The Billy Boy

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To my wonderful parents. Hugh and Nan Anderson, sadly they are no longer with us, and to my wife, Jenny, who in all the years we have been together has always stood by me come what may. Her presence has made my life complete.

This book could not have been completed without the help of a number of people from both sides of Northern Ireland’s political divide. Although many of them did not identify themselves with Billy Wright’s politics or modus operandi, they nevertheless realised that certain issues surrounding his death required clarification and investigation. Their kind advice and assistance to me over a six-year period proved invaluable. Their encouragement to keep going in the face of the numerous obstacles placed in my path by officialdom gave me the impetus to complete this book. I hope The Billy Boy serves to repay their faith in my ability to complete the course.

There were times when it would have been easy to give up and to admit defeat. In particular, over the past two years a number of unnerving incidents made me stop and ask myself if it was safe to pursue the unanswered questions surrounding the death of Billy Wright. Computers suddenly connecting up to the telephone system without being prompted to do so combined with telephone lines inoperative for protracted periods of time without apparent cause or explanation – it all happened. Twice within a three-month period in early 2002 my computer systems were stripped of their content. First, the hard disk on my main PC was completely destroyed. Second, in a more selective intrusion, only the content of my Internet system and e-mail program on my laptop was removed. Fortunately, no information relating to my work on the book was stored on either the main PC or the laptop. Since the publication of The Billy Boy in October 2002, my telephone lines have ‘gone down’ a total of four times. My computer systems have also had their content removed a further three times. On one occasion my laptop was so badly damaged that it had to be replaced.

Perhaps the most frightening incident was a phone call to my wife by someone purporting to be from the Post Office. The caller, who my wife described as having an English accent, asked for me by name and when informed that I was not present politely enquired when I would be expected home as they had a registered package for me, which they wished to deliver in person. Puzzled by the call itself and alerted by the absence of an official notification of any such package (it is normal practice for a postal official, when failing to deliver registered mail, to notify the recipient of when and where the item can be collected), my wife became concerned at the persistent nature of the enquiry as to when exactly I would return home. She contacted me and made me aware of the situation. Subsequent enquiries with the Post Office, the local sorting office, Parcel Force and other local carriers failed to uncover any registered package addressed to me. The package has yet to be delivered.

If anything, the above incidents only served to harden my resolve to finish the book. Having done so I must thank a number of people. Firstly, I must acknowledge the help and assistance given to me by Billy Wright’s family. In particular to his father David, sisters Jackie and Connie and his ex-wife, Thelma. They provided me with so much useful information and detail that I would otherwise have struggled to obtain. Throughout the five years I have known David Wright, I have come to respect his honesty and integrity. In the face of what can only be described as contemptuous treatment by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his administration, David Wright has always maintained his self-respect and refused to indulge in petty point-scoring tactics. Likewise the media profession has been less than kind to the Wright family. The contrast in the coverage of the issues of concern relating to the murder of Billy Wright have received far less media coverage than other similar controversial killings. David Wright has always treated me as a personal friend, something I value greatly.

A special thanks is due to Kelvin Boyes, whose pictures appear in this book; Gerry Morriarty, Suzanne Breen and the staff of the Belfast office of the Irish Times; John Devine and Dominic Cunningham of the Irish Independent; John Cassidy, Stephen Gordon, Donna Carton, Christian McCashin, Stephen Dempster, Ivan Little, Mervyn Jess, Merion Jones and Mick O’Kane. A special word of thanks is also due to Olivia Ward of the Toronto Star who suggested I take on this project in the first place. Thanks also to Tim Pat Coogan, who opened doors and encouraged me as I started off in this profession and who has now written the foreword to this book.

To Jeffery Donaldson MP for his help in pursuing specific issues in relation to Billy Wright’s death over the past six years. Others equally deserving of thanks are: Jane Winter of British Irish Rights Watch; Paul Mageehan, of the Committee on the Administration of Justice; Laurence McGill, consultant engineer and John MacAtamney, solicitor; Emma O’Neill who worked so hard on the legal aspects of the book; Billy Wright’s former associates who provided me with eyewitness accounts of the murder and of his life both inside and outside the Maze. To all his former associates, especially the late Mark ‘Swinger’ Fulton – thank you. To all who helped in any way with this project and who out of necessity must remain anonymous – my thanks. To my good friend ‘Junior’ (Mercer), whose encouragement when times got tough was much appreciated. Thanks also to Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, and in particular, Bill Campbell and Sharon Atherton, who put up with me for so long. A very special thanks also to Graeme Blaikie of Mainstream who worked so closely with me in the final stages of the book.

