. Murphy was learning about the law, the nature of witness and forensic evidence, and when such evidence was ruled admissible or inadmissible.
Dillon quotes an RUC man who had this to say about Murphy:
Lenny loved his notoriety and the fact that we knew who he was. He enjoyed watching the reaction of his friends when he talked to me or my colleagues. It was as if he was saying to his friends, ‘Look, I can talk to these jerks and they don’t know what the hell I’m up to and even if they suspect me there is nothing they can do about it.’ … He was like the smiling assassin. When I saw him in the scarf and the leather jacket he reminded me of those First World War pilots who were going off in glory to battle and were loved by the women. He was like that. He always had young girls around him even in the courthouse. There was a Jack-the-Lad quality about him as well. I’m not a homosexual, you understand, but I have to say he was good-looking. I think in retrospect that he saw himself as a film star.
Dillon wrote:
The only apparent thing was his pathological hatred of Catholics which he constantly stressed in all his conversations. He seemed a hardworking shop assistant, though his criminal activities paid for his flamboyant lifestyle of heavy drinking and womanizing.
Murphy’s relationship with the security forces is returned to in Dillon’s book, as well as others. It seems clear that he enjoys being a person-of-interest to the RUC and army. In his memoir, Billy Hutchinson recounts Murphy being upset that soldiers arrested Hutchinson but not Murphy when they were stopped together in 1972. Another incident where Murphy came to the attention of the security forces is not covered by Dillon. During 1972 when loyalists were setting up no-go areas across Belfast Murphy had a brush with the army when he stole a military vehicle and narrowly escaped a custodial sentence. This would fit into a pattern of behaviour which preceded the Troubles when Murphy and some of his associates were prolific car thieves.
Dillon's attempt to flesh out the Lenny Murphy behind the subsequent headlines is limited. This is largely due to the fact that it is unlikely that many people who knew Murphy well would have spoken to Dillon; though it is evident that he did try to get information - he recounts arranging a meeting with Margaret Berry, Murphy's ex-wife, while he was researching the book. At the last minute she cancelled the arrangement as her husband, a former associate of Murphy, didn't approve.
One of the authors has spoken to people who knew Murphy well, including some family members, and recollections range from 'a sound guy' to 'an utter psychopath' - this isn't surprising and speaks to the complexities of comradeship and kinship in a low-intensity conflict situation.
What we do know about Murphy from the conversations that we have had with people who knew him are that he was, on the surface, as Dillon states, much like any other young man of his age. He loved music, particularly the Beatles (and later Wings) and when he was told that he reminded someone of the pop star David Essex, he immediately started getting his hair styled a la Essex 'Gonna Make You A Star' era.
A common thread in anecdotes about Murphy's development into his later notoriety was the murder of Thomas Kells and the anger this stirred within the young loyalist. Some senior loyalists also talked about a particularly gruesome torture murder of a Protestant in 1972. The man, who was associated with loyalist politics, was allegedly found in a cold storage van and the loyalists one of the authors spoke to still talk animatedly about how the RUC pasted SOC photos of the victim on walls around the Shankill. Whether this is true or apocryphal, it demonstrates the then pertaining mood and the increasing levels of barbarity in society.
Back to the chapter in question, Dillon goes on to link Murphy to four killings that, for various reasons that we will explore, are at the very least open to question.
Reappraising murders attributed to Lenny Murphy in 1972
On page 34 of this chapter, Dillon writes:
His [Lenny Murphy] first direct involvement in killing was on Friday 21 July 1972. That day a thirty-four-year-old Catholic, Francis [Frankie] Arthurs, from Fallswater Street off the Falls Road, was travelling in a taxi from the predominantly Nationalist Ardoyne area in North Belfast. The taxi was stopped on the Crumlin Road, which runs parallel to the Shankill Road. The mistake made by Arthurs was a classic one, in that the enclave from which the taxi emerged signalled to those watching the area that the occupant of the vehicle was a Catholic. Arthurs was drunk and was unaware that the previous night a young Catholic couple, also travelling in a taxi, had been apprehended and murdered. When Arthur’s taxi was stopped he was bundled out of the vehicle unceremoniously and was hit over the head with a metal object. He was then taken to the Lawnbrook Social Club, a Loyalist club off the Shankill Road.
