Billy Wright (loyalist)
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William Stephen "Billy" Wright (7 July 1960 – 27 December 1997) was a prominent Ulster loyalist
during the period of violent religious/political conflict known as "The Troubles
". He joined the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in 1975 and became commander of its Mid-Ulster Brigade
in the early 1990s. According to the Northern Ireland security forces, he directed up to 20 sectarian killings, although he was never convicted in connection with any killing.
Wright attracted considerable media attention at the Drumcree standoff
where he supported the Orange Order's right to march its traditional route through nationalist
areas in Portadown
. In August 1996, in the wake of an unauthorised sectarian killing, Wright, along with the Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade, was stood down by the UVF's Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership). When he was expelled from the UVF and threatened with execution if he did not leave Northern Ireland, he ignored the threats and defiantly formed the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force
(LVF). He took a significant number of his followers with him, mainly from the officially-disbanded Portadown unit. While leader of the LVF, he was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army
(INLA) inside the Maze Prison
, where he had been sent eight months before for having threatened the life of a woman.
Owing to his uncompromising stance as an upholder of Ulster loyalism
and opposition to the Northern Ireland peace process
, Wright is regarded as a cult hero and martyr figure by hardline loyalists. His image adorns a number of murals in loyalist housing estates in Portadown and elsewhere throughout Northern Ireland; many of his devotees have tattoos bearing his likeness.
William Stephen "Billy" Wright, named after his grandfather, was born in Wolverhampton
, England
on 7 July 1960 to David Wright and Sarah McKinley, Protestants from Northern Ireland
. He was the only son of five children. Before Wright's birth, his parents had moved to England when they fell out with their fellow Protestants in the community after his grandfather had challenged tradition by running as an Independent Unionist candidate and defeated the local Official Unionist MP. The Wright family had a long tradition in Northern Ireland politics; Billy's great-grandfather had once served as a Royal Commissioner. His father obtained employment in the West Midlands
industrial city of Wolverhampton. At the age of four, Wright's parents separated and his mother left the family. While his father remained in England, Wright and his four sisters returned to Northern Ireland, where he was raised in a children's home in Mountnorris
, South Armagh
(a predominantly Irish nationalist area). The young Wright mixed with Catholics and played Gaelic football
indicating an amicable relationship with the local Catholic, nationalist population. Nor were his family extreme loyalists. Wright's father, while campaigning for an inquest into his son's death, would later describe loyalist killings as "abhorrent". Two of Wright's sisters married Catholic men, one having come from County Tipperary
and whom Wright liked. Wright's sister Angela maintained that he personally got on well with Catholics, and that he was only anti-Republican and anti-IRA. Indeed for a while David Wright cohabitated
with Kathleen McVeigh, a Catholic from Garvagh
.
At the age of 15, Wright, whilst attending Markethill High School
, took a part-time job as a farm labourer where he came into contact with a number of staunchly unionist and loyalist farmers who served with the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC) Reserve or the Ulster Defence Regiment
(UDR). The sanguineous religious/political conflict known as "The Troubles
" had been raging across Northern Ireland for over five years by this stage, and many young men such as Wright would be swept up in the maelstrom of violence as the Provisional IRA
ramped up its bombing campaign and sectarian killings continued to escalate. During this time Wright's opinions moved towards loyalism and soon he got into trouble for writing the initials "UVF" on a local primary school wall. When he refused to clean off the vandalism, Wright was transferred from the area and sent to live with an aunt in Portadown
.
organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force
(UVF) as a potential recruit. On 31 July 1975, coincidentally the night following the Miami Showband killings
, Wright was sworn in as a member of the Young Citizen Volunteers
(YCV), the UVF's youth wing. The ceremony was conducted by swearing on the Bible
placed on a table beneath the Ulster banner
. He was then trained in the use of weapons and explosives. According to author and journalist Martin Dillon
, Wright had been inspired by the violent deaths of UVF men Harris Boyle
and Wesley Somerville, both of whom were blown up after planting a bomb on board The Miami Showband
's minibus. The popular Irish cabaret band had been returning from a performance in Banbridge
in the early hours of 31 July 1975 when they were ambushed at Buskhill, County Down
by armed men from the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade
at a bogus military checkpoint
. Along with Boyle and Somerville, three band members had died in the attack when the UVF gunmen had opened fire on the group following the premature explosion. Boyle and Somerville had allegedly served as "role models" for Wright. Boyle was from Portadown. However in his 2003 work The Trigger Men Dillon broke from this version of events and instead concluded that Wright had actually been sworn into the YCV earlier in 1975. Wright's sister Angela told Dillon that her brother's decision to join the UVF had in fact had nothing to do with the Miami Showband killings and Dillon then concluded that Wright had encouraged this version of events as he felt linking his won UVF membership to the activities of his heroes Boyle and Sommerville added an origin myth to his own life as a loyalist killer.
Shortly after Wright joined the organisation, he was caught in possession of illegal weapons and he was sentenced to five years in a wing of HMP Maze (Maze Prison) reserved for paramilitary youth offenders. Before his imprisonment Wright was taken to Castlereagh Holding Centre, a police interrogation centre with a notorious reputation for the brutality employed during grilling. According to Wright's sister Angela, he would later claim that he had been subjected to a number of indignities by the interrogating officers, including having a pencil shoved into his rectum. During his spell in prison Wright briefly joined the blanket protest
, although he stepped down following an order from the UVF's Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership), who feared that prisoner participation in the protest was being interpreted as a show of solidarity with the Provisional IRA.
Wright would later claim that his decision to join the YCV had been influenced by the Kingsmill massacre
of January 1976, when ten local Protestants were killed by republicans. Wright's cousin Jim Wright, and future father-in-law, Billy Corrigan and brother-in-law, Leslie Corrigan were also killed by republicans in this period. Wright later said of the Kingsmill massacre, "I was 15 when those workmen were pulled out of that bus and shot dead. I was a Protestant and I realised that they had been killed simply because they were Protestants. I left Mountnorris, came back to Portadown
and immediately joined the youth wing of the UVF. I felt it was my duty to help my people and that is what I have been doing ever since." However the massacre actually occurred several months after Wright was first sworn in.
Locals say he was also "indoctrinated" by local loyalist paramilitaries. Wright was soon arrested as a result of his UVF activities and in 1977 was sentenced to six years in prison for arms offences and hijacking a van. He served 42 months for these crimes at the Crumlin Road
and Maze prisons.
As a consequence of his religious conversion, Wright eschewed the highlife favoured by many of his loyalist contemporaries such as Johnny Adair
and Stephen McKeag
, abstaining from alcohol, tobacco and drugs. He was also well-read, and knowledgeable on a variety of subjects, including Irish history and theology
. In particular he had studied the history of Protestantism
in Europe. Wright's religious faith had contradictory influences on his life. On the one hand, he argued that his faith drove him to defend the 'Protestant people of Ulster', while at the same time, he conceded that the way in which he had taken that fight to the "enemy", the cold blooded murder of non combatant civilians, would ensure his damnation
. He spoke of this dilemma during an interview with Martin Dillon:
When asked by Dillon whether or not the conflict was a religious war, he replied: "I certainly believe religion is part of the equation. I don't think you can leave religion out of it".