In this book, the majority of the quotes from Billy Wright are contained on an audiotape of Wright himself. The tape was given to me by a senior loyalist figure in mid-1998 and I still have the tape in my possession. Other quotes from Billy Wright have come through personal conversations I have had with him.

My only regrets are, despite numerous requests to the IRSP (Irish Republican Socialist Party), I never managed to obtain a face-to-face interview with Christopher ‘Crip’ McWilliams. Likewise, the PUP failed to respond to a request for an interview in relation to this book. My thanks also to Jackie Mahood, who gave me a detailed insight into a number of important issues concerning Billy Wright and his politics.

Most importantly of all, my heartfelt gratitude to my wife Jenny who sacrificed so much to keep me going and allowed me to fulfil my obsession. Her support has been the difference between success and failure. To all my children, especially Steven, Mark and Kathryn, who endured the upheavals of family life as I struggled to complete this project, thanks for putting up with me. A special thanks to Steven who prepared the final floppy disc copy of this manuscript for me.

In closing, I would say to my critics, of which I expect there will be plenty, I have not intended this book to be a glorification of paramilitaries, nor have I intended it to eulogise Billy Wright. Its objective has been to show what can happen to Catholics or Protestants in Northern Ireland once they have outlived their usefulness or become obstacles to political progress. Murder is murder no matter who the victim is. Questions need to be answered in relation to the murder of Billy Wright. What he was or was not is irrelevant where truth and justice are concerned. Perception must not be allowed to prevent the truth about his death being made known. I trust the majority of those who take the time to read The Billy Boy will agree that in this instance the truth has yet to be exposed and others have yet to be brought to justice.

Chris Anderson has written a most important book. There is a good deal of republican literature available, but with honourable exceptions such as Martin Dillon’s Shankill Butchers, Stone Cold or, in another genre, Frank McGuinness’s play, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching to the Somme, little in the way of exposition of the loyalist mind.

By any stretch of the imagination, Billy Wright could be regarded as the embodiment of that mindset. He is very important in the context of contemporary Irish history. One can take him as an exemplar of how loyalists viewed Catholics and/or republicans, as a case study in how the security forces collude with loyalist paramilitaries, or simply how a ruthless man reacted to the storms of Irish history which broke upon him.

And Billy was certainly ruthless. My own abiding memory of him is of the partially blanked out figure in the famous Channel 4 interview in which he defended the killing of a Catholic widow’s son. The lady in question, he said, might be innocent herself of any IRA involvement, indeed, so might her son, but the widow would certainly know the names and addresses of a number of IRA activists or sympathisers who were likely to kill loyalists, and her crime was that she did not pass these on to the authorities. That interview will be a valuable piece of the history of our times one day.

Billy Wright’s attitude to the IRA was contemptuous: ‘I met very few brave IRA men, to their own shame. Ninety per cent of their senior officers left the battlefield; they ran away, they headed south. That’s the nature of them – they want to kill, but they don’t want to be killed.’

Many nationalists would also regard the Orange terrorists as similarly cowardly. Capable only of the murder of soft targets, operating only when protected by the security forces, this great hatred little-room syndrome is one of the features, and the conflicts, of the problem.

One wonders how much Billy Wright actually knew about the IRA, about matters like discrimination and gerrymandering. The IRA to him seems to have been something which welled up in the South and attacked the North. In the North itself, his view of his activities was: ‘We were taking on the IRA and giving them a headache and I think that’s what made mid-Ulster [UVF] stand out. We fought the Provies and had no quarrel or disagreement with the Catholic community. I genuinely believe that we were very, very successful and they know that we hammered them into the ground. It was the east Tyrone Brigade which was carrying the war in the whole of the North, including Belfast. East Tyrone were decimated, the UVF wiped them out.’

That self-applied gloss on his own activities would hardly comfort the families of the innocent Catholics who died in the murder triangle. To them, the name Billy Wright is synonymous with anti-Christ. Not a man who on his own terms firmly believed ‘that the loyalist people have the right to resist and to defend themselves’.

This sense of righteousness amongst loyalists is part of the settler ethos. The natives are by definition treacherous and disloyal, resisting the forces of civilisation and enlightenment. In Portadown, the militias of the righteous ones traditionally have the right to enter homes ‘to search for arms’, wrecking furniture and, inevitably, destroying any spinning wheels found in Catholic homes.