A detective revealed to me details of Murphy’s involvement in another murder which occurred around this period. I could not, however, trace the victim because of the number of unsolved crimes in June and July of 1972. The detective’s source, which I cannot reveal here, could be described in journalistic terms as impeccable. This informant described how Murphy beat and tortured a Catholic man in a lock-up garage in a street running from the Shankill Road to the Catholic Springfield Road. The informant confirmed one detail about Murphy in these words: ‘Lenny hit the guy harder than the rest of the people there that night. It was as if he was out to prove that he hated the Taigs more than the rest of us. He wanted to show that he was more violent and more capable than anyone else there. He was the one who used the knife before we shot the guy.’
Dillon again:
One month after the Arthurs killing an elderly Catholic was murdered in a way which bears a striking resemblance to the Arthurs crime. Though no one was ever brought to justice for these murders, it was thought that the manner of killing strongly indicated the same hand at work.
And later:
The third murder was that of forty-eight-year-old Thomas Madden who worked in a mill on the Crumlin Road and who, due to the geography of Belfast, was obliged to travel each day through tough Protestant enclaves to reach his place of work. Madden was a bachelor, an inoffensive man who enjoyed a drink and went to Mass on Sundays. He lived in a boarding house in Cliftonpark Avenue in North Belfast and worked as a security guard, which involved night shift duty. Three weeks before his death he was stopped by vigilantes and taken to a club on the Shankill where he was interrogated. There is little doubt that it was the Lawnbrook Social Club, where Arthurs was murdered.
Of these four killings, two of the victims are named, and two are not. Of the two that are not named, regarding the man alleged to have been tortured and murdered by Murphy in a lock-up garage between the Shankill and Springfield Roads, working on the assumption that Murphy and his fellow murderers would dump their victim close to where the murder took place, we looked to Lost Lives and the CAIN index for June and July 1972 to see if we could identify the victim. Despite exhaustive searches of all available open source records, we were unable to – perhaps John O’Hanlon, but his body was left in Twickenham Street, which was closer to the Oldpark than the Springfield Road adjacent part of the Shankill.
Regarding the murder of an “elderly Catholic” a month after Frankie Arthurs was killed (so by the end of August 1972), the oldest Catholic to die in this timeframe was 57 year old James Casey, shot dead by the British army in Derry. We do not believe that an elderly Catholic man was killed in the circumstances Dillon describes in the timeframe given and are not sure why this was suggested by the author.
Regarding the two named victims, Frankie Arthurs and Thomas Madden, these are widely regarded as having been carried out by members of the UDA, and not of the UVF. As Dillon points out in his book, dual membership and overlap of association - before regimental loyalty became a defining characteristic of loyalist militancy - means that the situation in 1972 was fluid. But there are a number of other reasons why it could be wrong to connect these murders to Lenny Murphy.
Dillon gets a number of details wrong about the murder of Frankie Arthurs. He states that Arthurs was travelling in a taxi from Ardoyne when in fact he was travelling from the Engineer's Club in Corporation Street in the centre of Belfast, having spent an evening socialising with his girlfriend and others. The city was tense, having been subjected to widespread bombing earlier in the day. This would become notorious as Bloody Friday.
The taxi containing Arthurs, his girlfriend and another man and woman was stopped at a loyalist roadblock (vehicle checkpoint) on the Crumlin Road, near to St Mary's Church of Ireland, between Silvio Street and Yarrow Street. Along with the other passengers Arthurs was asked for identification and then frog-marched towards Yarrow Street – not to the Lawnbrook social club. Arthurs was also not struck with a wheelbrace after he left the taxi, as Dillon claims. Arthurs' girlfriend later gave a chilling account of what actually happened. Having been asked to exit the taxi, all the occupants were allowed to get back inside. One of the loyalists then returned to the taxi and spoke to Arthurs: 'Right, out you.' His girlfriend said "He did not protest or put up any fight to the men. He was taken by the arm by a number of men who took him round the front of the taxi and across Crumlin Road towards Yarrow Street. As soon as Frankie was out of my sight a dark haired man twentyish and slightly built came and spoke to the driver of the taxi. I didn't hear what was said but the taxi driver turned the car and he drove to Glenravel Street Police Station.' Dillon claims that Arthurs' mistake (coming from Ardoyne in a taxi, which he didn't) was a 'classic one' and that a couple had been abducted and murdered in similar circumstances the previous evening. In fact, the couple Dillon alludes to were taken around an hour before Arthurs was abducted and we consider it likely that elements of the same killer gang were involved in both murders.
Dillon claims that once in the Lawnbrook Club Lenny Murphy repeatedly stabbed Frankie Arthurs. The source of that information is however of dubious quality:
Joe Bennett, who later became one of the major UVF supergrasses, once told a friend that Murphy stood out from others that night as the most barbarous gang member present.
