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Showing posts with label Sectarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sectarianism. Show all posts
Lesley Stock ✍ In case some reading this aren’t aware, I am a former RUC/PSNI officer, a mother of two adult children, conduct workshops in trauma and Peace and reconciliation both with adults and teenagers and have taken an interest in the political scene in NI pretty recently.

I would be the first to say that my experiences differ vastly to others, and I condemn Any form of murder, from wherever it comes and whilst I can accept and even understand in some instances, that people during the conflict here took up arms for a variety of reasons, I can never condone the deliberate taking of a life.

I am from a Unionist family; however, I can never remember being brought to the 12th parades as a child and only remember mum in the latter days of my gran’s life being coerced into taking her. My only experience of the parades is having to police them every year and it was not a duty I looked forward to. I have to say though, that Belfast is a totally different atmosphere (certainly within North Belfast) than other areas. I have been publicly critical of the Orange Order and of the way some loyalists conduct themselves at parades, and in fact year long.

Having said all that, in the past few days I have seen what looks like inflated misrepresentation by people who should know better. Journalists, political figures, so called political commentators - all have had their digs at the PUL community, in some cases spinning in order to try to score points against it.

We saw Sinead McLaughlin weighing in from Derry to castigate the 12th by tweeting:

Everybody leaves, everything closes down, you would struggle to get a restaurant open in Belfast on the lead up to and the couple of days after. It is a disaster for Tourism.

Can I categorically state now that Ms McLaughlin is not factual? Restaurants were busy, shops were busy, museums were open, as was St Georges Market - and all were bringing in revenue. Even in my own area, all restaurants were booming, petrol stations were open etc, so that’s Sineads’ myth busted. Then only today, Chris Donnelly decided to weigh in with the same type of argument.

A journalist wrote about their ‘trauma and scars’ as a youth and having almost to evacuate the awfulness of the 12th. If this was not one of the most sickening displays of unadulterated sectarianism and ‘poor me’ I have had the misfortune to read in quite some time, I don't really know what is. Only that I am aware of some of their past, I knew that they were well aware of North Belfast prior to having to report from the riots.

What should have been homed in on by all was the disgusting and vile effigy and (with some headers in the Loyalist community claiming this to be‘art’) of the boat with immigrants on the top of Moygashel bonfire. The silence from some Unionist politicians was deafening on this utter display of racist hate and intimidation. Quite rightly this is being investigated as a hate incident which is however, different to a hate crime. Where were the decent community of Moygashel when this disgusting display was being raised to the top of this pyre?

What should be reported on are the good works going on within communities, people who, prior to what we call ‘peace’, would have never come in contact with each other. Journalists and commentators should also challenge any attempt to stir hatred and division from wherever between the two communities, showing that it is counter-productive, juvenile and wrong. Journalists should be impartial when reporting on events rather than propel their own sensationalist agendas onto the unsuspecting public for clicks and drama.

We should all take ownership for calling out the wrongs in our own communities. All sides spouting vile nonsense only serves the purpose of dragging us back and has zero positive impact on our society.  
 
 Lesley Stock is a former PSNI and RUC Officer
currently involved in community work. 

Hypocrisy Should Be Made An Offence In This Place!

Dr John Coulter ✍ There’s been one heck of a hullaballoo about the recent sectarian chanting from some Shamrock Rovers fans at Windsor Park during the European match with Larne - but at least the game was played!

Gone are the days when the Northern Ireland male soccer squad had to play its ‘home’ games in England because of the Troubles.

Abusive chanting may have taken place last month at Windsor Park, but at least its wasn’t a Troubles-style, full-scale riot as Northern Ireland has witnessed over the decades.

This prompts the very contentious question - is it better to tolerate bursts of sectarian chanting rather than risk serious physical crowd trouble resulting in games having to be abandoned, played behind closed doors, or even transferred to other grounds outside Northern Ireland?

Of course, the woke community and society’s latte-sipping liberal elite will immediately chime in that no abusive chanting of any kind should be tolerated at any sporting events.

Soccer always seems to get a bad reputation for chanting because of the football hooliganism image it gained in the latter decades of the last century. Even today, some clubs have to endure the name of having a hard core of supporters who like to indulge in chanting and banners.

However, are we as a society missing the big picture - that sporting rivalries are part of human nature. Whilst people may point to the traditional Old Firm games over the generations between Glasgow soccer rivals, Rangers and Celtic, surely there are many, many more examples of how heated sporting events can enflame passions.

Sticking with Scottish football, what about the rivalries between Dundee and Dundee United, or Hearts and Hibernian in Edinburgh? Travel south of the Scottish border to England and north London, what about the rivalry between my beloved Gunners and Spurs. Then there’s the Manchester and Merseyside derbies.

As a life-long Gunner, I’ll openly admit to taunting Spurs fans both in person and online. And chums who are Leeds fans have not been behind a wall in reminding me as a Gunner how their team defeated my beloved Arsenal in the 1972 English FA Cup final!

When the referee’s whistle goes to signal the start of a sporting event, it can trigger raw emotions in us as human beings. I have one chum that I regard as a brilliant academic. Yet put him in a crowd at a soccer match and sound that whistle, he becomes a baying woof! Likewise, when the referee blows the whistle for the end of the match, he returns to his normal, mature, academic self!

Surely each sport has its moments when passions run wild and even overflow. I even remember in my junior reporting days hearing of a fight between players after a church indoor bowls match!

By chance, I recently had the pleasure of attending a Saturday morning match between two junior sides.

The plentiful cursing and swearing was loud, yellow and red cards flowed, some cracker goals, a sending-off, and there was even a punch-up - and that was just among the players!