Not only did the settlers have the right to defend their turf, they could also legitimately destroy any economic threat to ‘their’ linen industry. Out of this background of bible, and bashing, there grew a mindset which was easily manipulated by the security forces to their own ends. Men who felt it was their bounden right and duty to ‘stiff a Teague’, when given intelligence, in some cases weaponry, and a clear passage to and from their victims’ homes, had the additional merit in the eyes of the counter-insurgency experts of leaving no smoking guns behind them.

One of the important features of Chris Anderson’s book is his exposition of the manner in which these forces decided that Wright, who in the eyes of the ‘securocrats’ had progressed from smoking gun to loose cannon, should himself be assassinated.

There were a number of reasons for this. One, that Wright, whose unenviable exploits had earned him the equally unenviable title of ‘King Rat’, also suffered from the disability of having above-average intelligence, and was becoming a dangerous power in his own right. The second was that the infamous ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy demanded that the ever-growing list of Catholic victims demanded some balancing Protestant sacrificial offerings. Wright was the biggest one around.

Anderson, in a telling passage, describes how the late Harold McCusker MP was first made aware by Wright that a shoot-to-kill policy was in operation, and that it was about to be applied to Wright himself. Wright seems to have been on a hit-list from 1981–2 onwards. His death in prison was merely the carrying out of a long-ordained sentence.

Whatever he had done himself, Wright did not deserve to die as he did. He was in the care of the State, and should have been protected. Instead he appears to have been set up for the INLA hit men. One can only speculate as to what Wright’s role would have been had, as someone obviously feared he might, he benefited under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and been released from prison.

On the evidence of his career, one can hardly speculate that it would have been benign. But who knows. Though his attitude to ‘the enemies of Ulster’ was clearly malevolent, he might have evolved into a political figure with something to contribute. This is speculation. What is certain is that there are lesser Billy Wrights aplenty in the six counties. I was watching some of them marching recently during the 2002 12th celebrations in Belfast.

They were a chilling sight. The low foreheads, the tattoos, the heads shaven for forensic purposes so that they would not leave hairs at the scene of a crime or ‘operation’. But they were there, and they have to be reckoned with. And here we come to one of the most important parts of Anderson’s book. Amongst those who reckon with them are the leaders of the unionist political community.

I have always made a distinction between unionism as a political culture, which I hold to be deficient because of its ‘not-an-inch’ approach, and its failures to measure up to the challenges posed by contemporary economic trends and Catholic demography, and Protestantism.

The mass of the Protestant people of Northern Ireland are decent and peace-seeking. But they lack leadership. There is a leadership deficit in the unionist community which cannot articulate the Protestant need for security and at the same time, guide Protestants towards change.

The three principal strands of unionism are the Protestant religion, the British heritage and supremacy. I would fight for their entitlement to the first two, even though there is very little enthusiasm in the United Kingdom mainland for their attention to Ulster Unionist British heritage. But supremacy has no more place in modern, west-European political philosophy than it had in Boer South Africa.

However, as Anderson graphically describes, on one notable occasion, Billy Wright forcefully demonstrated his belief in the rightness of that supremacist attitude – the 1996 Drumcree controversy, during which in a very real sense Billy Wright made it possible for David Trimble to win the political horse-race for the then vacant unionist leadership riding on the back of King Rat.

Wright had a digger, a petrol tanker, explosives and armed men ready to smash through the Drumcree barricades if the Orangemen were not allowed to march. He made these facts known to David Trimble and Trimble in turn informed the authorities of what was planned, with the result that the Chief Constable decided to allow the procession.

It was the greatest capitulation to militant loyalism since Roy Bradford walked out of the power-sharing executive in 1974 following a visit to his ministerial office by the then UVF leader, Ken Gibson. Both episodes illustrate the power paramilitaries exert on unionist decision taking.

Wright and Drumcree also served to highlight the dilemma for loyalism posed by the fact that although he claimed to have eliminated the IRA and republicanism in east Tyrone, that the Catholics still went on inconveniently increasing in number with the result that once ‘traditional’ marching routes like Drumcree are now Catholic housing estates, containing Catholic voters who support Sinn Fein.

The loyalists cannot live with the Catholics, but as someone said of women, nor can they live without them. The truth is that we all – Catholic, Protestant, Dissenter and the Dublin 4 type who wants nothing more than a giant pair of scissors with which to cut along the dotted line on the map separating the six counties from the 26 and send all the Northerners out to sea – must live together.