Bennett was a skilled bomb-maker who was popular with some UVF members but regarded as unreliable due to his womanising and gambling problems. In the early 1980s a large number of senior UVF members were convicted on foot of Bennett's supergrass evidence.
In December 1984, after a lengthy appeal process, the men were released; Lord Lowry questioned the credibility of Bennett's evidence and the UVF men won their appeal. Bennett has long been regarded as a fantasist in UVF circles and while there may well be some truth to what he claimed in the supergrass trials his legacy is that of an unreliable witness.
Thus information he is alleged to have given 'a friend' about the circumstances surrounding the murder of Arthurs must be read in the context of his unreliability.
It is worth noting that in almost all accounts of the brutal and sadistic murder of Frankie Arthurs (including coroner's reports from the time) he is not noted as having been stabbed.
Elsewhere in the book, Dillon spoke of Murphy’s hesitance in being seen with other members of loyalist paramilitary organisations. This would exclude him from the roadblock at which Frankie was abducted, where his girlfriend states that a 'fair-haired man' was in charge.
It is possible he would have been at the venue around Yarrow Street where the unfortunate man was taken, but we do not believe that it is plausible. Convictions were secured against some men who murdered Catholic civilians in identical circumstances to those in which Frankie was killed, and in all cases those involved were UDA members.
Throughout the summer of 1972 press coverage (mainly in the south of Ireland) began to publish articles about a 'Jack the Ripper'-style loyalist assassin operating out of Yarrow Street. This seems to have been forgotten or ignored through the sands of time, despite matching up with what contemporaneous witness statements suggest.
The murder of Thomas Madden in August 1972 was horrifying (see newspaper graphics at the end of this article). Dillon claims that Madden’s first abduction saw him being taken to the Lawnbrook social club. He offers no evidence for this, despite saying “there can be little doubt.” In fact, it seems that the UDA, and not the UVF, had taken an interest in Madden, having shot his brother, Hugh, dead earlier in the year. It seems that Madden, like Arthurs, was brutally murdered by UDA men operating around the Crumlin Road/Oldpark areas of Belfast. There was an extremely active, extremely brutal group of men abducting, torturing and murdering Catholic men in that area at that time. We do not believe that there is compelling evidence to suggest that Lenny Murphy was among them. We do believe that Davy Payne was.
On page 36 on chapter two, Dillon states that: “Until now [1989, date of the book’s publication] no-one has known of Lenny Murphy’s involvement in several murders in the summer of 1972.” In fact, on the 27th November 1982, the republican newspaper sold in the USA, the Irish People, published an article titled “Lennie Murphy’s Bloody Career” which linked Murphy to the murders of Arthurs and Madden.
In December 1984, after a lengthy appeal process, the men were released; Lord Lowry questioned the credibility of Bennett's evidence and the UVF men won their appeal. Bennett has long been regarded as a fantasist in UVF circles and while there may well be some truth to what he claimed in the supergrass trials his legacy is that of an unreliable witness.
Thus information he is alleged to have given 'a friend' about the circumstances surrounding the murder of Arthurs must be read in the context of his unreliability.
It is worth noting that in almost all accounts of the brutal and sadistic murder of Frankie Arthurs (including coroner's reports from the time) he is not noted as having been stabbed.
Elsewhere in the book, Dillon spoke of Murphy’s hesitance in being seen with other members of loyalist paramilitary organisations. This would exclude him from the roadblock at which Frankie was abducted, where his girlfriend states that a 'fair-haired man' was in charge.
It is possible he would have been at the venue around Yarrow Street where the unfortunate man was taken, but we do not believe that it is plausible. Convictions were secured against some men who murdered Catholic civilians in identical circumstances to those in which Frankie was killed, and in all cases those involved were UDA members.
Throughout the summer of 1972 press coverage (mainly in the south of Ireland) began to publish articles about a 'Jack the Ripper'-style loyalist assassin operating out of Yarrow Street. This seems to have been forgotten or ignored through the sands of time, despite matching up with what contemporaneous witness statements suggest.
The murder of Thomas Madden in August 1972 was horrifying (see newspaper graphics at the end of this article). Dillon claims that Madden’s first abduction saw him being taken to the Lawnbrook social club. He offers no evidence for this, despite saying “there can be little doubt.” In fact, it seems that the UDA, and not the UVF, had taken an interest in Madden, having shot his brother, Hugh, dead earlier in the year. It seems that Madden, like Arthurs, was brutally murdered by UDA men operating around the Crumlin Road/Oldpark areas of Belfast. There was an extremely active, extremely brutal group of men abducting, torturing and murdering Catholic men in that area at that time. We do not believe that there is compelling evidence to suggest that Lenny Murphy was among them. We do believe that Davy Payne was.