And then everyone went home calm! Tempers, tantrums and sport - now there’s a potentially dangerous concoction.

Some folk like to compare the behaviour of some soccer fans to the conditions at rugby matches where the latter has integrated mixing of fans and alcohol available at grounds.

While the segregation issue may not be a problem at rugby matches, is anyone daring to suggest there has never been inappropriate chanting at such games?

Likewise, some of the most brutal contact sports are ice hockey, boxing and wrestling. In some cases, the play on the rink or in the ring can cause the crowd to be wound up to fever pitch.

I am of an age when I could remember Saturday afternoon wrestling on ITV before the football results. That sport had stars, such as Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Kung Foo, Mick McManus, and Kendo Nagasaki.

I’ve sat in the homes of born again Christians who almost climbed into their TV sets, baying for the blood of opponents during that mad hour before the calmness of the soccer results.

Indeed, I can even remember as a young Boys’ Brigade member at summer camp in Southport in 1975 attending the mid-week wrestling when Giant Haystacks was on the bill that evening.

We heaped verbal abuse on Haystacks to such a point that he came out of the ring and made towards us! Or maybe it was just part of his act? After the chanting, it was back to the main marquee for the evening spiritual epilogue for us Christian BB lads!

Returning to soccer, fans will sing inappropriate songs and chants at times about the referee, opposing teams and players.

Whilst such singing and chanting is part of the sport, indeed many sports, in terms of ‘letting off steam’, the line has to be drawn when the lyrics include racist, homophobic or transphobic remarks.

In reality, given human nature, can we ever 100 per cent rid sport of inappropriate singing or chanting? No matter what the event, there will always be that one individual who lets their emotions run amok and shouts the horrendous remark.

The bitter medicine that we may have to swallow as a society is that it is better to let some fans hurl sectarian abuse rather than them hurl bottles and bricks. Indeed, to try and clamp down on sectarian chanting may only encourage some to indulge in it as a mark of rebellion.

Are some folk too easily offended? Are we trying to create too woke a society? Does society need a law defining what constitutes inappropriate songs and chanting at sporting events?

I’ll end my column on very, very thin ice. What happens, as a society, if we become so draconian in our marshalling of sporting events in terms of singing and chanting that we take the fun out of attending those events because we have to sit in silence?

 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

Is Chanting A Price Worth Paying For Peace?

It's Still Only Thursday ✒ Let us begin this blog post by reiterating our condemnation of the recent video which emerged of a number people, who would probably describe themselves as Unionists or Loyalists, singing a vile and hateful song about Michaela McAreavey, who was murdered whilst on honeymoon in Mauritius in 2011.

8-June-2022

Those people do not represent anybody but themselves. Songs like the one they sang about Mrs McAreavey are sick and disgusting. There can be no justification for such sectarian behaviour, no “ifs or buts”. It was wrong. It was deeply offensive. It was spiteful. It was sick. Full stop.

Unfortunately, some of the reaction to it has been every bit as hateful, bigoted and sectarian. People have reacted to a hateful incident by being just as hateful themselves. It has become a vicious circle of sectarianism. A closed loop of hate, bigotry, anger, outrage, offence and distrust, leading to yet more hate, bigotry, anger, outrage, offence and distrust.

Make no mistake about it – if we truly want Northern Ireland to work, if we genuinely want our wee country to have normality and stability, then that vicious circle of sectarianism and hatred must be broken.

We cannot break that circle by reacting to hate and sectarianism with even more hate and sectarianism.
Houses of Glass

Continue reading @ It's Still Only Thursday.

Hate Begets Hate ✑ The Vicious Circle Of Sectarianism

Peter Anderson ⚽ Last week I tuned in to see the Northern Ireland Women's team in action in their first ever Euro Cup game.

It didn't go well. To be fair it wasn't expected to go well, but you live in hope. The part-timers were up against a very accomplished Norway and were 3-nil down by half-time. After the restart though, Northern Ireland got one back. The hundreds of Northern Ireland supporters in the stadium went crazy, just like they had scored the winner! It is something that is part of the GAWA experience whether at men's or women's games. We aren't very good and we don't score many goals, but we still love it anyway.

I have to say that I love the GAWA. Not having a proper quality league in Northern Ireland means that the only time we see good players playing here is in international matches. And thanks to Billy Bingham, we have a culture of hoping for the best and supporting our boys (and now girls) in their endeavours because sometimes, just sometimes, we pull off something special.

The big difference between today's GAWA and that the Billy Bingham years is the lack of sectarianism. I went to as many games as I could afford in the 80s. I loved the atmosphere in the Kop end and the singing of loyalist songs was a big part of that. By the 90s my perspective was changing as I fell out of loyalism over Drumcree. Around the same time Neil Lennon started getting stick from Northern Ireland fans for being "one of them". I'm not a big fan of Lennon but he was definitely one of ours. I was at a Northern Ireland game around that time and a fight broke out among the fans, I heard later it was over some feud among paramilitaries from the Shankill and Sandy Row. It all kicked off right in front of me and I had to flee, lest I end up getting a diggin'. That was me finished with Northern Ireland. I vowed never to return.

About 10 years later after moving to Madrid, one of my mates told me that the IFA had cracked down on sectarianism in the stadium. I was sceptical, but he insisted. I decided to watch one of the games to check it out. I went to a bar in the centre of Madrid to watch Northern Ireland against Spain in a qualifier at Windsor. The atmosphere was electric and there were no loyalist songs. To make it even better, we won 3-2. As the only Northern Ireland supporter in a bar packed with Spanish, I thoroughly enjoyed beating it up the locals.