Wright's sister later claimed that he had foreseen the September 11 attacks when he told her that as she was living in New York she was abiding in a "city of sin"; he then went on to predict that the World Trade Centre towers would be destroyed from the air.
" within the movement. Wright was charged with murder, attempted murder, and the possession of explosives. The cases, however ended without any major convictions after McKeown changed his mind and ceased giving evidence.
In the late-1980s, after a five year absence from the organisation, Wright resumed his UVF activities. This was in consequence of the November 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement
which angered loyalists because it gave the Irish Government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government. There were constant raids by the RUC and British Army
on his home in Portadown's Corcrain estate. Although he was arrested repeatedly on suspicion of murder and conspiracy, he never faced any charges.
Wright rapidly ascended to a position of prominence within the UVF ranks, eventually assuming leadership of the local Portadown unit. He became commander of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade in the early 1990s, having taken over from Robin "the Jackal" Jackson
, who had been the leader since July 1975. Jackson was implicated in the 1974 Dublin car bombings
, the Miami Showband killings, and a series of sectarian attacks. Founded in 1972 by its first commander Billy Hanna
, the Mid-Ulster Brigade operated mainly around the Portadown
and Lurgan
areas. It was a self-contained, semi-autonomous unit which maintained a considerable distance from the Brigade Staff in Belfast. Holding the rank of brigadier, Wright directed up to 20 sectarian killings, according to the Northern Ireland security forces, although he was never convicted in connection with any killing.
While most of Wright's unit's victims were Catholic civilians, some were republican paramilitaries. On 3 March 1991, the Mid-Ulster UVF shot and killed three Provisional IRA men, along with a middle-aged civilian, in an ambush outside Boyle's Bar
in Cappagh
, County Tyrone
. Wright was widely blamed by nationalists and much of the press for having led this shooting attack. According to Paul Larkin in his book A Very British Jihad: collusion, conspiracy and cover-up in Northern Ireland, UVF members who had been present at Cappagh gave details of the operation, claiming that they were forced to drag Wright into the car as he had allegedly become so frenzied once he had started shooting that he didn't want to stop. British journalist Peter Taylor
, however, stated in his book Loyalists that he had been told by reliable UVF sources that Wright was not involved. The RUC arrested Wright after the shootings. During the interrogation he provided the RUC with an alibi which had placed him in Dungannon
when the Cappagh attack occurred, and the RUC confirmed this. Wright himself considered Cappagh to have been a successful UVF operation. The Guardian newspaper quoted him as saying, "I would look back and say that Cappagh was probably our best".
Because of the ruthlessness and efficiency of the attacks carried out by his unit, Wright struck fear into the nationalist and republican communities across Northern Ireland. The Cappagh killings in particular shattered the morale of the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade
as they had been boldly perpetrated by the Mid-Ulster UVF in a village which was a seemingly impenetrable IRA stronghold. Wright took personal credit for this, boasting that he and his Mid-Ulster unit had "put the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA on the run" and "decimated" them. As a result he became a target for assassination by the IRA and also the Irish National Liberation Army
(INLA)'s leader Dominic McGlinchey
. The IRA tried unsuccessfully to kill Wright on five different occasions; on 23 October 1992 they planted a bomb under his car, but he detected it after a report that a man had been seen crouching suspiciously beside the vehicle in West Street, Portadown.
commander Robert John Kerr
as a form of pub bantering. According to journalist and author Paul Larkin, Kerr sat inside a pub and jokingly bestowed a nickname on each patron as they entered. When Wright walked through the door, Kerr gave him the soubriquet of "King Rat". Sunday World
journalist Martin O'Hagan
picked up on it and satirically named them the "rat pack"; he also used the name "King Rat" to identify Wright. Much to Wright's annoyance, the name became popular with the media. In response, Wright had the newspaper's offices bombed and issued a death threat to O'Hagan and anyone who worked for the paper.
It was also claimed by journalist Susan McKay in The Guardian, that Wright at this time ran a lucrative protection racket and was one of the most significant drug dealers in the Portadown area, primarily in ecstasy.
In an interview with Martin Dillon, he blamed the police raids, republican death threats and the "King Rat" nickname as factors which eventually caused the breakup of his marriage. He nevertheless maintained cordial relations with his ex-wife, Thelma, whom he described as a "good Christian".
In addition to being one of its leading military figures, Wright was initially caught up in the euphoria of the Combined Loyalist Military Command
(CLMC) ceasefire, describing 13 October 1994 (the date of the announcement by Gusty Spence
) as "the happiest day of my life". However he was also a political militant within the UVF, and soon he publicly disagreed with their leadership's calling of the ceasefire, being sceptical of the IRA's motives behind the Northern Ireland peace process
.
, stemming from an Orange Order
's protest at Drumcree Church
after their parade had been banned from marching through the predominately nationalist Catholic Garvaghy area of Portadown, returned to the headlines in 1995 with trouble expected in Wright's Portadown stronghold. Just before the July marching season Irish government representative Fergus Finlay
held a meeting with Wright in which the latter pledged his loyalty to the peace process and David Ervine
in particular, although Wright also warned Finlay that loyalist views had to be respected. Cracks began to show however as Wright felt that the UVF response to the trouble had been inordinately low-key whilst his taste for the Progressive Unionist Party
(PUP) strategy also began to wane as the party moved increasingly towards a form of socialism
, an ideology repugnant to Wright. A further problem arose when Wright, who by that time was a popular loyalist figure across Northern Ireland, travelled to the Shankill Road in Belfast in late 1995 in order to try to overturn a ban that had been placed on an Orange Order parade in that was entering a neighbouring Catholic area. Wright had hoped to bring local UVF units onto the streets of the Shankill in order to force an overturning of the ban but the Shankill commanders refused to put their units at Wright's disposal, having assured the British authorities that they would not in a series of secret negotiations. Wright returned to the Portadown in disgust, accusing the Belfast UVF of having surrendered. Nonetheless when Wright was arrested in late 1995 for intimidation he was still on good terms with the UVF, whose magazine Combat called for his release.
In January 1996, Wright once again travelled to Belfast where he dropped a verbal bombshell by announcing that the Mid-Ulster Brigade would no longer operate under the authority of the Brigade Staff. That same year Wright was ordered to attend a meeting called by the Brigade Staff at "the Eagle", their headquarters above a chip shop (bearing the same name) on the Shankill Road, to answer charges of alleged drug dealing and being a police informer. The latter accusation came about after the loss of a substantial amount of weapons from the Mid-Ulster Brigade and a large number of its members had been arrested. Wright refused to attend and continued to flout Brigade Staff authority.