David Wright, father of murdered Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) leader, Billy Wright, used those powerful and emotive words to me during a conversation that took place between us back in October 1998. A few days earlier, at Downpatrick Crown Court, three Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners – Christopher ‘Crip’ McWilliams, John Kennaway and John Glennon – had been convicted of the murder of Billy Wright. Judge Brian Kerr sentenced all three men to life imprisonment. The murder trial itself was remarkably brief. It lasted a little over a day and a half. Few new facts about the murder came to light during the trial of the three INLA prisoners. All three pleaded not guilty to the charge of murdering Billy Wright, but strangely offered no evidence in their defence.

Throughout the duration of the trial, David Wright and his two daughters listened impassively to the Crown case. Just a few feet in front of them – almost within touching distance – sat the three accused. On a number of occasions during the trial, the INLA prisoners smirked and joked with each other. It was a public display of contempt by the dissident republicans for the British justice system. It also showed the value all three men placed on human life.

However, for David Wright the trial proved to be a turning point. Indirectly it provided him with information to reinforce his belief that the ‘hidden hand’ of the State had orchestrated his son’s murder.

During the lunch recess on the first day of the murder trial David Wright was standing at the main doorway of Downpatrick Courthouse. A few moments earlier he had had a brief conversation with Mr John Creaney, Crown Counsel. Creaney, in the presence of others, had told David Wright that in his opinion the three accused would be found guilty as charged. The remark did little to instil in David Wright the belief that the full facts of his son’s killing were being presented to the Court. ‘I told Creaney I didn’t need a gown and wig to reach that conclusion. I also told him I could drive a coach and horses through the Crown case. I instinctively knew certain relevant facts were being hidden and kept out of the public domain,’ David Wright told me.

Later, as he stood with his daughters in the entrance hall of the courthouse, a number of men entered the building and brushed past David Wright. Although the men were dressed in civilian clothes, they were all prison officers from the Maze who had been called to give evidence in the murder trail. As they made their way across the hallway, one of them stopped, turned, and walked back to where the Wright family were standing. As the prison officer passed David Wright he thrust a small piece of green paper into his hand. The movement went unnoticed by police officers and court officials standing nearby.

A short time later David Wright went into a cloakroom adjoining the courtroom. Inside he opened the small piece of paper and read the following words:

This particular note was given to David Wright by prison officer Brian Thompson. Although he had provided a statement to the RUC, Thompson was not listed as a witness at the trial of the three INLA killers. Thompson believed the authorities were deliberately suppressing his evidence, which included a direct reference to the standing down of the watchtower guard and the warnings given to prison management. Concerned by this, Thompson alerted David Wright to the fact that he had made a statement regarding 27 December 1997 to his solicitors and the RUC, which had not been used.

David Wright contacted the solicitors by telephone and they confirmed the existence of the Thompson statement. However, to date the content of the statement has never been made public.

That small piece of paper was dynamite and proved to be a catalyst for David Wright. It served to convince him that the authorities were deliberately withholding the full facts about the death of his son. It was the impetus, which saw the 67-year-old grandfather embark on a campaign to have a public inquiry held into the circumstances of his son’s murder inside the Maze Prison, a jail which was allegedly the most secure prison in Western Europe.

Since then David Wright has continued to campaign for a public inquiry to be established into the death of his son. He has unearthed, disseminated and collated specific and detailed information about the murder, which he says exposes serious inaccuracies and untruths in the British government’s official version of how his son died. On two occasions he has endured the harrowing ordeal of visiting H Block 6 at the Maze Prison to view at first hand the murder scene and its surroundings. Those visits in particular only served to further convince David Wright that his son’s murder had been state orchestrated.

At the time of his death aged 37 in 1997, Billy Wright was an extremely influential loyalist figure. He was the leader of the loyalist paramilitary grouping, the LVF, which held sway in the staunchly loyalist heartland of Portadown, Co. Armagh. Wright had been involved with loyalism from the age of 15 when he joined the Young Citizens’ Volunteers (YCV) – the junior wing of Northern Ireland’s largest paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

The LVF had been formed in 1996 following an acrimonious split with the UVF over the organisation’s political strategy and its failure to support the Orange Order protest at Drumcree, a few miles outside Wright’s hometown of Portadown. Until that point in time Billy Wright had been clearly identified as the UVF commander in the mid-Ulster area. The UVF’s mid-Ulster Brigade was one of the organisations most potent and ruthless. It had a long and bloody history in the loyalist war against republican terror groups. However, by the summer of 1996 Wright and the majority of his mid-Ulster colleagues were vehemently opposed to the embryonic peace process and the strategy of fringe loyalist political parties such as the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). This stance was in direct opposition to UVF strategy at the time and led to the UVF standing down its mid-Ulster Brigade. The Belfast command of the UVF gave Wright 72 hours to leave Northern Ireland or face ‘summary justice’. Wright defied the order, split with the UVF and formed his own breakaway organisation, the LVF The move brought Wright and the LVF into direct conflict with the UVF and its leadership in Belfast.