Once I moved home, I decided to check out this "new" Windsor Park. I was amazed. Somehow the IFA had managed to stamp out the sectarianism and improve the atmosphere at the same time. Big kudos to them, it was a minor miracle. In 2016 I travelled to Lyon and Paris with the GAWA for the Euros and have never been so proud of the fans. On the ferry from Rosslare, we drank with the Republic fans in a wonderfully friendly way, no problems at all, even after the drink was in. And at Lyon's central square, tens of thousands of GAWA drank merrily and behaved themselves admirably, gaining much praise from the local police and French media. The French Euros were a resounding success for us.

The IFA have achieved what I believed would be impossible: the complete changing of our football culture and (almost) total eradication of sectarianism. Not only that, but they have increased attendance and improved the noise level, and therefore the atmosphere. So, seated stadiums and family friendly policies have ruined football's atmosphere? The GAWA will show you that it doesn't have to be that way.

Peter Anderson is a Unionist with a keen interest in sports.

All The Way With GAWA

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ The chant, The Billy Boys can be heard often at Glasgow Rangers and Linfield football matches and on Orange parades around the six counties and Britain, particularly Glasgow and Liverpool. 

Hearts supporters also sing a version of this hate filled bigoted song which is sang to the air Marching Through Georgia. A different version of this song, totally unrelated, in fact in many respects the absolute opposite, can be heard at Old Trafford Manchester as Manchester United fans sing; We are the Busby Boys in tribute to Matt Busby United’s former legendary manager. The same song as that at Old Trafford can be heard at Broadhurst Park, home of FC United of Manchester, as their supporters also claim Matt Busby’s heritage. The Glaswegian version, unlike that of Man Utd fans, is an anti-Catholic chant and Rangers FC, in fairness, tried to ban it. UEFA looked into the possibility of banning the song but concluded that as the Scottish Government had not done so (up to that point) they were powerless. So much for kicking racism out of football as this song is in itself a kind of racist chant or, at very best, ethnocentric.

It is often erroneously thought the song was originally about the Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1689-91 and the victory of King William, the Dutch Protestant, over England’s last Roman Catholic monarch, James II. This is not an unreasonable assumption but it is wrong. The song over the years took on and evolved into a dual meaning, the original and the evolved version about the events of the late seventeenth century. King William, William III, Prince of Orange, was also known as King Billy so it is perfectly understandable how the song quickly evolved into relating historically to his victory. Having briefly examined the historical connections, referring William III “King Billy’s” victory over James II in 1691, to the chant it is time to examine the songs real origins.

The Brigton “Billy Boys” were a sectarian Glasgow gang of Protestant bigots formed in 1924 by Glasgow’s own “King Billy”, William “Billy” Fullerton. Fullerton was an arch sectarian bigot, anti-Roman Catholic, who formed this gang of notorious thugs as he had allegedly been attacked by a gang of Catholic youths. Another tale is that he was an up and coming footballer until he was injured in a game and the offending player happened to be a Roman Catholic. Whatever the reason he decided to form one of the most ruthless razor gangs in Glasgow, the “Brigton Billy Boys” named after himself. Their anthem was The Billy Boys which was adopted by sections of Glasgow Rangers football supporters. 

The area the gang came from was Bridgeton Cross in Glasgow’s east end, not far from Glasgow Celtic's football ground, the traditional Catholic club in the city. Their anthem would ring out when the gang paraded through Catholic areas where they were often opposed by the native “Norman Conks” gang, a Catholic retaliation group. The Billy Boys words were/are: 

Hello, Hello, we are the Billy Boys, 
Helllo, Hello you’ll know us by our noise. 
We are up to our knees in Fenian blood surrender or you’ll die, 
we are the Brigton Billy Boys. 

Sometimes it is changed to “up to our knees in papist blood” but the meaning is still the same. Glasgow Rangers FC tried to ban the song due to its sectarian meaning, how hard they tried is open to interpretation, but have been unsuccessful. In 2011 the Scottish government (local authority in real terms) included this song on their list of chants banned from football grounds in Scotland. It was specifically banned because of its sectarian “up to our knees in Fenian blood” line. Billy Fullerton often gave public orations against Roman Catholic and Irish immigrants in the Bridgeton Cross area and was a well known street agitator of the most right-wing kind.

The “Billy Boys” often took part in Orange parades in Belfast where the song was adopted changing the words “we are the Brigton Billy Boys, to we are the “Shankill Billy Boys” and by now the song was becoming equated with the Williamite wars in Ireland, themselves part of a much larger European conflict between Catholic France and the Protestant Dutch Republic led by William Prince of Orange. How a Prince could be head of a republic is another conundrum and would be far too long to go into for this article.

The “Billy Boys” gang were often used as expendable foot soldiers by the Conservative and Unionist Party at election times. They were used to break up Labour Party, socialist, and trade union meetings by the Tory respectable thugs in parliament. Billy Fullerton was also a notorious strike breaker during the 1926 General Strike called by the TUC in support of the miners. Despite his sectarianism, much of it privately shared by some Conservatives, he was commended by the Conservative and Unionist Party for his strike breaking. Fullerton regularly scabbed, doing the work of striking workers. Fullerton later went o to join Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) and also tried to raise a branch of the US Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as they were, like him, anti-Catholic and, again like him, anti-Black racist people. This last escapade gained little traction. He would also have been known, if not friendly with, the Conservative and Unionist MP, Archibald Ramsey. Ramsey was a supporter of the Nazi ideology and opposed the war with Hitler. He was interned along with Mosley during the Second World War.

