Spotlight, ‘An Unholy War’, BBC Northern Ireland, 20 April 1999.
Reporter Chris Moore looks at dissident Loyalist groups the Red Hand Defenders and the Orange Volunteers, but also touching on Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright's Loyalist Volunteer Force, and links to the ‘mainstream’ paramilitaries the UDA/UFF and the UVF.
Starts with the murder of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson, who was murdered by way of a car bomb in March 1999, for which a claim of responsibility was made by a group calling itself the ‘Red Hand Defenders’. (Context: the mainstream Loyalist paramilitaries - the UDA/UFF, the UVF and the UVF-associated Red Hand Commando - had been formally on ceasefire since October 1994; the UFF ‘reinstated’ its own ceasefire in January 1998.)
Nelson began receiving threats and suffering harassment from RUC officers and Loyalists after she represented Colin Duffy, a dissident Republican acquitted of murder, and later for representing the Garvaghy Road residents. Accusations are made that particular police officers fingered Nelson to Loyalists as a ‘Provo fellow traveller’.
Fellow lawyer Patrick Fahy describes a similar situation he faced, when a Protestant client told him that when at an RUC station after being arrested he had asked for Fahy to represent him, he was told that he was “some fucking Protestant to be asking for a Provo bastard like that” and that he was “a senior member of the IRA” who gave the movement £20 of every £25 he was paid. Fahy regularly made complaints about this behaviour to the RUC but they were not taken seriously. Flanagan denies that such complaints were treated seriously, a position not helped by noting that Nelson had herself made similar complaints.
Back to the RHD - Nelson was their third victim of their “campaign of sectarian attacks on Catholics”. Other victims by this point were Catholic civilian Brian Service and (Catholic) police officer Brian O'Reilly.
Moore claims that “
Spotlight has established that the Red Hand Defenders and the Orange Volunteers are one and the same,” using the two names to “disguise their true identity and to cover the activities of some members of Loyalist groups on ceasefire, including the LVF.” He notes that the RHD/OV milieu involves the leadership of “religious zealots”, a view concurred with by Ervine, who describes them as a mix of “[Protestant] fundamentalists, drug dealers and low life, amalgamating to prosecute ‘holy war’.”
Next is a sequence on
News Letter journalist Jeanette Oldham, who was picked by the OV to attend an interview with three of its masked members around a table on which grenades were placed. One of the men, described as the ‘Brigadier’ of the Orange Volunteers, held a bible and quoted scripture. Moore notes that a pro-LVF leaflet put out during the 1998 referendum campaign by “a self-appointed pastor” carried the same passage from Deuteronomy which the ‘Brigadier’ had quoted at Oldham. He states that
Spotlight has identified a number of Protestant pastors who have aligned with the OV and RHD. According to Oldham, members of the OV pray together before operations, and that a pastor - not present at her interview - blesses the weapons. Ervine and McMichael condemn the actions of the RHD/OV, and dismiss the notion that they represent a legitimate dissenting view within Loyalism or Unionism. “It appears to be violence for violence's sake,” says McMichael.
Moore goes on to suggest that the RHD/OV as a discrete group would not have the experience or technical knowhow to have built or deployed the bomb which killed Nelson. According to him there is evidence that the device closely matched one used by the UDA to murder Glenn Greer in Bangor in 1997.
Spotlight's sources claim that this “could narrow down the identity of the bomb maker to one of two men regarded as having the expertise; one from Belfast, and one from County Down.” Those sources say the explosive used was of a commercial variety, but that “it was not Powergel, as was widely believed.”
McMichael notes that whilst the RHD/OV currently are not a major threat in themselves in terms of their level of support, their reach or their abilities, that they appear to be motivated by attempts to provoke a reaction from Republicans, and to stimulate the wider Loyalist movement into action.
Dublin trades unionist Chris Hudson fears that the voices of those who voted ‘no’ in the 1998 referendum are not being heard, and that this risks pushing more people into the orbit of the dissident Loyalist paramilitaries. He calls for ‘no’ voters not to be treated as a single homogenous group.
Moore says that the RHD/OV are highly hostile to the UVF and their political wing the PUP, considering them both part of a ‘Pan-Nationalist front’(!). Ervine points out that Loyalists “must come to terms with the fact there are 600,000 Catholics in Northern Ireland, and they're not going away”, and that there must be a political accommodation. Hudson believes that whilst the RHD/OV have no political wing, there is a political vacuum around “the ‘no’ camp” which must be resolved if they are to be pulled back from violence.
Moore claims that the Red Hand Defenders has “access to the Ulster Resistance arms dumps”. (UR was the anti-Anglo-Irish Agreement militia set up by Ian Paisley and others in the mid-1980s which set up a tripartite arms deal with the UDA and the UVF.) Moore says that whatever the status of the UR weapons, the RHD had recently acquired its own guns - Kalashnikovs and pistols - independently, delivered to Portadown.
Discussion of the issue of official collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries. Macgeean notes that the apparent lack of firm evidence of such collusion may not be overly significant, given that in the immediate aftermath of the Pat Finucane murder there was a similar dearth of direct evidence. Rogers hedges her bets. Moore points out that the Nelson murder inquiry is being led by a police officer from England, Colin Port, involving officers from at least six different mainland forces, and will be reliant on cooperation from local communities - though most of the personnel will comprise RUC officers. International interest in the case is noted with comments made by UN Special Rapporteur Param Cumaraswamy, who hoped that the RUC would not hinder or taint the murder investigation.
Interviewees include:
- Brid Rogers MLA (SDLP)
- David Ervine MLA (PUP, former UVF prisoner)
- Sir Ronnie Flanagan (RUC Chief Constable)
- Fr Kieran McPartlan (Lurgan priest)
- Paul Macgeean (Committee on the Administration of Justice)
- Patrick Fahy (solicitor)
- Jeanette Oldham (journalist, News Letter)
- Gary McMichael (UDP, son of UDA leader John McMichael)
- Colin Port (Deputy Chief Constable Norfolk Constabulary, leading Nelson murder inquiry)
- Chris Hudson (Dublin trades unionist who helped broker UVF ceasefire)
- Param Cumaraswamy (UN Special Rapporteur - library footage, 12 April 1999)
Red Hand Defenders - Wikipedia
Orange Volunteers - Wikipedia
Combined Loyalist Military Command - Wikipedia
Rosemary Nelson - Wikipedia
Frank O'Reilly, the catholic RUC officer killed by loyalists in 1998
Man killed when his car is wrecked by booby-trap bomb blast
http://www.oricaminingservices.com/...vices/packaged_explosives/packaged_explosives
Ulster Resistance - Wikipedia
Homepage – CAJ
The Rosemary Nelson Inquiry Report - GOV.UK
Cory Collusion Inquiry - Wikipedia
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