In March 1997, Billy Wright was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on a charge of threatening to kill. Initially he was held at Maghaberry Prison, Co. Antrim before being transferred to HMP Maze in April that year. He had been in the Maze for just over eight months when his killers struck on 27 December 1997.

There is no disputing who killed Billy Wright. The three Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) inmates, Christopher ‘Crip’ McWilliams, John ‘Sonny’ Glennon and John Kennaway, have been convicted of the murder. The INLA also claimed responsibility for the shooting.

However, there are a number of very serious and disturbing factors concerning the murder of Billy Wright, which have yet to be answered satisfactorily. They include:

• The decision by prison authorities to house INLA and LVF prisoners in the same H Block within the Maze Prison.

• The decision by prison authorities to transfer two of the murderers, John Kennaway and Christopher McWilliams from Maghaberry Prison to the Maze despite both men having been involved in a hostage-taking incident during which the two men used a smuggled weapon, and despite the INLA having issued specific death threats against Billy Wright on this particular occasion.

• The failure of the prison authorities to act on warnings about the insecurity of the roof areas at H Block 6 and the possibility of attack.

• The apparent ability of the INLA inmates to gain access to weapons and wire cutters despite the progressive introduction of enhanced security measures at the Maze from May 1997.

• The fact that a breach in the wire remained undetected by prison staff.

• Prisoners were given the names of both INLA and LVF prisoners due to receive visits on 27 December 1997.

• A crucial security camera used to scan the roof area of the H Blocks, including H Block 6, had been out of action on the day of the murder.

• A prison officer, on duty in the watchtower overlooking the murder scene, had been removed from his post twice on the day of the murder, including the time of the murder.

• LVF prisoners were not allowed access to their exercise yard on the morning of the murder, but INLA prisoners had access to their yard.

• Unusually, the INLA prison visits bus was parked adjacent to the LVF wing with the LVF prison visits bus parked next to the INLA wing.

• The failure by police to question 1NLA prisoners in the Maze until four weeks after the murder.

• The failure by the Coroner to call key witness to give evidence at the inquest into Billy Wright’s murder.

These crucial factors, along with vital information revealed here for the first time, have led David Wright to conclude that his son’s murder was ‘state arranged, state sponsored and state sanctioned, in collusion with some of those in prison management’. Those suspicions are now shared by an increasing number of people and human-rights groups. It is clear that a number of serious questions surrounding the murder of the LVF leader have not been adequately answered despite a police investigation, a murder trail, an inquest and an investigation by a senior English prison official. In such circumstances only a public inquiry can fully establish the truth. The Wright family are entitled to know that truth.

Any state collusion in the murder of Billy Wright must be exposed and remedied. The failure by the authorities to do so only serves to weaken further public confidence in the administration of justice and rule of law in Northern Ireland. Without that confidence there is little hope of our tortured and troubled province ever becoming a stable society.

William Stephen Wright was born on 7 July 1960 in Wolverhampton, England. He was the only son in a family of five. His father, David, originally from Portadown, Co. Armagh, had left Northern Ireland as a young man and had been working in England for some time. The family had eventually settled in the English Midlands where Billy Wright and three of his sisters were born and spent the early years of their lives.

Billy Wright’s family were well known in Portadown, both in business and political circles. His great-grandfather, Robert Wright, had established a thriving business in the Co. Armagh market town and was heavily involved in local politics with Portadown Urban District Council. He also held the position of Royal Commissioner for 27 years. Billy Wright’s grandfather, also known as Billy, had inherited his father’s business acumen as well as the interest in local politics. In the late 1940s Wright’s grandfather was elected to the local council in Portadown. In 1947 he topped the poll in the local elections and became the first independent councillor to be elected in Northern Ireland. However, to stand as, and be elected as, an independent councillor was viewed as nothing less than an open act of defiance against the controlling Ulster Unionist Party who dominated Portadown Council at that time.