Following the decision by RUC Chief Constable Hugh Annesley
to ban the Orange parade in the summer of 1996 a campaign of road blockages and general disruption broke out across Northern Ireland
as a protest organised by the Ulster Unionist Party
(UUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party
(DUP). The protests, which led to a reversal of the ban, saw no official UVF involvement although Wright, despite not being a member of the Orange Order, personally was involved and led a sizeable force of his men to Drumcree. Wright and the Mid-Ulster Brigade attracted considerable attention from the global media as they made a formidable show of strength and staunchly defended the Orangemen's right to march their traditional route. The brigade manned the barricades, and brought homemade weapons to the church; among these was a mechanical digger and a petrol tanker. There was intelligence that Wright and his unit had planned to attack the Army and police who were blocking the Orangemen's passage. Television cameras broadcast Wright directing rioters on Drumcree hill against the security forces. Wright even held a meeting with one of the central figures in the operation, UUP leader David Trimble
, and he was often seen in the company of Harold Gracey, Grand Master
of the Portadown District Orange Lodge.
Peter Taylor had been at Drumcree that July and got a close-up view of Wright. Taylor described Wright as a "charismatic leader". Clad in neat jeans, white tee shirt and wearing a single gold earring, physically he was short and muscular, with close-cropped hair. Flanked by two bodyguards, Wright's sudden appearance at Drumcree had inspired much admiration from the young boys and girls who were present. Journalist David McKittrick in the Belfast Telegraph described him as having been heavily tattoed, who walked with a "characteristic strut that radiated restrained menace"; and had a "bullet head, close-cropped with small ears and deep-set, piercing eyes". Martin Dillon, who had interviewed him in his home in Portadown, said that while he had been pleasant and charming throughout the interview, Dillon had "sensed a dark side to his character". Wright was also considered to have been a "political thinker and capable strategist".
As a result of the Belfast leadership's inaction, Wright ordered several killings on his own initiative, according to republican sources. On 9 July 1996, at the height of the Drumcree standoff, the body of Catholic taxi driver, Michael McGoldrick, was found shot dead in his cab in a remote lane at Aghagallon, near Lurgan
, a day after having picked up a fare in the town. He had been shot five times in the head. Both the UVF and the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) released statements emphatically denying involvement in McGoldrick's killing. According to PUP leader David Ervine, Wright had ordered the killing for the purpose of incriminating the UVF Brigade Staff by making it appear as if they had sanctioned it. To further Wright's ploy, a handgun had been sent down to the Mid-Ulster Brigade from the Shankill UVF arms dump, but as the weapon had no forensic history the plot backfired. Several years later, Clifford McKeown, the former supergrass, was convicted of the murder of McGoldrick. McKeown, who had claimed that the killing was a birthday present for Billy Wright, was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment for his involvement in the murder.
Wright expressed the following sentiments regarding the CLMC death threat in an interview he conducted with journalist Emer Woodful in late August 1996:
Most of the other units of the Mid-Ulster Brigade soon affirmed their loyalty to the leadership although Wright ignored an order to quit Northern Ireland by 1 September 1996, and hours before the deadline attended a Royal Black Preceptory
march and a celebration at a club in Portadown's Corcrain estate, receiving a hero's welcome at both events. Some days later at least 5,000 loyalists turned up for a rally in support of Wright, with the DUP Reverend William McCrea
making a speech critical of David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson
for what he felt was their involvement in the death threats. McCrea's sharing of the stage with a militant such as Wright cause uproar although he argued that he was merely supporting Wright's entitlement to freedom of speech. Ignoring the threat, Wright, in a public show of defiance, formed the Loyalist Volunteer Force
(LVF), taking members mainly from the officially-disbanded Portadown unit of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade. Appearing at a Drumcree protest rally, Wright made the following statement: "I will not be leaving Ulster, I will not change my mind about what I believe is happening in Ulster. But all I would like to say is that it has broken my heart to think that fellow loyalists would turn their guns on me, and I have to ask them, 'For whom are you doing it?'". Wright's hardline stance won the support of a number of leading loyalists, including UVF colleague Jackie Mahood, Frankie Curry
of the Red Hand Commandos
and Alex Kerr
of the Ulster Defence Association
(UDA). Kerr, another key figure at the Drumcree standoff, had also been ordered by the Combined Loyalist Military Command to leave Northern Ireland on pain of execution.
They were joined by other loyalists disaffected by the peace process, giving them a maximum strength estimated at around 250 activists. They operated outside the Combined Loyalist Military Command and ignored the ceasefire order of October 1994. Wright denounced the UVF leadership as "communists", for the left wing inclinations of some of their public statements about reconciliation with the nationalist community. Wright was strongly anti-communist and his belief in this was increased by a series of meetings he held with representatives of far right
Christian groups from the southern states of the USA. From these meetings, organised by Pastor Kenny McClinton
, Wright was introduced to conspiracy theories about the role of communists in bringing down Christian morality, ideas that appealed to him. In a somewhat similar vein Wright also enjoyed closed relations with a Bolton
-based cell of activists belonging to the neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18
and had members of this group staying in Portadown during the build-up to the Drumcree stand-off in 1997. The UVF in its turn, regarded Wright's setting up a rival loyalist organisation in the Mid-Ulster area as "treason". The LVF was proscribed by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Mo Mowlam
in June 1997.
The LVF published a document stating their aims and objectives: They also published a magazine entitled Leading the Way.
. On 18 March, he received a visit from DUP politician Peter Robinson
(who would be elected First Minister of Northern Ireland in 2008). During the interview Wright told Robinson that he believed an attempt on his life by republicans was imminent.
He was sent to the Maze in April 1997. He demanded and was granted an LVF section in C and D wings of H-block 6 (H6) for himself and 26 fellow inmates. INLA prisoners were housed in the A and B wings, and the Irish Republican Socialist Party
(IRSP, the political wing of the INLA) warned there would be trouble if the prisoners were not kept segregated. In August 1997, LVF prisoners, led by Wright, rioted over their visiting accommodation in the Maze.
Wright continued to direct LVF operations from the prison, although his deputy Mark "Swinger" Fulton
served as its nominal leader. LVF membership increased during Wright's imprisonment; by October 1997, membership in the organisation was between 150 and 200, many of them former UVF members disillusioned with the ceasefire. It was afterwards discovered that he had kept an irregular diary whilst in prison. On some of the pages he had made subtle threats to Catholic human rights solicitor Rosemary Nelson
(killed in 1999 by a Red Hand Defenders
car bomb) and her client, IRA prisoner Colin Duffy
, charged with killing two RUC constables. The charges against him were later dropped. Wright's appeal was scheduled to be heard in February 1998.
The decision to kill Wright inside the Maze was made in mid-December 1997 at an INLA Ard Chomhairle which was attended by the INLA Chief of Staff. The assassination was to be carried out in retaliation for the LVF killing of GAA
member Gerry Devlin which had taken place shortly before. On 16 December a senior INLA member who had been at the Ard Chomhairle went to the Maze to pay a visit to the Officer Commanding
of the INLA at H Block 6.