On page 36 on chapter two, Dillon states that: “Until now [1989, date of the book’s publication] no-one has known of Lenny Murphy’s involvement in several murders in the summer of 1972.” In fact, on the 27th November 1982, the republican newspaper sold in the USA, the Irish People, published an article titled “Lennie Murphy’s Bloody Career” which linked Murphy to the murders of Arthurs and Madden.
Contemporaneous newspaper reports of Thomas Madden’s murder note that his ears were cut off. On the 26 August 1972, two Catholic men from Ballymena, John Nulty and Patrick Kelly, were abducted together, tortured, murdered, and their bodies left in separate locations “400 yards apart in the Oldpark area.” One of the men had had an ear cut off, and another had his tattoos gouged with a knife. The CAIN website, among other databases, list these two murders as the work of the UVF. In terms of the appalling treatment of the politically uninvolved civilians murdered, and the location, and the time-frame, it could be reasonably assumed that the same gang was responsible. We think that Dillon linking Murphy to the murders of Arthurs and Madden, but not Nulty and Kelly, does not make much sense. The Woodvale UDA were notorious in the summer of 1972 for operating in plain sight - quite literally picking innocent Catholics who drove into their vehicle checkpoints off the street at will (often during daylight hours) and subjecting them to unimaginable cruelty before murdering them and leaving their bodies in the Lower Oldpark/Clifton Park Avenue areas (see newspaper graphics at the end of this article).
Dillon also wrote:
Four weeks after the death of Thomas Madden another Catholic, fifty-year-old William Matthews, was found dead in the Glencairn Estate in a spot where Lenny Murphy was later to dump many of his victims. Matthews’ body also bore the signs of torture and the use of a knife. Again, the character of the wounds indicated the hand which killed Arthurs and Madden.
Less than a week after the murder of William Matthews, was a killing for which Lenny Murphy was tried and which fits an emerging pattern of a Murphy as an accomplished gunman whose preferred mode of transport during murders was a motorcycle.
⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.
⏩Sean Bradfield is a Former
researcher who shouldn't care about this stuff so much but can't help
himself.
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Good work guys. I always felt Dillon was never quite accurate about a lot of stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt makes for fascinating reading
ReplyDeleteKitsons counterinsurgency handbook would coincidentally approve of the shankill butchers tactics. Striking fear into every Catholic was the perfect way to 'pollute the water' the fish(IRA) swam in. Btw, it was also pure coincidence that the butchers were kickstarted by 'ex British soldier' ginger Baker. Pure coincidence I tell you as there's no way the British state would stoop so low as to secretly employ their own people to sponsor terrorism cos the Brit State has always, ALWAYS been a State that is honest and plays by the rules............F.R.U was a few rogue apples!lol
ReplyDeleteBaker had absolutely no involvement with the Butchers - though the squad he was part of was equally as brutal. East Belfast and Sandy Row were the cockpits of some of the worst loyalist violence in 1972, though Woodvale and Oldpark were just as bad with alleged state agent Davy Payne pushing things to excess under the noses of the security forces.
ReplyDeleteBaker was UDA and the Butchers were UVF. I think the point Mick might be making is that Baker kickstarted the Butchers phenomenon rather than kickstarted the Murphy gang.
DeleteWhether 'alleged state agent' or 'ex Brit soldier' that were involved in these tactics it's still remarkably coincidental that kitson would approve such savagery and terror. Add into the mix such as the likes of the glennane gang(that we know of) and FRU etc and it would be wiser politically to source out their terrorism into unionist death gangs allthewhile the State can keep up appearances by claiming to be 'upholding the law'. The amount of state agents within unionist deaths squads surely weren't all there to 'protect life'? I would imagine most military minded people would adopt the above tactics if their job is to protect a state/defeat an opponent I.e nothing is taboo........rules are for the politicians to sort out.
DeleteI'd disagree with that. Baker's first confirmed involvement in murder was a shooting in August 1972; the first romper killing by Baker and his associates was in September. Loyalists had carried out a number of romperings (and in the case of Tom Madden, butchering) from June 1972 onwards.
ReplyDeleteyou make a good point
DeleteThere is also a very strong case that the first murder involving torture was carried out by Republicans in 1971.
ReplyDeleteBaker didn't comment his team - a knife man and sadist did. At least one of their victims could have been saved by an RUC patrol, but I don't believe people were being knifed to death on security force orders.