There were many ironies surrounding Billy Fullerton because despite his well-documented hatred of Roman Catholics he often did work for some people who were Catholic by denomination. One such character who Fullerton was in the employ of was Tommy Gilmour. Gilmour was a bookmaker and boxing promoter and a Roman Catholic yet, and despite his open hatred of Catholics, “King Billy” worked for him, often to erect boxing rings, a job he was renowned for being competent at. 

After the Second World War Fullerton worked for the Glasgow bantamweight boxer, Peter Keenan, another Roman Catholic and devout Celtic supporter. Keenan was the only Scottish boxer to win two Lonsdale Belts outright, 1953 and 1957, and was held aloft on Fullerton’s shoulders on the Parkhead pitch much to the delight of the Celtic fans. Had “king Billy” changed his opinions? Or was it a question of if the price is right! It must be wondered what the views of the Celtic fans would have been had they been aware who the person carrying the boxing icon on his shoulders was.

Billy Fullerton, Glasgow’s “King Billy” died in poverty in 1962 aged 57.

The Williamite war in Ireland ended with the siege of Limerick resulting in the Jacobite forces surrendering under Patrick Sarsfield in 1691. This signalled the successful conclusion, for the aspiring bourgeoisie and British rulers, the Tories and Whigs (later the Conservative and Liberal parties) of the misleadingly termed “Glorious Revolution” and the installation of King William as the King of Ireland, as well as England and Scotland. The chant The Billy Boys was made up by sectarian bigots led by Billy Fullerton, the Billy Boys, in 1924 two hundred and thirty-three years after the Siege of Limerick and the end of the war. It quickly evolved and was adopted by the Orange Order and those who celebrate the Williamite victory as to be about “King Billy”, William III and is so to this day. The Williamite war was not, and is not, the origins of this song and it initially was not about William of Orange and his victory over James II, the last Catholic King to sit on the throne of Britain and Ireland, now “Northern Ireland” as some term it. It was initially about Glasgow’s own “King Billy”, William Fullerton. 

To this day Fullerton, despite dying in poverty, is hailed as a hero among elements within the Glasgow gangland and Orange Order, Freemasons and other Protestant triumphalist groups. In truth he was a ruthless street thug, sectarian bigot, racist and anti-Semite. Whether, as some have argued, in later life he tried to change his life around would be contradicted by the large Protestant gangland attendance at his funeral. The truth about his final years will perhaps remain shrouded in mystery and could be adapted to suit the narrative of the teller.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

The Origins Of The Billy Boys ✑ Sectarian Song

Lesley Stock ✒ In all the time of the troubles we, as a community, were all hit by the inhumanity of our fellow man. We witnessed atrocities, murders and destruction based on someone’s firmly held beliefs. (The wrongs or rights of those for another time).

We all remember the horror of hearing in 2011 the heart-breaking story of a talented, beautiful young teacher having been brutally murdered in Mauritius whilst on her honeymoon. That young woman was Michaela McAreavey, daughter of Micky Harte. The fact that she was a Catholic never entered our heads. She was one of us and that was enough to grieve for her and her family. That was, until a few days ago, when details of a band at Dundonald Orange Lodge broke its foul stench onto the internet.

The first I was made aware of ‘that’ video, was by chance on Twitter, and unfortunately I was stupid enough to watch it. I sat for some time in the kitchen, wondering had I actually misheard the words of the song drunken louts were singing in a hall. Then, details of the words were published and I sat and cried, not only for the Harte/McAreavey families, but for the disgust I felt for being born a Protestant, for I knew that some would ‘cash in’ (not literally) on the premise that ‘all prods were sectarian bastards and of course, this kind of rabble are indicative of the PUL community.' And then, there it was, including the trolls who have nothing better to do all day other than abuse anything Protestant or British.

These idiots in the video, thankfully, have been now put under investigation for what I can only describe as one of the worst cases of vile, sectarian behaviour I’ve had the misfortune to witness. But, apart from wondering how the heck a human can sit down and make up such grossly offensive words to a song about another beautiful human purely based on her religion, it then struck me as the condemnation poured in from the Orange Order and others, that this has been going on in band halls and Orange Halls for years. This, hopefully would be the time whereby the Orange Order had a prime opportunity to get their house in order.

With the unprecedented revulsion from every community now being on the world's stage, I’m hoping that the Orange Order can put robust measures in place to eradicate this type of sectarianism within its ranks. Some have been calling for it for decades, and with every song, every drunken action by either bandsmen or members of the OO, it has been (quite rightly) fueling the gap between the two communities.

For the loyalists who cry ‘our culture has to be acknowledged and protected’ I say – you’ve just lost your battle if nothing changes.

The only way that you can have any credence in that argument is if both members of bands and OO members are now held to account by strict sanctions if found to be in breach of a code of conduct. And nothing short of booting out will suffice!

It came as no surprise to me that I learned that the vermin in the video hadn’t even marched! This show of drunken loutish behaviour occurred even before what was to be a celebration of the Platinum Jubilee. A family day of celebration I might add. Then again, some would say the 12th celebrations are that as well. Perhaps in the rural areas, but never in the city.

The Orange Order should now dump any band who is drunk prior to a march – even should it be one member. When bands are prohibited from marching they’ll soon get the message. However, the leaders of the Orange Order have to implement and enforce these rigidly, otherwise - like spoilt kids of parents who always back down and give them their way - the sectarianism will just carry on. Now is the time for a turn in PUL actions which give CRN communities the ammunition to call for their demise. But even whilst typing this, I reflect that some within the PUL haven’t really had their heads screwed on for years!!