However, Billy Wright’s grandfather recognised the social and economic injustices to which Northern Ireland’s nationalist community were subjected. He objected to the widespread and common practice of discrimination against Catholics in housing and employment. He tried to fight those same injustices at a local level but encountered the full force of unionist opposition and bigotry. Portadown was and still is to this day, synonymous with Ulster unionism and the Orange Order. In the 1940s very few, if any, would have dared to take on the unionist establishment head to head. In Wright’s eyes the Ulster Unionist Party was symptomatic of the malaise affecting politics in Northern Ireland at that time. However, one man could not break the Unionist stranglehold on local government in Portadown. After Unionist councillors opposed his policy that local houses should be allocated on a points basis (at that time councillors voted on the allocation of houses) he became disillusioned with politics in Northern Ireland. Wright had supported the allocation of a house to a former soldier married to a local woman. Unionist members of the council opposed Wright en bloc and allocated the house to their own nominee. Following the meeting to allocate the house, one senior Unionist councillor turned to Wright and said: ‘You can hang your points system on that decision.’

The family’s experiences with the Ulster Unionist Party and the Orange Order left a lasting impression on them. Fifty years after his father had taken on the establishment in Portadown, David Wright said: ‘My father used to say you could buy the best Orangeman for the price of a bottle of stout on the Twelfth of July morning.’

In later life Billy Wright himself would learn that the Orange Order and unionism in general had progressed little since his grandfather’s sortie into local politics.

After spending the first four years of his life in England, Billy Wright’s family returned to Northern Ireland and Portadown in 1964. A few years later, aged seven, following the failure of his parent’s marriage, he went to live with a foster family, the McMurrays, in the village of Mountnorris close to the republican heartland of south Armagh. In later life Wright said he had been happy during his time in Mountnorris. He attended the local primary school where a Mrs Flack, a member of the Alliance Party, taught him. During his time at Mountnorris school, Billy Wright studied Irish history, learning about Irish culture and mythology from an Irish perspective. Here he was made aware of the centuries of ‘English wrongs’ towards Ireland. He later claimed it was unique for Protestant children to be taught in this manner in the 1960s. At that time, the majority of state schools would have been teaching the ‘Anglicised’ version of Irish history. According to Wright, the teaching he received from Mrs Flack helped awaken and develop his awareness of the political situation in Northern Ireland.

During his time in south Armagh, Billy Wright made many friends within the local Roman Catholic community. Although brought up in the strong Presbyterian faith, attending church twice on Sundays, he mixed freely with the local nationalist children. He later said he saw nothing wrong with that, claiming that the two cultures – unionism and nationalism – were entwined in the area. On Sunday afternoons, Wright and his friends walked the short distance to the village of Whitecross to the only shop that opened on Sunday. Although a Catholic family owned the shop, it served both sections of the community. Following a trip to the shop, Wright and his friends would watch the Gaelic football match at the local Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) ground. The sport had no political connections for Wright at that time. He described it as just a game. However, despite claims to the contrary, he never admitted to taking part in the sport himself.

At the age of 11, Billy Wright left Mountnorris primary school and transferred to the local secondary school at Markethill a few miles away. Former classmates described him as quiet but articulate and intelligent. Staff at Markethill secondary school had high hopes for the small, blond-haired lad who showed a passion for learning. However, dark forces were at work in Northern Ireland in 1971. The violence, which had erupted across Belfast and Londonderry in 1969, had spread to other areas of the province. South Armagh was one of the areas and later became synonymous with murder and mayhem, earning itself the nickname, ‘Bandit Country’.

At this point in his life, Billy Wright said he gradually became aware of the activities of the IRA. Brought up to respect law and order and the forces of the Crown, he slowly became aware of what was happening around him as the security forces began to take casualties at the hands of republican terrorists. The area in which he lived was on the periphery of Bandit Country and Wright claimed he became increasingly concerned at the lack of protection afforded to the Protestant families of the area. That concern developed over the next few years as the IRA expanded its campaign against the security forces. Aged 15, Billy Wright worked part-time on a number of the Protestant farms close to Mountnorris and Whitecross. A number of the farmers were members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve (RUCR) or the locally recruited Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), a part-time unit of the British Army. In April 1970, the UDR had been formed to replace the controversial ‘B Specials’. However, throughout its 20-year history the UDR remained an anathema to Irish nationalists and republicans. By the time it was amalgamated into the Royal Irish Regiment in 1991, nearly 200 members of the UDR had been killed in terrorist-related incidents. Of that figure a sizable number had been killed in the south Armagh area. Most of the UDR soldiers had been off duty when they were attacked. As he worked on the farms Wright noticed that when they were out in the open fields some of the men patrolled the area where they were or stood guard until the day’s work was complete. Such was the threat to the local community at that time and the background in which the adolescent Billy Wright was growing up.