I think all evidence points to their being a culture within elements of the PUL community that led to their being a not insignificant number of individuals and teams involved in these types of killings. Accusations of security force involvement detract from robust analysis of this phenomena.
Lenny Murphy and his Shankill Butchers being a one off, a man who even in a normal society would have become sort of serial killer, is usually the narrative that Northern Ireland's media runs with. It's safer and steers clear of potentially troubling critical analysis of the nature of Northern Ireland.
DeleteAlthough the Butchers were certainly high profile in their time, there were also a lot of ritualistic knife killings of Catholics involving torture by not so infamous loyalist paramilitaries in the 1970s. Indeed, there are a fair few examples even from the 1990s.
It's worth exploring if the enhanced notoriety given to Murphy and his gang by the publication of Dillon's book has occluded the many other loyalist "ritual" killers of the period and helped the Butchers be interpreted as a bizarre one-off.
It's interesting how communities are so selective in who they remember to build a mythos for the present e.g. Irish nationalists North and South will remember the men of 1916 in Dublin rather than the Somme. Or Britain today prefers the men in Spitfires defending the White Cliffs of Dover to the men in Lancaster bombers causing unprecedent carnage in Hamburg.
Killings of Catholics by loyalists play a surprisingly low key in Nationalist remembrance in NI in 2024, despite the scale of the suffering inflicted.
Unionists who grew up with little real contact with the Troubles in suburban Belfast or North Down will hold onto a seed of bitterness against the IRA (completely omitting the CNR experience) while the often gruesome killing of Catholics only seems relevant in Nationalist collective memory when British state involvement is suspected i.e. collusion.
One stark example was the 40th anniversary of the Darkley massacre of 1983. Reporting described it as a uniquely heinous atrocity even for the Troubles yet in the 1970s there was a grim tally of shooting and bomb attacks on Catholic churches by the UDA/UVF. It's a curious situation.
Comment should read:
ReplyDeleteThere is also a very strong case that the first murder involving torture was carried out by Republicans in 1971.
Baker didn't command his team - a knife man and sadist did. At least one of their victims could have been saved by an RUC patrol, but I don't believe people were being knifed to death on security force orders.
I think all evidence points to there being a culture within elements of the PUL community that led to their being a not insignificant number of individuals and teams involved in these types of killings. Accusations of security force involvement detract from robust analysis of this phenomena.
Good comment, Bleakley.
ReplyDeleteHere's a knife criminal who clearly had the Shankill Butchers in his mind: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/killers-back-on-belfast-streets-three-murderers-living-in-the-same-hostel/41441020.html
The erasure of nationalist victims of these types of atrocities is troubling. So too is analysis of the population from which the killers and torturers came from. Murphy was not an aberration - he was the latest in a line of men for whom torturing and murdering defenceless and uninvolved civilians was acceptable and desirable.
I consider myself pretty well read and knowledgeable about the loyalist paramilitary scene of the 1970s, but in researching these pieces I've come to know the names and identities of a number of men involved in such brutality. Some I can't name as I don't know if they're still living their wretched lives, but others, such as Davy Bryson, are dead.
Murphy and his cohort are an absolute stain on my community. I feel nothing but shame, revulsion and utter and complete apology for what that utter waste of skin and oxygen did in so called defence of our community. My heart and apology goes forever to their victims and families.
ReplyDeleteCam Comments
ReplyDeleteComment from Cam:
Murphy and Robin the Jackal Jackson were drinking chums and I think they drank together in the Berlin bar, maybe, not sure if it was that one….I can’t remember the exact details as it has been a few years since I was told all by an ex-UVF member from the Newtownards Road. They would meet up every now and then to discuss ‘operations’ and swap stories. The Murphy gang was known locally among loyalists, both UVF and UDA on the Shankill, as the Sweeney from the popular TV cop show as they would turn up at bars and clubs in cars that screeched to halt, they would swing open the doors before the car stopped and jump out in a real hurry and leave the same way….like they were always on a mission. As for the RUC cop who was lauded for catching them…seriously, the dogs on the street knew who they were!!!!
If you read into Kitson’s background you could only conclude that he would approve of all tactics to defend the State and be eventually awarded with his ‘gong’. The reason that the British Security forces outsourced their killing to the loyalists was that Northern Ireland was just too close to home and the West in general so they couldn’t hide away their terror tactics from the media like they did in Malaya, Kenya, India, and everywhere else they were. I often find the term collusion misleading for in fact the British were directing, and at all times in charge.