If you want your culture to be respected, start having respect for yourselves! You can’t complain about eradication of culture, when that culture breeds the kind of vile sectarianism we as a nation witnessed last week. Get the act sorted:

  • have events people of all ages, classes and religion can attend without the trappings of drunks, foul imbeciles
  • have a zero alcohol tolerance for participants and ‘hangers on’, and by all means get snattered at the end of the parade/event if that’s your thing.

The organisers now have a chance to turn the tables. I only hope they take it.
 
 Lesley Stock is a former PSNI and RUC Officer
currently involved in community work. 

Maybe This Could Be The Start Of ‘Respect’

Brandon Sullivan ✒ As with my previous article on this subject, I have used the British Newspaper Archive.  Some of the links will only be accessible if you have an account with them.  I have also linked to some videos from BBC Rewind - this is a free service from the BBC, but requires the viewer to register.

Introduction

My last article received constructive criticism as I included the killing of UDA members alongside the killing of politically uninvolved Protestants under the article title The Sectarian Murder of Protestants by Catholics. This was fair comment. The inclusion of the killing of the UDA men was, I think, relevant, but it could have been introduced in a clearer way. The comments underneath that piece led to an interesting debate about the presence of sectarian intent behind the 1993 Shankill bomb.

This article looks at the Bayardo Bar bombing of August 1975. The IRA clearly considered it a target, and I have found some evidence that it was a place where arms were stored, prominent loyalist paramilitaries drank, and where violence happened. Despite this, I believe that there is simply no question that the attack was anything other than a sectarian bombing. The men shot dead in the opening stages of the attack were 30 years older than seasoned mature paramilitaries would be, and the use of a bomb ensured that the attack was indiscriminate in nature. A UVF man was killed, but a UVF man was also killed by the UVF when they shot up the Chlorane Bar on Gresham Street.

The murders of Peter and Malcolm Orr were despicable crimes. It is not surprising that no organisation has wanted to associate itself with this wanton act of prolonged cruelty. The Shankill Butchers are rightly held up as a totem of sectarian depravity. But one theme I have uncovered in the murders of Protestants by the 3rd Battalion of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade is that the victims were in the hands of their killers for a long time. I have not seen any evidence of violence being meted out to the Orr brothers, but they were in the hands of the organisation who would ultimately kill them for at least 10 hours, according to the available evidence.

The Murders of Peter and Malcolm Orr, July 1972

As reported by Martin Bell (on BBC Rewind), at around 6am on Wednesday 5th July 1972, a farmer’s wife heard shots. These were the shots that killed Peter (19) and Malcolm Orr (20), two brothers who were murdered together and left near what is now Belfast International Airport, not far from where James Carberry would be found a few years later. They were the 8th and 9th people to die in less than a week.

Peter and Malcolm’s parents, gave an extended interview (BBC 24 Hours: When Will the Killing Stop?) in which Mr Orr described how they left the family home just after 8pm, and were expected at their girlfriend’s home half an hour later. They never made it. Mr Orr described receiving a phone call from one of the son’s girlfriends asking where he was. Worried, Mr & Mrs Orr traced the route they would have taken, and raised the alarm. Mr Orr spoke with great dignity of how he spent the night awake, without a phone or access to a car, hoping for news, and walking to barracks and up to patrols, asking the police and army if they had heard anything. He described his relief at hearing that no bodies had been found on radio bulletins the next morning. However, at 11:30am, a newsflash reported that two bodies had been found, and Mr Orr said he instinctively knew that they were his sons. Mrs Orr, less than a fortnight after losing her two sons, said that she felt sorry for their killers as they would have to live with what they had done. She also said that perhaps she “had thought too much about my own little family and not enough about the world outside.” Mr Orr spoke to receiving cards from the Falls Road expressing sorrow, and letters from all sections of the community. A wreath arrived from the mother of Fusiliers John and Joseph McCaig, who were killed by the IRA, along with another soldier, Dougald McCaughey.

At the Peter and Malcolm’s funeral (BBC Scene at Six), Mr Orr walked between the two hearses, a hand on each car, wishing to walk with his sons to their final resting place. When asked how he felt about vengeance, he said he did not feel any desire for it, and developing the point, asked how anyone could feel vengeance against someone that they didn’t know.

Lost Lives stated that the murder of the Orr brothers “have always been regarded as one of the mysteries of the Troubles.” Lost Lives was published in 1999, and several sources have since placed the responsibility for the killings with the IRA in North Belfast.

Kevin Myers wrote that one of the killers of the Orr Brothers was Terence “Cleeky” Clarke.

Terence “Cleeky” Clarke

Born in Belfast, it appears that Cleeky Clarke spent some time in Coventry. He was arrested and charged with arms offences in 1971, the Belfast Telegraph giving an address in Coventry, but noting that he was from Etna Drive. Clarke escaped from the Crumlin Road prison as part of the “Crumlin Kangaroos” and was captured on the 14th August 1972. Clarke was also charged with possessing a .45 pistol and four rounds of ammunition. He refused to recognise the court and was passed packets of cigarettes from a woman in the public gallery. The resident magistrate, William Staunton ordered that the cigarettes be confiscated, and asked Clarke to treat the court with respect. Clarke replied “do you want to see the marks on my neck and body. Is that courtesy?

The day before Clarke’s capture, loyalists committed what was described as “the most sadistic murder yet” of a politically uninvolved 48 year old Catholic man, named Thomas Madden. In terms of sectarian murders, loyalists accounted for over double the number than republicans did in 1972.

Staunton was shot dead by the IRA in January 1973. One of the Orr brothers had bought 40 cigarettes shortly before he was abducted. 38 remained unsmoked and untouched when his body was found many hours later.