At the age of 15 Billy Wright left Mountnorris and moved back to Portadown to live with his aunt. The incident, which was to lead to his departure, was trivial but an indication of events to come. Wright had painted a ‘UVF’ slogan on a wall of the local primary school. When he had been told to remove it he refused to do so. He decided to leave the area and move back to Portadown.

In 1975, Portadown had strong loyalist paramilitary connections. Both the UVF and the UDA were active in the area and had carried out a number of terrorist attacks against the Catholic community in the mid-Ulster area. The previous year, in May 1974, at the height of the loyalist strike, which brought down the power-sharing executive at Stormont, a number of bombs exploded in the centre of Dublin and Monaghan in the Irish Republic. The attacks, the worst in the history of the Troubles, killed 33 people and injured hundreds of others. At the time, responsibility for the bombings was laid at the door of the UVF’s mid-Ulster Brigade. Since then suspicions of security-force involvement in the attacks have persisted. However, in recent years the UVF has always maintained it carried out the Dublin and Monaghan attacks unaided. In July 1975, three members of the Miami Showband were killed after the minibus in which they had been travelling was stopped at a bogus army checkpoint near Newry, Co. Down.

The musicians died when the UVF’s mid-Ulster unit mounted the fake roadblock on the main Belfast to Dublin road south of Banbridge. The apparent intention of the UVF appeared to have been to put a bomb into the band’s minibus and have it explode as they travelled towards their homes in the Irish Republic. However, the device exploded prematurely as two UVF members were loading it into the vehicle. Three members of the Miami Showband – Fran O’Toole, aged 29, Brian McCoy, aged 33, and Anthony Geraghty, aged 23 – were killed in the explosion. Two UVF men – Harris Boyle from Portadown and Wesley Somerville from Dungannon – also died in the attack. Later two other members of the UVF were convicted of the Miami Showband killings and were sentenced to life imprisonment.

On 31 July 1975, the night the UVF gang launched its attack on the Miami Showband, Billy Wright was sworn into the paramilitary group’s junior wing, the Young Citizen’s Volunteers (YCV). He had just turned 15 when he took his first steps into the world of the loyalist paramilitaries in mid-Ulster.

Billy Wright had never been attracted to either the UDR or the RUCR. For him the real army of the Protestant people was the Ulster Volunteer Force. As far as he was concerned it was the only organisation which held the moral right to defend the Protestant population of Northern Ireland. Since 1966, when the UVF re-emerged as an organisation, Wright’s belief was that the UVF had been assumed into the Protestant culture in Portadown, Co. Armagh. For him the sense of Protestantism was stronger in the mid-Ulster area that in any other area of Northern Ireland. However, he never felt compelled to join the Orange Order. Portadown is interlinked with Protestant history down through the years. It is arguably Northern Ireland’s most loyal town. It is, in the eyes of local loyalists, perhaps the last bastion of traditional ‘Protestantism’ in Northern Ireland. The town displays its Protestant heritage at every opportunity. It revels in its history and Protestant culture, which is displayed wherever possible.

In 1641, almost 100 Protestant men, women and children were massacred by Manus Roe O’Cahan, a native Irish rebel, in the River Bann at Portadown during the rebellion of that year. The scene of the massacre is graphically depicted on the banner of one of Portadown District’s many Orange lodges: Johnston’s Royal Standard, LOL No 99 portrays, ‘Drowning the Protestants in River Bann, 1641’. The Orange Lodge, in a constant reminder of the treatment meted out by the Irish rebels to Portadown Protestants almost four centuries ago, carries the banner on every ‘Twelfth’ parade.

In September 1795 following the Battle of the Diamond, just a few miles from Portadown, the Orange Order was formed. Ten months later the first Orange ‘Twelfth’ Demonstration was held near the Co. Armagh town. A few months later, on 21 August 1796, Portadown LOL No 1 became the first District Orange Lodge to be formed in the history of the Orange Institution. So strong have the town’s links to the Protestant religion and the Orange Order been over the years that it has become known as the ‘Orange Citadel’. This is the town Billy Wright returned to at the impressionable age of 15.