On the morning of Saturday 27 December 1997, just before 10.00 a.m., Wright was assassinated by INLA prisoners inside the Maze Prison. The operation was undertaken by three INLA volunteers – Christopher "Crip" McWilliams, John "Sonny" Glennon and John Kennaway – armed with two smuggled pistols, an PA63
semi-automatic and a .22 Derringer. He was shot in the forecourt outside H Block 6 as he sat in the back of a prison van (alongside another LVF prisoner, Norman Green and one prison officer acting as escort) on his way to the visitor's complex where he had an arranged visit with his girlfriend, Eleanor Reilly, and their son Stephen. John Glennon had been pretending to paint a mural in the sterile area between A and B wings which placed him in a position to see and hear what happened in the forecourt. Upon hearing the announcement over the prison Tannoy
system that Wright and Green had been called for their respective visits, Glennon gave a pre-arranged signal to his two waiting comrades. They moved into position at the A wing turnstile; Glennon ran into the canteen and he mounted a table situated beneath a window which gave him a clearer view of the block forecourt. When he saw Wright entering the van at 9.59 a.m. he gave a second pre-arranged signal, which was: "Go, go, go".
The three INLA men rushed through the turnstile leading to A wing's exercise yard. Peeling away a pre-cut section of wire fence, they climbed onto the roof of A wing and dropped into the forecourt where the Renault van containing Wright had just started to move forward towards the exit gates. The van was ordered to stop by the armed INLA men; however, the driver, John Park, thinking that he and the other officer were about to be taken hostage, intended to accelerate through the partially opened gates in a bid to escape. He was prevented from doing so when the gates were automatically shut. The other prison officers stationed at the forecourt gates had spotted the men on the roof, and assuming there was a prison escape in progress, activated the alarm system. The van was ten feet away from the gates when it came to a halt. Neither of the two prison officers inside the van was armed.
While an unarmed Kennaway physically restrained the driver, Glennon, armed with the Derringer, gave cover beside the van as McWilliams opened the side door on the left at the rear, and shouted the words: "Armed INLA volunteers". With a smile on his face, he then took up a firing stance and aimed his PA63 pistol inside the van at Wright, who was sitting sideways facing the side door beside Norman Green, with Prison Officer Stephen Sterritt seated behind the driver. Wright had been in the middle of a conversation, discussing the "cost of Christmas", with both men. Sterritt and Green instantly dropped to the floor to protect themselves; however, Wright stood up and kicked out at his assailant who began firing at point blank range. McWilliams climbed into the van and continued shooting at Wright, hitting him a total of seven times. Wright, despite being shot, continued to defend himself by moving forward, kicking and lashing out at McWilliams. Wright was fatally wounded by the last shot, the bullet having lacerated his aorta
. He slumped against the legs of Green. After screaming "they shot Billy", Green made an attempt to resuscitate Wright, but to no avail; he was brought to the prison hospital, where a doctor pronounced him dead at 10.53 a.m. None of the others inside the van were hurt. Immediately following the shooting attack, the three gunmen returned the way they had come and surrendered to prison guards. They handed over a statement:
. Four civilians were wounded and one, a former Provisional IRA
member, was killed. Police believed that the disco itself was the intended target.
Wright's paramilitary funeral took place in Portadown on 30 December. The LVF ordered all shops in the town to shut as a mark of respect; bus and taxi services were also suspended, and the Union Jack flew at half-mast. The media was kept at a distance. After a private service inside Wright's Brownstown home, the funeral cortège, led by a lone bagpiper
, proceeded to Seagoe Cemetery, two miles away. Thousands of mourners were in attendance as the hearse containing Wright's coffin moved through the crowded streets, flanked by a guard of honour and preceded by women bearing floral wreaths. The Reverend John Gray of the Free Presbyterian Church
officiated at the graveside service. Wright's friend, the former UDA member Pastor Kenny McClinton
, also delivered an oration in which he eulogised Wright as having been "complicated, articulate, and sophisticated". LVF gunmen fired a volley of shots over his flag-draped coffin.
Wright's close friend and deputy, Mark "Swinger" Fulton assumed control of the LVF leadership after Wright's death.
The LVF became more closely tied to the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) organisation that was led by Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair
.
The LVF committed a series of attacks on Catholic civilians, which it termed a "measured military response" in response to Billy Wright's death. Martin O'Hagan, the Sunday World journalist whom Wright especially disliked, was killed in September 2001 by the Red Hand Defenders
, a cover-name used by the UDA and LVF.
On 20 October 1998, Christopher McWilliams, John Glennon, and John Kennaway were convicted of murdering Billy Wright, possession of a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life. The three men had pleaded not guilty. Although they were sentenced to life imprisonment, they only served two years of their sentence due to the early release provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.
newspaper. Wright's father, David had campaigned for a public inquiry into his son's murder and had appealed for help to the Northern Ireland, British and Irish authorities for help in the matter. The murder was investigated by the Cory Collusion Inquiry
and it was recommended that the UK Government launch an inquiry into the circumstances of Wright's death. The Cory Inquiry concluded that "whatever criticism might properly be made regarding the reprehensible life and crimes of Billy Wright, it is apparent that he met his death bravely", and described his killing as "brutal and cowardly".
June 2005 saw the Billy Wright inquiry open, chaired by Lord MacLean
. Also sitting on the inquiry were academic professor Andrew Coyle
from the University of London
and the former Bishop of Hereford
, the Reverend John Oliver. On 14 September 2010, the findings of the panel were released publicly at Stormont House in Belfast and found that there was no evidence of collusion between the authorities and the INLA. The inquiry, which had cost £30 million, did find a number of failings within the security of the prison. There was the main question of how the weapons were successfully smuggled inside the prison to the killers. There was also the issue regarding the decision to house the INLA and LVF in H Block 6, when it was known that they were deadly rivals, neither of which was on ceasefire, and the INLA had vowed to kill Wright given the opportunity. McWilliams and Kennaway had been transferred to the Maze from Maghaberry the previous May. One month before their transfer, when Wright had still been at Maghaberry, they had organised an unsuccessful hostage-taking incident at the prison. This was meant to end in the assassination of Wright; he was subsequently moved to the Maze. Other questions were raised after the discovery that on the morning of the killing, Prison Officer Raymond Hill was stood down from his post in the watchtower overlooking A and B wings of H-Block 6 where the INLA prisoners were housed. The CCTV camera placed in the area was also found to have been nonfunctioning for several days prior to the shooting. The visitors lists for 27 December 1997 had been circulated in both the LVF and INLA wings the day before thereby giving Wright's assassins time to prepare for the killing as the list clearly stated that Wright was scheduled to receive a visit on 27 December. The LVF prison van had been parked outside the INLA wing that morning instead of following the normal procedure which was to park outside the LVF wing. And the gates leading from the forecourt were automatically locked as soon as the killers were spotted on the roof. This had prevented the van from driving off and thus effectively trapped Wright in the rear.
In an interview with The Guardian before his own death, one of the killers, John Kennaway said the security inside the Maze was "a joke". He claimed the weapons had been smuggled to McWilliams and Glennon inside nappies. He added that as soon as the "screws" [prison officers] had seen the INLA men on A wing's roof, they assumed the men were staging an escape and sounded the alarm system. The gates were automatically locked-down therefore preventing the van from leaving. Kennaway suggested that had the prison officers not seen them and quickly sounded the alarm, the van could have driven away in time and Wright might have escaped with his life.