People may not have been knifed to death on security force orders but even turning a blind eye is tantamount to compliance. The aspect of all these killings is that the people in those areas where these loyalists resided knew who they were and what they at and therefore so did the British security forces….to try and separate the two is nonsense…there were obviously killings committed by loyalists gangs that were not sanctioned by the British but that also happened in all their ex colonies and like there as here, they simply turned a blind eye and continued on as it served their purpose.
I totally disagree that the Butchers were psychopaths…it was and is part of Unionist / Loyalist ideology to behave as such when it is required for if it wasn’t then all the other savage killings by Baker, Jackson et al would never have happened. Otherwise, history would record an epidemic of psychopaths!
@ Cam
ReplyDeleteI think your comment, and MickO's lets loyalists off the hook. Loyalist militancy and loyalist violence were, and to a degree still are, organic phenomena which would (and did) exist without direction or control by UKG forces.
I, and others, have said that there is evidence to suggest Davy Payne was being looked after by contacts within the RUC/British Army in the 1970s. But he was interned, and later jailed for a considerable length of time. John White, I believe, was an agent of some description upon leaving prison. I think his remit as an agent was to split loyalist post-ceasefire. Since he hated the UVF, that worked just fine.
Sean and I believe one of the major faults of the Shankill Butchers book is that it reduces the locus of loyalist torture murders to one man. The truth is far more sinister. There were multiple gangs made up of multiple, sometimes overlapping, members. The violence was as chaotic as it was sadistic and bloody. I find the concept that it was meet any strategic need of the British army.
I'd ask those who comment about collusion to instead study what we have written and interact with that.
It's worth pointing out that the victims of almost half of the murders the Shankill Butchers were convicted of were Protestant, and a few were loyalists.
The notion that Kitsonian army officers were organising and directing gangs of teenagers and young men to arm themselves with knives to torture and murder members of the "other" tribe must be contrasted against the notion that groups of teenagers and young men consumed with bigotry and against a background of encouragement and fearmongering by political leaders armed themselves with knives to torture and murder members of the "other" tribe.
Did collusion exist? Of course it did. Did it play a major role on the phenomena of loyalist torture murders? I don't think there is any evidence to suggest that it did, and a fair amount to suggest that it didn't.
"I totally disagree that the Butchers were psychopaths…it was and is part of Unionist / Loyalist ideology to behave as such when it is required."
I think you're close to a truth here, though I wouldn't go as far as to agree with this specifically. Your comment seems to push against this earlier though, by citing the British as the catalyst for such behaviour. I don't think they were - I believe that something, and I'm not sure what, within loyalism allows for extreme violence to be exercised against Catholics. Bleakley has pointed out that Shankill Butcher style barbarity occurred right up to at least the 1990s.
"As for the RUC cop who was lauded for catching them…seriously, the dogs on the street knew who they were!!!!"
I'm not so sure that they did. I just don't know. But Jimmy Nesbitt and his team had an extremely high conviction rate for all killings in his district. It's worth noting as well that, according to Richard O'Rawe's book, when they were arrested, the Butchers were beaten up just like IRA prisoners were during interrogation.
Far from letting unionists off the hook, but rather not letting the British state off the hook. People tend to ignore the savagery the British carried out in Kenya etc that in their eyes was intended to crush insurrections. In a nut shell the British have always aimed to be more violent than their opponent in order to secure their interests. Whether military Intel was organizing gangs or not it wouldn't be a stretch for other individuals to mimick a gangs actions that was sponsored by military Intel, after the seed was sown by the initial gang. And mimick they would do especially when they saw and understood the reaction it was impacting on a community.
DeleteFast forward to late 80's and early 90's and unionists(Brit Intel?)tactics changed whereby more unionists bogeymen such as cokeheads Adair and billy wright were bringing a different sort of fear but terror nonetheless upon the nationalist community after being armed by Brit agent Brian nelson and military Intel. Just like the glennane gang endeavored to do, the new bogeymen were bringing the terror deep into the water that kitsons 'fish' swam in. And before anyone claims wright was an slippery character and outwitted the police, don't make me laugh. He must have had magical powers to outwit them even when they were often were seated outside his house.........were they watching him or protecting him? And I am guessing certain branch men in Gough barracks were just acting sinister when they would often tell a republican that they 'were very close to a friend in portadown' who would be very interested in them........the fact they'd be seen in a hotel together with their 'friend' was just coincidence too.
"Bleakley has pointed out that Shankill Butcher style barbarity occurred right up to at least the 1990s."
DeleteDecided to look into this and came up with a few examples:
October 1991: Co. Dublin man is beaten and shot in the head by the UDA after wandering into Shankill Road bar.