The Orr brothers lived on Alliance Road, a ten minute walk from Clarke’s family home on Etna Drive.

There remains no explanation for why the Orr brothers were selected for a prolonged abduction, followed by murder.

Cleeky Clarke did over 20 years in prison for a variety of IRA actions, including his part in the killings of two British Army Corporals during the funeral of IRA Kevin Brady. As is widely known, Clarke, along with many others, believed a car which drove into the way of the cortege was another loyalist attack and, with considerable personal bravery, was first on the scene to challenge the intruders, who were armed. I was unable to find the relevant footage, but I think Clarke saved a press photographer from an angry crowd which had mistaken him for another infiltrator.

The IRA were officially on ceasefire when the Orr brothers were killed. The ceasefire began on 26th of June 1972, and a condition of it was the release of Gerry Adams from Long Kesh to take part in a republican delegation to engage in talks with representatives of the UK Govt, on the 9th July. Adams commanded the IRA Belfast Brigade’s 2nd Battalion. Martin Meehan commanded the 3rd Battalion, which included Clarke’s Ardoyne unit. Meehan was captured and interned on the 9th August, just over a month after the murder of the Orr brothers. The Belfast Brigade commander was Seamus Twomey. Chief of Staff was Seán Mac Stíofáin.

On TPQ, Anthony McIntyre described how “scathing” Gerry Adams had been of the blatantly sectarian murder of the Orr brothers. It is rumoured that Adams was furious with Clarke for his role in the double murder. With the passage of time, though, the relationship had been repaired, and Clarke acted as co-ordinator of Adams’ security team.

Cleeky Clarke died of cancer in June 2000, which he was first diagnosed with in 1990, in the same Crumlin Road prison that he escaped from 19 years earlier.

He was 53 years old and was survived by his wife, two children, and also his two brothers, Gerard, and Seamus.

At his funeral, Fr Des Wilson, who conducted the funeral mass at the Holy Cross Church in Ardoyne, said:

He was a man of great courage and generosity. He had a tremendous ideal that Ireland should be shared between all the people. He brought up his two children beautifully, when he was allowed to be with them.

The Bayardo Bar bombing, 13th August, 1975


Illustration from the Birmingham Post, 1st April, 1972


On the 19th of November 1971, a 17 year old man named Hugh Alexander Harris was remanded in custody for malicious wounding. Harris, the RUC alleged, had carried out a knife attack on a Catholic boy, 15 year old Michael Patrick Conlon. The court heard it was a “partly sectarian attack” and that Conlon’s left ear was cut in two. The court also heard that Harris admitted the attack but alleged that “he started it first.”

On the 4th of February, 1974, a man was injured when a bomb exploded in a mail box opposite the Bayardo bar. An hour later, a controlled explosion was carried out on a suspect letter in a mail box in Percy Street, off the Shankill Road.

On Saturday, 8th June 1974, Ernest Lionel McCurdy (36) Shankill Parade and Charles Miller (29), of Forth River Parade, were remanded in custody on charges related to a serious assault on an unnamed victim who sustained serious face and mouth injuries. The victims injuries were so severe that he was unable to make a statement. The attack took place in the Bayardo Bar, The judge ruled that there was a danger of witnesses to the assault being intimidated.

On Thursday the 19th of June, 1974, two IRA members on a motorcycle threw a bomb at the Bayardo Bar, which blew in windows and injured five people. Local people stopped a passing army patrol and told them a black taxi driving away contained the bombers. The army opened fire, hitting the taxi, but mercifully not injuring anyway, before realising their mistake.

On the 29th November 1974, a judge acquitted the Bayardo Bar manager, George Thompson, of possession arms and ammunition. A Thompson submachine gun, and dozens of round of ammunition, were found concealed in a loft above a backroom. Thompson accepted that he knew they were there, but claimed he feared for his family’s safety if he did anything about it. The judge apparently accepted this.

On Thursday, 13th August, 1975, an IRA unit from the 3rd Battalion carried out a multi-fatality, multi-casualty gun and bomb attack on the Bayardo Bar.

The Belfast Telegraph described the murder of five people at the Bayardo as a “forgotten atrocity.” The article, published in 2011, said that following the Miami Showband massacre:

A retaliatory attack was expected from the IRA for such a blatant UVF outrage and it came almost exactly a fortnight later when a gun and bomb attack was mounted on the Bayardo Bar on the Shankill Road.
More than 50 people were injured when the old pub structure crumbled, engulfing them in bricks, wooden joist frames, plaster and roof tiles.
Samuel Gunning was chatting to his brother-in-law, William Gracey, who worked in the bar, when the IRA unit arrived at Aberdeen Street in a stolen car and unleashed a fusillade of bullets from an automatic weapon, killing both men.
The gunman's accomplice then walked into the crowded bar and left a bag with a bomb inside it. Customers ran to the toilets in the hope of finding sanctuary, but the bomb exploded, trapping many beneath the rubble - just as the McGurk's bar bomb had done. Hugh Alexander Harris (21) and Joanne McDowell were found dead beneath the rubble and, even though she was pulled alive from the debris, Linda Boyle didn't survive her rescue.

Contemporary reports of the trial of the men convicted of the bombing detail how a list of loyalist pubs was found in Seamus Clarke’s house. The court heard that Brendan “Bik” McFarlane was the driver, and that Peter “Skeet” Hamilton was the man who planted the bomb that killed three people.

Hugh Alexander Harris was a UVF member, and appears on the roll of honour. It is not difficult to imagine that the IRA in Ardoyne were aware of the weapon being found on the premises. Nevertheless, this was a blatantly indiscriminate attack.