Before he was gunned down by the Red Hand Defenders in 2001, journalist Martin O'Hagan revealed to fellow journalist Paul Larkin that a high-ranking RUC officer had told him that Wright had received operational assistance from RUC Special Branch
along with the code name "Bertie". Years earlier, the UVF had conducted its own internal investigation into allegations that Wright was a police informer. UVF sources later spoke to journalists suggesting that Wright had worked for RUC Special Branch, who in turn provided him with alibis, protection, as well as information on suspected republicans. According to an IRA Intelligence officer, Wright had been specifically selected and trained by the Northern Ireland security forces to take over the role as key player in Mid-Ulster from former brigadier and alleged Special Branch agent Robin Jackson. Larkin had made a film in 1996 for BBC's Spotlight current affairs programme about the activities of Wright and his unit entitled Rat Pack. It was broadcast on 8 October of that year.
Shortly before the findings of the inquiry into Wright's death were released in September 2010, Ulster Television News broadcast a report regarding the question of collusion. South Belfast UDA brigadier Jackie McDonald
explained to Ulster Television's Live Tonight the UVF's mindset at the time Wright was threatened with execution by the CLMC in 1996, "It was obvious he [Wright] was doing his own thing and going his own way. I think he had become such an embarrassment to the UVF that they had to send word to him to get out of the country - that's when the LVF was formed, that's when the breakaway group appeared." When asked by the interviewer whether or not the CLMC had actually been prepared to carry out the death threat against Wright McDonald replied, "You have to be prepared to kill people if you tell them to do something and they don't do it - something of that magnitude. If you say they had to go and they don't go - the defiance alone, it doesn't leave many alternatives". McDonald expressed his personal belief that there had probably been no state collusion in Wright's death. Equally dismissive of the allegations of collusion, Willie Gallagher of the Republican Socialist Movement offered the suggestion that had the INLA not killed Wright, he would have been released from prison shortly afterwards. Once free, Wright would have continued to conduct and orchestrate his murder campaign against nationalists.
's Shamrock Park
home ground, was removed in 2006 with a mural of George Best
painted in its stead. His picture appears on tee shirts, fridge magnets, key rings, and plates. He is regarded as a martyr and hero by hardline loyalists; many of whom have tattoos bearing his likeness. It is considered to be a status symbol in Portadown for loyalist men and women to display a Billy Wright tattoo on one's arm, leg, or back. Some of his more ardent devotees even have them on the private parts of their anatomy. His successor Mark "Swinger" Fulton had one tattoed over his heart.
Immediately after his death, his grave became a shrine. One teenaged girl in North Belfast set up a shrine to Wright in her bedroom complete with his photographs. She explained to a journalist, "I'm not interested in pop stars. Billy was a real Loyalist hero and I like to go to sleep at night looking at him". Gunmen at a paramilitary display in Portadown in 2000 told journalists: "He [Wright] did what he had to do to ensure that our faith and culture were kept intact." Wright was also taken up as an inspiration by Johnny Adair and the UDA West Belfast Brigade
. In the immediate aftermath of Wright's killing Adair told his main gunmen Stephen McKeag and Gary Smyth that they had a free hand to "avenge" Wright's death, with McKeag almost immediately launching a machine gun attack on a nationalist bar despite the UDA being officially on ceasefire. The West Belfast Brigade would later reference Wright as a true loyalist who had been a victim of the UVF in a leaflet circulated to foment a feud between the UDA and the UVF. Despite this the two men had had a fractured relationship during Wright's life and according to Adair's sometime girlfriend Jackie "Legs" Robinson, Adair had told her that Wright was a "bastard" when the UVF leader attended a party at Robinson's house. Robinson wrote the incident off as jealousy on Adair's part as Wright was already well established as a leading figure in loyalism by that stage whilst Adair was still making his name.
The Belfast Telegraph newspaper summed up Billy Wright as having been "one of the most fear-inspiring loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland since the Shankill Butchers in the 1970s". Peter Taylor offered an alternative insight into the reputation of Billy Wright by suggesting that popular myth had laid many killings and atrocities at Wright's door when there was actually little evidence to back them up.
Ulster loyalism
Ulster loyalism is an ideology that is opposed to a united Ireland. It can mean either support for upholding Northern Ireland's status as a constituent part of the United Kingdom , support for Northern Ireland independence, or support for loyalist paramilitaries...
during the period of violent religious/political conflict known as "The Troubles
The Troubles
The Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast...
". He joined the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in 1975 and became commander of its Mid-Ulster Brigade
UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade
UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade formed part of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force in Northern Ireland. The brigade was established in Lurgan, County Armagh in 1972 by its first commander Billy Hanna. The unit operated mainly around the Lurgan and Portadown areas. Subsequent leaders of the...
in the early 1990s. According to the Northern Ireland security forces, he directed up to 20 sectarian killings, although he was never convicted in connection with any killing.
Wright attracted considerable media attention at the Drumcree standoff
Drumcree conflict
The Drumcree conflict or Drumcree standoff is an ongoing dispute over a yearly parade in the town of Portadown, Northern Ireland. The dispute is between the Orange Order and local residents. The residents are currently represented by the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition ; before 1995 they were...
where he supported the Orange Order's right to march its traditional route through nationalist
Irish nationalism
Irish nationalism manifests itself in political and social movements and in sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and as a sense of pride in Ireland and in the Irish people...
areas in Portadown
Portadown
Portadown is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about 23 miles south-west of Belfast...
. In August 1996, in the wake of an unauthorised sectarian killing, Wright, along with the Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade, was stood down by the UVF's Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership). When he was expelled from the UVF and threatened with execution if he did not leave Northern Ireland, he ignored the threats and defiantly formed the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force
Loyalist Volunteer Force
The Loyalist Volunteer Force is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed by Billy Wright in 1996 when he and the Portadown unit of the Ulster Volunteer Force's Mid-Ulster Brigade was stood down by the UVF leadership. He had been the commander of the Mid-Ulster Brigade. The...
(LVF). He took a significant number of his followers with him, mainly from the officially-disbanded Portadown unit. While leader of the LVF, he was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army
Irish National Liberation Army
The Irish National Liberation Army or INLA is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group that was formed on 8 December 1974. Its goal is to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist united Ireland....
(INLA) inside the Maze Prison
Maze (HM Prison)
Her Majesty's Prison Maze was a prison in Northern Ireland that was used to house paramilitary prisoners during the Troubles from mid-1971 to mid-2000....
, where he had been sent eight months before for having threatened the life of a woman.
Owing to his uncompromising stance as an upholder of Ulster loyalism
Ulster loyalism
Ulster loyalism is an ideology that is opposed to a united Ireland. It can mean either support for upholding Northern Ireland's status as a constituent part of the United Kingdom , support for Northern Ireland independence, or support for loyalist paramilitaries...
and opposition to the Northern Ireland peace process
Northern Ireland peace process
The peace process, when discussing the history of Northern Ireland, is often considered to cover the events leading up to the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army ceasefire, the end of most of the violence of the Troubles, the Belfast Agreement, and subsequent political developments.-Towards a...
, Wright is regarded as a cult hero and martyr figure by hardline loyalists. His image adorns a number of murals in loyalist housing estates in Portadown and elsewhere throughout Northern Ireland; many of his devotees have tattoos bearing his likeness.