January 1992: UDA members stabbed to death a Scottish-born lapsed Catholic man, John McIver, in the toilets of the Liverpool Supporters' Club in Templemore Avenue, Belfast. Reportedly, four months before his death, McIver cried as he told a friend: "They have found out I'm a Catholic". Detective described the murder scene as the most "brutal" he had ever seen.
February 1992: Loyalists linked to UDA and UVF murdered 26-year-old Catholic woman Anne Marie Smyth in east Belfast. She had been beaten, strangled, and her throat slashed to the spinal cord. She had been lured to a house from Hillfoot Glentoran Social Club by a woman, after confiding she was Catholic. All involved reportedly laughed and joked throughout.
August 1992: UDA members severely injured a Catholic man in an attack with a hatchet on the Cliftonville Road, Belfast. They were prevented from killing him when a man happened upon the scene and set his German Shepherd on them.
August 1993: UVF members abducted 24-year-old Catholic Seamus Hopkins from the Mater Hospital and beat him to death with a brick and a nail-studded plank. He had suffered brain damage in a sectarian attack six years before.
April 1994: Red Hand Commando/UVF members killed Margaret Wright at a south Belfast band hall wrongly believing she was a Catholic. She was severely beaten, tortured, and shot in the head four times.
November 1995: Loyalists, apparently unaffiliated, beat Catholic Norman Harley to death with iron bars in the Waterworks, Belfast, while walking to his mother's house.
July 1997: Catholic civilian James Morgan (16) kidnapped in Newcastle, County Down. He was tortured, beaten to death with a hammer, and his body was then doused in petrol and set alight. His burnt and mutilated body was found three days later in a waterlogged ditch used for the disposal of animal carcasses. Man charged and convicted of the killing joined LVF wing.
That's a grim list but far from exhaustive. Point is the Butchers should be viewed in wider context.
Reading about the case of the man on trial for planting bombs at the East Belfast GAA grounds in 2024 and I think it was very revealing that he allegedly said “something needs to be done”
DeleteNow, to the outside world this is absurd. Kids kicking a ball about a field is not a crisis or somehow impinging on this man's life. But for him, the presence of the GAA club, simply existing in East Belfast was a daily humiliation.
I think that psychology of power, dominance and humiliation is a huge motivator for loyalist violence. And it's a very male emotional state. Vast majority of acts of violence in any society are perpetuated by men and so much of that violence stems from incidents where an insecure man felt he was being humiliated, his power and position undermined.
Pub brawl turned deadly, a man beating his wife, drug buyer ripped off etc. What these incidents also have in common with loyalist violence are alcohol. So many loyalist attacks, including the Shankill Butchers, start with men drinking in a pub.
If loyalist violence was in direct response to the IRA's campaign you'd expect patterns of violence to match, But that's not the case. A much more reliable predictor of an upsurge is when unionists power and status is being undermined, either symbolically or in material terms. Civil Rights movement. Stormont abolished. Anglo-Irish Agreement. Drumcree. Good Friday Agreement, Flag protests. And so on.
Excuse me if this falls short of a fully formed theory more a bit of idle musing.
Cam responds top Brandon
DeleteI think Brandon that the UK security forces always had a hand in colonial militancy irrespective of where it was. If you read how British colonial policy was enacted in all its colonies, it clearly replicates right across the globe to here. The same violence occurred at the hands of colonisers everywhere and with the full support of the British establishment armed forces. When you have an ideology that treats an ethnic grouping as inferior in human value you can pretty much do to them as you please. Once you have the State backing you, you can basically do anything you want and they did. The same Establishment people were always called upon to enforce British rule and by the time they got to here they had honed their skills with Kitson being a prime example. As I say the problem with here is that it was just too close to home so to the rest of the watching world the British sense of justice had to be seen to be equally applied, hence loyalist arrests and imprisonment, when it suited!
Brandon, if you read up on Britain’s behaviour in its colonies right up until the conflict started here, and through the support of its colonial settlers and also through local indigenous support, you’ll come to fully understand that their tactics here are and were no different from what it had honed elsewhere.....their brutality and savagery to the indigenous peoples of its colonies who demanded self-determination was really horrific and the tortures devised and carried out with the full authority would have made the Nazis look quite infantile(these torture chambers were carried over right through WWII and through the cold war and dotted all around Europe besides in their colonies). The only thing that the British didn’t do was build gas chambers! Gangs of colonisers roamed all Her colonies, sometimes accompanied by the State forces and they competed with each other in their acts of violence.....the Zionists pre-Israel were no different and trained by the British.....they even have streets named after Orde Wingate in Israel. Those Jews who helped their Arab neighbours were brutally treated by the Zionist and they themselves were constantly at each other’s throats over ideologically reasons and came very close to out and out civil war....the same happened in all its colonies between all the groupings involved....India / Pakistan...both hated the British but hated each other even more!!! Malaya, Kenya and Aden now Yemen....So those Protestants killed by the Butchers don’t really set a new trend....that’s normal. The catalyst was and is the ideology that allows you to think and act like that – British colonialism.