Seamus Clarke, Brendan “Bik” McFarlane, and Peter “Skeet” Hamilton were all sentenced to five life terms for carrying out this atrocity.

At 01.20am on 2nd March, 1976, Hugh Leonard Thompson “Lenny” Murphy was detained for questioning upon leaving the rebuilt Bayardo Bar with Robert “Basher” Bates. Later that morning, Murphy attempted to murder two Catholic women. The RUC captured him attempting to retrieve the pistol used in the murder bid, and Murphy was ultimately sentenced to 12 years in prison, of which he served six. The IRA’s two bombings of the Bayardo Bar clearly did not deter the UVF from using the bar socially, or for using it as a place to plan the murder of nationalists from.

The murder of Alexander Patterson, 4th June 1976

Two members of the IRA’s 3rd Battalion sat in the back of a taxi being driven by George McDermott. Sitting in the front beside the driver was Alexander Patterson, aged 42, and there was a young woman sitting in the back. The taxi stopped at Hesketh Road (scene of the murder of UDA man Trevor Kell in 2000), whereupon Gerard O’Halloran and Gerard Clark got out and immediately opened fire on the men sitting in the front. Mr McDermott was injured, and Mr Patterson was killed almost immediately. The female passenger in the back was unharmed and apparently not targeted.

O’Halloran and Clarke were 16 when they murdered Mr Patterson and attempted to murder Mr McDermott. In October 1977, they were sentenced to be detained at her majesty’s pleasure. They were sent to HMP Maze, and the blanket protest.

Reflections

A postscript to this collection of stories is the theme of brotherhood. Peter and Malcolm Orr socialised together as friends and brothers, and died together. Cleeky Clarke, their alleged killer, had two brothers, Seamus and Gerard, who were convicted of blatantly sectarian murders. At one stage, all three Clarke brothers endured the privations of the blanket protest.

Perhaps the Bayardo Bar’s most infamous customer was Lenny Murphy. His older brother John was also a prominent UVF member, and is the viciously sectarian Mr B in Martin Dillon’s flawed, but well-read, account of the Shankill Butchers gang. In 2008, Lenny Murphy’s nephew, William Murphy, had received a life sentence for the barbaric murder of a 78 year old man named Andrew Spence. 

It appears that the bulk of sectarian murders of Protestants were committed by members of the IRA’s 3rd Battalion, and that most of them happened from 1974 - 1976. There are of course exceptions, the 2nd Battalion area saw the murder of Samuel Llewellyn two days after the Bayardo bomb attack, and on the 11th July 1976, the body of Thomas McKenzie was found at the Divis Flats, having suffered terrible stab wounds.

In my next article, I would like to look at the command structures in place in Belfast and their effect on encouraging or limiting sectarian murders carried out by republicans.

If anyone has any information, or ideas for exploration, I’d be very interested in hear from you.

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

The Sectarian Murder Of Protestants By Catholics – Part Two

Brandon Sullivan ✒ In the literature available covering the Troubles, the area of sectarian murder of Protestants by Catholics has not received much in-depth attention. 

There will be a number of reasons for this, among them the reticence of republican leaders to acknowledge, let alone rationalise, sectarian murderers within their ranks.

Incidents such as Darkley and, most notoriously, Kingsmill demonstrate Catholics deliberately murdering Protestant civilians. But away from these headline grabbing incidents were scores of murders with one or two victims which, if community of perpetrator and victim were swapped, would have appeared as standard loyalist murder gang modus operandi.

I plan to look at a few of these in depth. Simply, incidents I have managed to gather together some information about that is not included in the most widely read accounts of the troubles.

South Belfast

The murder of Gerard David Turkington – 9th July, 1972

Gerald David Turkington was one of 11 people to die on the 9th July 1972. He was abducted along with another man, named in the Belfast Telegraph as Witness A in Madrid Street and brought to the Markets area of Belfast, where they were both beaten over a period of at least three hours. Witness A also had a tumbler shoved in his face. The brutal treatment meted out to these men was no different to that endured by many nationalist victims of loyalist killers. The Turkington killing stands out for a number of reasons, not least of which is that Witness A survived and gave compelling testimony to his ordeal. But it had other effects.

Turkington was a member of the UDAs “G Company” in East Belfast, and had been on “barricade duty” in East Belfast that night. A former IRA source told me that despite his membership of a loyalist organisation, Turkington’s killing led to anger within the IRA’s Belfast Brigade, which sent a high-ranking member to visit the units involved, warning them that they would be stood down if they killed any more Protestants.

In 1988, a man named Peter Anthony Burns was charged with Turkington’s murder, the attempted murder of Witness A, and a number of other IRA offences. Burns had been living in Burnley, found God, suffered psychiatric issues, and gave himself up, saying to detectives “I shot the Prod, a UDA man.” At Burns’ trial, Witness A was called, and gave testimony as he had done during the 1973 inquest. Burns was found guilty, but the conviction was overruled in 1991 on the grounds that he had been suffering from schizophrenia when interviewed.

1974, a 24 year old man named Peter Anthony Burns was sentenced to three years for arson. He, with others, in January 1972 had burned down a primary school, for what were noted might have been “sectarian reasons.” His rationale in court was that he had “had a row” with his wife. He was arrested in London and brought back to Belfast to stand trial for this action. I could not independently verify if it was the same man charged in relation to the Turkington murder.

Capturing the UDA - 1974

Another East Belfast man, Robert Ronald Trimble, was abducted by IRA members in January 1974. Trimble had entered a pub in a nationalist area and aroused the suspicions of IRA men inside it. The IRA men interrogated Trimble, who named Sammy Tweed as an active UDA man. The IRA sought permission from the IRA leadership in Belfast to kill their captive, but this was denied to them. They tried to kill him anyway, but missed. Trimble, like Witness A two years earlier, had a lucky escape.