Early life
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
on 7 July 1960 to David Wright and Sarah McKinley, Protestants from Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. He was the only son of five children. Before Wright's birth, his parents had moved to England when they fell out with their fellow Protestants in the community after his grandfather had challenged tradition by running as an Independent Unionist candidate and defeated the local Official Unionist MP. The Wright family had a long tradition in Northern Ireland politics; Billy's great-grandfather had once served as a Royal Commissioner. His father obtained employment in the West Midlands
West Midlands (county)
The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a 2009 estimated population of 2,638,700. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The...
industrial city of Wolverhampton. At the age of four, Wright's parents separated and his mother left the family. While his father remained in England, Wright and his four sisters returned to Northern Ireland, where he was raised in a children's home in Mountnorris
Mountnorris
Mountnorris is a small village and townland in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. It lies about six miles south of Markethill. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 165 people. It is within the Armagh City and District Council area.- History :...
, South Armagh
South Armagh
South Armagh can refer to:*The southern part of County Armagh*South Armagh *South Armagh...
(a predominantly Irish nationalist area). The young Wright mixed with Catholics and played Gaelic football
Gaelic football
Gaelic football , commonly referred to as "football" or "Gaelic", or "Gah" is a form of football played mainly in Ireland...
indicating an amicable relationship with the local Catholic, nationalist population. Nor were his family extreme loyalists. Wright's father, while campaigning for an inquest into his son's death, would later describe loyalist killings as "abhorrent". Two of Wright's sisters married Catholic men, one having come from County Tipperary
County Tipperary
County Tipperary is a county of Ireland. It is located in the province of Munster and is named after the town of Tipperary. The area of the county does not have a single local authority; local government is split between two authorities. In North Tipperary, part of the Mid-West Region, local...
and whom Wright liked. Wright's sister Angela maintained that he personally got on well with Catholics, and that he was only anti-Republican and anti-IRA. Indeed for a while David Wright cohabitated
Cohabitation
Cohabitation usually refers to an arrangement whereby two people decide to live together on a long-term or permanent basis in an emotionally and/or sexually intimate relationship. The term is most frequently applied to couples who are not married...
with Kathleen McVeigh, a Catholic from Garvagh
Garvagh
Garvagh is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It is on the banks of the Agivey River, south of Coleraine on the A29 route. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 1,288.-History:...
.
At the age of 15, Wright, whilst attending Markethill High School
Markethill High School
Markethill High School is a secondary school located in Markethill, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The school caters for 11-16 year olds and currently has about 480 pupils. It is within the Southern Education and Library Board area.-Principals:...
, took a part-time job as a farm labourer where he came into contact with a number of staunchly unionist and loyalist farmers who served with the Royal Ulster Constabulary
Royal Ulster Constabulary
The Royal Ulster Constabulary was the name of the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2000. Following the awarding of the George Cross in 2000, it was subsequently known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC. It was founded on 1 June 1922 out of the Royal Irish Constabulary...
(RUC) Reserve or the Ulster Defence Regiment
Ulster Defence Regiment
The Ulster Defence Regiment was an infantry regiment of the British Army which became operational in 1970, formed on similar lines to other British reserve forces but with the operational role of defence of life or property in Northern Ireland against armed attack or sabotage...
(UDR). The sanguineous religious/political conflict known as "The Troubles
The Troubles
The Troubles was a period of ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland which spilled over at various times into England, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Europe. The duration of the Troubles is conventionally dated from the late 1960s and considered by many to have ended with the Belfast...
" had been raging across Northern Ireland for over five years by this stage, and many young men such as Wright would be swept up in the maelstrom of violence as the Provisional IRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
ramped up its bombing campaign and sectarian killings continued to escalate. During this time Wright's opinions moved towards loyalism and soon he got into trouble for writing the initials "UVF" on a local primary school wall. When he refused to clean off the vandalism, Wright was transferred from the area and sent to live with an aunt in Portadown
Portadown
Portadown is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about 23 miles south-west of Belfast...
.
Early years in the Ulster Volunteer Force
In the more strongly loyalist environment of Portadown, nicknamed the "Orange Citadel", Wright was, along with other working-class Protestant teenagers in the area, targeted by the loyalist paramilitaryParamilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force
Ulster Volunteer Force
The Ulster Volunteer Force is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in late 1965 or early 1966 and named after the Ulster Volunteer Force of 1913. The group's volunteers undertook an armed campaign of almost thirty years during The Troubles...
(UVF) as a potential recruit. On 31 July 1975, coincidentally the night following the Miami Showband killings
Miami Showband killings
The Miami Showband killings was a paramilitary attack at Buskhill, County Down, Northern Ireland, in the early morning of 31 July 1975. It left five people dead at the hands of Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen, including three members of The Miami Showband...
, Wright was sworn in as a member of the Young Citizen Volunteers
Young Citizen Volunteers
The Young Citizen Volunteers of Northern Ireland had its first meeting just prior to the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant , opposing Home Rule, in Belfast City Hall on September 10, 1912...
(YCV), the UVF's youth wing. The ceremony was conducted by swearing on the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
placed on a table beneath the Ulster banner
Ulster Banner
The Ulster Banner, more commonly known as the Ulster flag, Northern Ireland flag or the Red Hand of Ulster flag, was the flag of the Government of Northern Ireland between 1953 and 1972. Since that government was abolished in 1972, the flag has become a symbol of Ulster loyalism and is not...
. He was then trained in the use of weapons and explosives. According to author and journalist Martin Dillon
Martin Dillon
Martin Dillon is an author and journalist from Northern Ireland. He worked for eighteen years at the BBC and has written a number of plays and novels, but he is best known for his non-fiction books about the Troubles....
, Wright had been inspired by the violent deaths of UVF men Harris Boyle
Harris Boyle
Harris Boyle was a Ulster Defence Regiment soldier and a high-ranking member of the Ulster Volunteer Force , a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary organisation. Boyle was implicated in the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings which left a total of 33 people dead...
and Wesley Somerville, both of whom were blown up after planting a bomb on board The Miami Showband
The Miami Showband
The Miami Showband were one of the most successful and popular showbands in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s. Led at first by singer Dickie Rock, and later by Fran O'Toole, they had seven number one records on the Irish singles chart...
's minibus. The popular Irish cabaret band had been returning from a performance in Banbridge
Banbridge
Banbridge is a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies on the River Bann and the A1 road. It was named after a bridge built over the Bann in 1712. The town grew as a coaching stop on the road from Belfast to Dublin and thrived from Irish linen manufacturing...
in the early hours of 31 July 1975 when they were ambushed at Buskhill, County Down
County Down
-Cities:*Belfast *Newry -Large towns:*Dundonald*Newtownards*Bangor-Medium towns:...
by armed men from the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade
UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade
UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade formed part of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force in Northern Ireland. The brigade was established in Lurgan, County Armagh in 1972 by its first commander Billy Hanna. The unit operated mainly around the Lurgan and Portadown areas. Subsequent leaders of the...
at a bogus military checkpoint
Checkpoint
- Places :* Border checkpoint, a place on the land border between two states where travellers and/or goods are inspected** Checkpoint Charlie, the best known crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War...