There is little doubt that in the mid-1970s there were individuals within the loyalist paramilitary organisations in Portadown on the look-out for potential recruits such as Billy Wright. It was all too easy to indoctrinate the impressionable mind of a 15-year-old youth with tales of the UVF, the Battle of the Somme and the threat from the IRA and ‘Fenians’. The men who recruited Billy Wright and many more like him into the murky world of the paramilitary bear a heavy responsibility. Many of them are still alive and walk the streets of Portadown in relative safety. Many of those they recruited and indoctrinated are dead and buried, their lives prematurely ended by their involvement with paramilitaries. That was the price they paid whilst others grew accustomed to a lifestyle they could only have dreamed of before the advent of the Troubles.

However, Billy Wright’s fledgling career as a loyalist paramilitary was cut short in 1975 when he was arrested by the RUC and taken to Castlereagh Holding Centre. While in detention he later claimed he had been beaten by police officers and forced to sign a number of statements admitting involvement in paramilitary activities in the mid-Ulster area. He was subsequently charged with possession of firearms and received a six-year jail sentence. He was sent to HMP Maze where he was held on the Young Person’s (YP’s) wing on H Block 2. This particular wing in the Maze Prison housed both loyalist and republican prisoners, all of whom were under 21 years of age. Some time after he arrived at the Maze Prison, Billy Wright joined the Blanket Protest.

The Blanket Protest, although primarily associated with republican prisoners, also involved a number of loyalist inmates at the Maze. In September 1976, Kieran Nugent, a member of the provisional IRA, was the first prisoner convicted of a terrorist crime not to be accorded special-category status. When he entered the Maze, Nugent refused to wear prison uniform and, instead of standing naked in his cell, wrapped himself in a blanket to distinguish himself from those prisoners convicted of non-terrorist-related offences. These prisoners became known as ODC’s – ordinary decent criminals. The Blanket Protest over the restoration of special-category status would eventually lead to the 1981 hunger strikes.

However, after a period of time Wright was ordered to give up the protest when the UVF leadership decided participation was being viewed as supporting the Provisional IRA in its campaign for the return of the special-category status. After he came off the Blanket Protest, the 17-year-old Wright became a wing commander, serving the remainder of his time at the Maze on H Block 2. During his time on H Block 2, Wright lived in close proximity to republican prisoners, the majority of whom came from the south Londonderry area and Strabane. Like Wright, all the republican prisoners on the YP wings of H2 were under the age of 21. The time he spent alongside the republican prisoners had a lasting effect on Billy Wright. It was here that he formed his first opinions of the republican movement and many of the impressions he formed during that time were to remain with him for the rest of his life. Wright remarked that he had noticed how quickly loyalists would accept the truth when it was proven to be the truth, while republicans, on the other hand, he said, were more than reluctant to accept anything other than what they themselves had set out to be correct.

In one graphic account of his time on H Block 2 Wright recalled how, as he was about to be released from the Maze, he had been standing beside a republican prisoner who was on the Blanket Protest. The man had not washed for over a year and the stench of urine was overpowering. Despite the prisoner’s appalling physical appearance, Billy Wright said he experienced an atmosphere of pure history. He is quoted as having said: ‘I knew the significance of what I was witnessing. If here was a movement that would inflict on itself so much violence for its own ideology, then what would it not do to other human beings? I knew then it had to be resisted.’

He went on to say: ‘Anyone or anything that would trust republicans with the lives of over one million Protestants were fools. Republicans were prepared to do whatever it takes to have their own way.’

Billy Wright felt anger and resentment towards the British state for his imprisonment. As far as he was concerned, he was being punished for being a ‘soldier’ and defending his people. It made no difference to him that he was a ‘soldier’ of the UVF and not the State. In his eyes the State had failed in its responsibility to defend his people, the Protestants of Northern Ireland, from attack by republicans. In light of that failure he had felt compelled to take up arms on behalf of his people. Wright was never ashamed of his involvement with, or his support for, the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Billy Wright was released from the Maze Prison in October 1982 after serving three and a half years of his six-year sentence. Before he left the Maze he received a lecture from one of the Maze governors, who, Wright said, was universally hated and despised by prisoners and staff alike within the jail. The governor said he had no doubt that Wright would return to the Maze in the near future. Wright said he and the governor had left the meeting hating each other.

As Wright emerged from the steel fencing and rusting barbed wire of the Maze and into the car park area, his girlfriend and his aunt met him. In an open act of defiance against the authorities, Wright turned, looked up at a British Army observation tower on the perimeter fence of the prison and shouted, ‘Up the UVF’. As he did so, he said, his girlfriend and aunt had looked on in total disbelief.

THE BILLY BOY