Trimble’s naming of Tweed is interesting. Three months later, Tweed escaped from a courtroom where he was answering arms charges. He evaded capture for more than 40 years, but was finally brought before a court in 2012. He was also interviewed, in 2015, as a suspect in the 1972 torture and murder of Patrick Benstead. The Irish News reported that Tweed was a member of a gang which included Albert “Ginger” Baker and Ned McCreery, and which tortured and murdered a number of politically uninvolved Catholics in the early 1970s. The unfortunate Mr Benstead had been tortured with a red hot poker, with the number 4 branded on his back. The Irish News posited that this was a reference to the murder being committed by the “G4” unit of the UDA’s East Belfast bridge. I am unaware about whether this is true. Martin Dillon suggested that the “4” referred to Mr Benstead being the gang’s fourth victim.

A number of DUP politicians, including Peter Robinson, wrote letters in support of leniency for Mr Tweed when he was finally brought to justice for the arms possession trail he escaped from.

North Belfast

The Third Battalion’s sectarian murderers: Killers from Ardoyne.

In 1979, Ardoyne man Brendan Patrick McClenaghan was convicted of four murders, including that of Nicholas “Nick the Brit” White, a former British soldier and community activist who lived in Ardoyne, and the hapless UDA leader Sammy Smyth who opined to a room containing IRA activists that any member of the Catholic community was a legitimate target for murder. Another victim of McClenaghan was a former member of the Parachute Regiment, John Lee, who settled in Mountainview Gardens in Belfast. The 35 year old was shot dead in after leaving the Crumlin Star Social Club, in 1977.

McClenaghan was found not guilty of the murder of James Carberry, a 20 year old Protestant, who worked at the Rumford Street Loyalist Club. According to Lost Lives, on 12th July 1975, Carberry was abducted off a street and taken to the Saunders Club, in Ardoyne. McClenaghan admitted bringing Carberry to a house in Ardoyne, tying him up, and leaving him there. Either at the Saunders Club, or the house in Ardoyne, or both, Carberry was “subjected to violence” and was bound hand and foot with carpet wire, gagged, and blindfolded, before being shot twice in the head near what is now Belfast International Airport, his body being left covered with a “bullet riddled and bloodstained sportscoat.” The drive from Ardoyne to where Carberry was murdered would have taken at least 20 minutes, and it is unclear how long the ordeal he endured prior to his death lasted. A man charged with crimes related to this murder said “He was shouting something when he was on the ground. It sounded like, ‘help me.’”

Again, the brutal nature of Carberry’s demise is similar to that experienced by many nationalist victims of loyalist killers except that, arguably, loyalist murders of this type have been covered more extensively in histories of the troubles. Carberry was a member of the West Belfast UDA, where he is remembered as Jimmy Carberry.

Charged alongside McClenaghan were two other men from Ardoyne: John Joseph Todd, and Norman Patrick Basil Hardy. Along with Brendan McClanaghan, they were all members of the IRA’s Third Battalion. Norman Hardy was acquitted of the Carberry murder but, with Todd and another man named Michael Donnelly, was convicted of a heinous double sectarian murder.

Turkington and Carberry were members of the UDA. That is not to say that either were involved in sectarian actions – there is no evidence for this, though through Carberry’s employment at the Rumford Street Loyalist Club it is likely he will have known many leading loyalist paramilitaries.

In The Times newspaper, 11th November 1974, Robert Fisk wrote that there seemed to be a rise in Catholic gunmen bent on killing Protestants out of revenge. 12 days later, and following an attack on the People’s Garage in which a 20 year old Catholic woman, Geraldine Macklin was murdered, Catholic gunmen made Fisk’s words a grim reality.

The murders of Heather Thompson and George Thomas Mclean were sheer unadulterated sectarian murder. Three Ardoyne Provos went to Edenderry filling station on the Crumlin Road with murder on their minds, and shot dead the 24 year old garage manager, Mr McLean, and garage assistant Ms Thompson.

At trial, according to the Belfast Telegraph, "Hardy said that as a result of murders of Catholics he decided to carry out a retaliation and he approached two friends and told them his intentions." The report also stated that Hardy claimed the murders “had not been done on behalf of a political organisation and were not politically motivated.” Whatever the truth of this statement, it did not stop the men serving their time on the IRA blocks and wings in prison.

Heather Thompson, like John Lee, lived on Mountainview Gardens. A two minute walk away, lived James Carberry on Moutainview Parade. The Ardoyne Provos killed three people from this tiny adjacent pair of streets from 1974 to 1977. A report from December 1976 claimed that Mountainview remained a mixed area, but that people lived in fear.

Brendan McClenaghan was the subject of a “comm” sent out HMP Maze detailing a serious beating he received at the hands of prison warders. He later joined Republican Sinn Fein, and, when asked in 1999 about the possibility of Irish republican bombs going off in England said "Nothing has changed much to suggest to me that it isn't a possibility that something like that could happen again."

Norman Hardy, also known as Basil Hardy, returned to Ardoyne, where his presence was used as an excuse for the Holy Cross attacks on Catholic schoolgirls. Hardy has also been involved in community work, part of which involved cooperating, to an extent, with the PSNI about a savage attack on a member of his local community.

The Provisionals in Ardoyne seemed to be particularly active in sectarian murder in the 1970s. Other killings committed by their members will be covered in the second part, which I am working on now.

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

The Sectarian Murder Of Protestants By Catholics – Part Ⅰ

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