. Along with Boyle and Somerville, three band members had died in the attack when the UVF gunmen had opened fire on the group following the premature explosion. Boyle and Somerville had allegedly served as "role models" for Wright. Boyle was from Portadown. However in his 2003 work The Trigger Men Dillon broke from this version of events and instead concluded that Wright had actually been sworn into the YCV earlier in 1975. Wright's sister Angela told Dillon that her brother's decision to join the UVF had in fact had nothing to do with the Miami Showband killings and Dillon then concluded that Wright had encouraged this version of events as he felt linking his won UVF membership to the activities of his heroes Boyle and Sommerville added an origin myth to his own life as a loyalist killer.
Shortly after Wright joined the organisation, he was caught in possession of illegal weapons and he was sentenced to five years in a wing of HMP Maze (Maze Prison) reserved for paramilitary youth offenders. Before his imprisonment Wright was taken to Castlereagh Holding Centre, a police interrogation centre with a notorious reputation for the brutality employed during grilling. According to Wright's sister Angela, he would later claim that he had been subjected to a number of indignities by the interrogating officers, including having a pencil shoved into his rectum. During his spell in prison Wright briefly joined the blanket protest
Blanket protest
The blanket protest was part of a five year protest during the Troubles by Provisional Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners held in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. The republican prisoners' status as political prisoners, known as Special Category Status, had...
, although he stepped down following an order from the UVF's Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership), who feared that prisoner participation in the protest was being interpreted as a show of solidarity with the Provisional IRA.
Wright would later claim that his decision to join the YCV had been influenced by the Kingsmill massacre
Kingsmill massacre
The Kingsmill massacre took place on 5 January 1976 near the village of Kingsmill in south County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Ten Protestant men were taken from a minibus and shot dead by a group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force...
of January 1976, when ten local Protestants were killed by republicans. Wright's cousin Jim Wright, and future father-in-law, Billy Corrigan and brother-in-law, Leslie Corrigan were also killed by republicans in this period. Wright later said of the Kingsmill massacre, "I was 15 when those workmen were pulled out of that bus and shot dead. I was a Protestant and I realised that they had been killed simply because they were Protestants. I left Mountnorris, came back to Portadown
Portadown
Portadown is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about 23 miles south-west of Belfast...
and immediately joined the youth wing of the UVF. I felt it was my duty to help my people and that is what I have been doing ever since." However the massacre actually occurred several months after Wright was first sworn in.
Locals say he was also "indoctrinated" by local loyalist paramilitaries. Wright was soon arrested as a result of his UVF activities and in 1977 was sentenced to six years in prison for arms offences and hijacking a van. He served 42 months for these crimes at the Crumlin Road
Crumlin Road Gaol
HMP Belfast, also known as Crumlin Road Gaol, is a former prison situated on the Crumlin Road in north Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is the only Victorian era prison remaining in Northern Ireland and has been derelict since 1996...
and Maze prisons.
Born again Christian
Wright was released from prison in 1980 and he went to Scotland where he lived for a brief period. He had been there only six weeks when he was taken in for questioning by the Anti-Terrorist Squad based at New Scotland Yard. Although he was not charged with any offences Wright was nonetheless handed an exclusion order banning him from mainland Britain. He soon returned to Portadown and initially tried to avoid active loyalism. He obtained a job as an insurance salesman and married his girlfriend Thelma Corrigan, by whom he had two daughters, Sara and Ashleen. He took in his sister's son to be raised alongside his own children when she went to live in the United States. He was regarded as a good father. In 1983 he became a born again Christian and began working as a gospel peacher in County Armagh. He had studied Christianity whilst in prison to pass the time.As a consequence of his religious conversion, Wright eschewed the highlife favoured by many of his loyalist contemporaries such as Johnny Adair
Johnny Adair
Jonathan Adair, better known as Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair is the former leader of the "C Company", 2nd Battalion Shankill Road, West Belfast Brigade of the "Ulster Freedom Fighters" . This was a cover name used by the Ulster Defence Association , an Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation...
and Stephen McKeag
Stephen McKeag
Stephen McKeag , known as Topgun or Top Gun, was a Northern Irish loyalist who became one of the most notorious figures within the Ulster Defence Association's 'C' Company in the 1990s...
, abstaining from alcohol, tobacco and drugs. He was also well-read, and knowledgeable on a variety of subjects, including Irish history and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
. In particular he had studied the history of Protestantism
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
in Europe. Wright's religious faith had contradictory influences on his life. On the one hand, he argued that his faith drove him to defend the 'Protestant people of Ulster', while at the same time, he conceded that the way in which he had taken that fight to the "enemy", the cold blooded murder of non combatant civilians, would ensure his damnation
Damnation
Damnation is the concept of everlasting divine punishment and/or disgrace, especially the punishment for sin as threatened by God . A damned being "in damnation" is said to be either in Hell, or living in a state wherein they are divorced from Heaven and/or in a state of disgrace from God's favor...
. He spoke of this dilemma during an interview with Martin Dillon:
When asked by Dillon whether or not the conflict was a religious war, he replied: "I certainly believe religion is part of the equation. I don't think you can leave religion out of it".
Wright's sister later claimed that he had foreseen the September 11 attacks when he told her that as she was living in New York she was abiding in a "city of sin"; he then went on to predict that the World Trade Centre towers would be destroyed from the air.
Mid-Ulster UVF commander
Wright was re-arrested, along with a number of UVF operatives in the area on evidence provided by Clifford McKeown, a "supergrassSupergrass (informer)
Supergrass is a slang term for an informer, which originated in London. Informers had been referred to as "grasses" since the late-1930s, and the "super" prefix was coined by journalists in the early 1970s to describe those informers from the city's underworld who testified against former...
" within the movement. Wright was charged with murder, attempted murder, and the possession of explosives. The cases, however ended without any major convictions after McKeown changed his mind and ceased giving evidence.
In the late-1980s, after a five year absence from the organisation, Wright resumed his UVF activities. This was in consequence of the November 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement
Anglo-Irish Agreement
The Anglo-Irish Agreement was an agreement between the United Kingdom and Ireland which aimed to help bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland...
which angered loyalists because it gave the Irish Government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government. There were constant raids by the RUC and British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
on his home in Portadown's Corcrain estate. Although he was arrested repeatedly on suspicion of murder and conspiracy, he never faced any charges.
Wright rapidly ascended to a position of prominence within the UVF ranks, eventually assuming leadership of the local Portadown unit. He became commander of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade in the early 1990s, having taken over from Robin "the Jackal" Jackson
Robin Jackson
Robert John "Robin" Jackson, known as the Jackal was a Northern Irish loyalist who held the rank of brigadier in the Ulster Volunteer Force during the period of violent religious and political conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.From his home in the small village of Donaghcloney,...
, who had been the leader since July 1975. Jackson was implicated in the 1974 Dublin car bombings
Dublin and Monaghan Bombings
The Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974 were a series of car bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland. The attacks killed 33 civilians and wounded almost 300 – the highest number of casualties in any single day during the conflict known as The Troubles.A loyalist...
, the Miami Showband killings, and a series of sectarian attacks. Founded in 1972 by its first commander Billy Hanna
Billy Hanna
William Henry Wilson "Billy" Hanna MM was a high-ranking Northern Irish loyalist who founded and led the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the Ulster Volunteer Force until he was killed, allegedly by Robin Jackson, who took over command of the brigade.According to RUC Special Patrol Group officer John Weir,...