As for arrest rates and the dogs on the street Brandon...the Butchers and the other gangs made sure everyone knew who was responsible for they revelled in the infamy...some of their victims were tortured to death in a stage act in their clubs....and on another note Nesbitt and the other RUC officers, what ideology do you think they came from hence when the Butchers time was up, why not give them a beating now that they had no-one backing them.....I’m sure the Butchers had laughed in Nesbitt\s face a few times prior to their eventual arrest..payback's a bitch..the didn’t seem to beat Lenny up too much now did they!
@ Bleakley - I think what you've written is far more relevant to the subject matter of these articles.
ReplyDeleteViolent loyalism is performative in nature.
"I think that psychology of power, dominance and humiliation is a huge motivator"
ReplyDeleteThrow together that mix Bleakley and the most vulnerable become supremacists and then inevitably lash out.
@ Henry Joy
ReplyDeleteI'm curious, what do you mean by vulnerable? I don't disagree, I'll wondering if we're looking at this from different angles.
Emotionally vulnerable rather than physically so Brandon; people demented by perceived threats to their privilege, privilege built upon a sense of rightful dominance, dominance conditioned in, sustained, and exploited by a pre-existing rancid culture.
Delete@ Henry Joy
ReplyDeleteThat's the type of vulnerability I think applies in these circumstances, I agree with every word that you said.
@ Cam
I don't think we're going to agree.
Did the British engage in some colonial era repression in the North? Yes.
Did collusion happen? Of course.
Was all loyalist violence as a result of collusion? Of course not, much of it was organic.
I Bleakley and Henry Joy capture the psychological prison these murderers lived in, and I think that it was exacerbated by alcohol, magazines and pamphlets that glorified extreme violence, "one-upmanship" among paramilitary groups, and the appearance on TV of masked loyalists threatening to "burn and pillage" amongst other things.
Interesting. I don't remember a desire to dominate even being a thought among ordinary working class Loyalists when I was a kid but I can certainly believe it of the Butcher's and their ilk. And I'm afraid I'll have to disagree,
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion they were definitely psychopaths.
Revenge, retaliation were far more proffered as excuses for the inexcusable. There's a reason why Loyalists always said " Get the IRA to stop and we'll stop".
@ Steve R
ReplyDeleteI'd argue that some elements of loyalist culture (some marches, some bands, some bonfires) are about a type of performative domination of the "other" - I imagine that this affects individual subconsciousness.
Once the violence genie was out of the bottle, the nature and severity of this type of performative behaviour changed radically.
This is of course theorising - but I find these discussions far more relevant, and interesting, than bringing Frank Kitson into it.
I think it's too neat to say the Butchers were psychopaths - perhaps one or more of them had those tendencies, but in a gang, the stronger and more extreme personalities usually dominate (that word again). As it happens, I don't think Lenny Murphy was a psychopath - someone whose opinion I trust said he was more likely someone with extreme mood-swings, high and low. The two things are not mutually exclusive, or course.
I think two books that explain a lot of loyalist violence are A Glasgow Gang Observed by James Patrick, and Ordinary People; Police Battalion 101 by Christopher Browning. Both unpack and rationalise violence in gang/organised, recreational/pseudo-military settings. Come to think of it, Army of Tribes does this in a military setting.
Just like the Americans at My Lai - they can't all have been psychopaths.
@Brandon & @Steve
ReplyDeleteI can understand both of your positions and would like to offer some information that may, or may not, help bridge that divergence (and validate 'Cam's' stance too).
Check out Paulhus & Williams's 2002 theory, Dark Triad Personality. For your convenience here's a link to a Wiki page that explains it.
@ Henry Joy
ReplyDeleteI had a look at that, I think it may offer some explanation for how many people became involved in torture and murder during the Troubles. And not just in paramilitary groups, the Para's have a culture of extreme violence and criminality that is continuing.
I still don't see the slightest link between romper room killings and some Kitsonian strategy. I think looking in that direction is pointless. The truth is often so much more mundane, and all the more frightening for it.