, the Mid-Ulster Brigade operated mainly around the Portadown
Portadown
Portadown is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about 23 miles south-west of Belfast...
and Lurgan
Lurgan
Lurgan is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town is near the southern shore of Lough Neagh and in the north-eastern corner of the county. Part of the Craigavon Borough Council area, Lurgan is about 18 miles south-west of Belfast and is linked to the city by both the M1 motorway...
areas. It was a self-contained, semi-autonomous unit which maintained a considerable distance from the Brigade Staff in Belfast. Holding the rank of brigadier, Wright directed up to 20 sectarian killings, according to the Northern Ireland security forces, although he was never convicted in connection with any killing.
While most of Wright's unit's victims were Catholic civilians, some were republican paramilitaries. On 3 March 1991, the Mid-Ulster UVF shot and killed three Provisional IRA men, along with a middle-aged civilian, in an ambush outside Boyle's Bar
1991 Cappagh killings
The 1991 Cappagh killings was a gun attack by the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force on 3 March 1991 in the village of Cappagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland...
in Cappagh
Cappagh
Cappagh is a small village in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is between Pomeroy, Ballygawley, Galbally and Carrickmore, with the hamlet of Galbally about one mile to the east...
, County Tyrone
County Tyrone
Historically Tyrone stretched as far north as Lough Foyle, and comprised part of modern day County Londonderry east of the River Foyle. The majority of County Londonderry was carved out of Tyrone between 1610-1620 when that land went to the Guilds of London to set up profit making schemes based on...
. Wright was widely blamed by nationalists and much of the press for having led this shooting attack. According to Paul Larkin in his book A Very British Jihad: collusion, conspiracy and cover-up in Northern Ireland, UVF members who had been present at Cappagh gave details of the operation, claiming that they were forced to drag Wright into the car as he had allegedly become so frenzied once he had started shooting that he didn't want to stop. British journalist Peter Taylor
Peter Taylor (Journalist)
Peter Taylor born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire is a British journalist and documentary-maker who had covered for many years the political and armed conflict in Northern Ireland, widely known as the Troubles...
, however, stated in his book Loyalists that he had been told by reliable UVF sources that Wright was not involved. The RUC arrested Wright after the shootings. During the interrogation he provided the RUC with an alibi which had placed him in Dungannon
Dungannon
Dungannon is a medium-sized town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is the third-largest town in the county and a population of 11,139 people was recorded in the 2001 Census. In August 2006, Dungannon won Ulster In Bloom's Best Kept Town Award for the fifth time...
when the Cappagh attack occurred, and the RUC confirmed this. Wright himself considered Cappagh to have been a successful UVF operation. The Guardian newspaper quoted him as saying, "I would look back and say that Cappagh was probably our best".
Because of the ruthlessness and efficiency of the attacks carried out by his unit, Wright struck fear into the nationalist and republican communities across Northern Ireland. The Cappagh killings in particular shattered the morale of the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade
Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade
The East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army , also known as the Tyrone/Monaghan Brigade was one of the most active republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland during "the Troubles"...
as they had been boldly perpetrated by the Mid-Ulster UVF in a village which was a seemingly impenetrable IRA stronghold. Wright took personal credit for this, boasting that he and his Mid-Ulster unit had "put the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA on the run" and "decimated" them. As a result he became a target for assassination by the IRA and also the Irish National Liberation Army
Irish National Liberation Army
The Irish National Liberation Army or INLA is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group that was formed on 8 December 1974. Its goal is to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist united Ireland....
(INLA)'s leader Dominic McGlinchey
Dominic McGlinchey
Dominic McGlinchey from Bellaghy, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland was an Irish republican paramilitary with the Irish National Liberation Army .-Background:...
. The IRA tried unsuccessfully to kill Wright on five different occasions; on 23 October 1992 they planted a bomb under his car, but he detected it after a report that a man had been seen crouching suspiciously beside the vehicle in West Street, Portadown.
King Rat
Wright's unit called themselves the "Brat pack". The nickname "King Rat" was first given to Wright by the Mid-Ulster UDAUlster Defence Association
The Ulster Defence Association is the largest although not the deadliest loyalist paramilitary and vigilante group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 and undertook a campaign of almost twenty-four years during "The Troubles"...
commander Robert John Kerr
Robert John Kerr
Robert John "R. J." Kerr , was a leading Northern Irish loyalist. He served as the commander of the Portadown battalion of the Ulster Defence Association's Mid-Ulster Brigade. Along with the Mid-Ulster Ulster Volunteer Force's brigadier Robin Jackson, Kerr was implicated in the killing of Catholic...
as a form of pub bantering. According to journalist and author Paul Larkin, Kerr sat inside a pub and jokingly bestowed a nickname on each patron as they entered. When Wright walked through the door, Kerr gave him the soubriquet of "King Rat". Sunday World
Sunday World
The Sunday World is an Irish newspaper published by Sunday Newspapers Limited, a division of Independent News and Media. It is the largest selling "popular" newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and is also sold in Northern Ireland .-Origins:The Sunday World was Ireland's first tabloid newspaper...
journalist Martin O'Hagan
Martin O'Hagan
Owen Martin O'Hagan, was an Irish investigative journalist from Lurgan, Northern Ireland. He was the most prominent journalist to be killed as a consequence of the Troubles and the only one to be specifically assassinated as a result of his work.-Life:Martin O'Hagan's father served in the British...
picked up on it and satirically named them the "rat pack"; he also used the name "King Rat" to identify Wright. Much to Wright's annoyance, the name became popular with the media. In response, Wright had the newspaper's offices bombed and issued a death threat to O'Hagan and anyone who worked for the paper.
It was also claimed by journalist Susan McKay in The Guardian, that Wright at this time ran a lucrative protection racket and was one of the most significant drug dealers in the Portadown area, primarily in ecstasy.
In an interview with Martin Dillon, he blamed the police raids, republican death threats and the "King Rat" nickname as factors which eventually caused the breakup of his marriage. He nevertheless maintained cordial relations with his ex-wife, Thelma, whom he described as a "good Christian".
In addition to being one of its leading military figures, Wright was initially caught up in the euphoria of the Combined Loyalist Military Command
Combined Loyalist Military Command
The Combined Loyalist Military Command was an umbrella body for loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland set up in the early 1990s, recalling the earlier Ulster Army Council and Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee....
(CLMC) ceasefire, describing 13 October 1994 (the date of the announcement by Gusty Spence
Gusty Spence
Augustus Andrew "Gusty" Spence was a leader of the Ulster Volunteer Force and a leading loyalist politician. One of the first UVF members to be convicted of murder, Spence was a senior figure in the organisation for over a decade but later renounced violence and joined the Progressive Unionist...
) as "the happiest day of my life". However he was also a political militant within the UVF, and soon he publicly disagreed with their leadership's calling of the ceasefire, being sceptical of the IRA's motives behind the Northern Ireland peace process
Northern Ireland peace process
The peace process, when discussing the history of Northern Ireland, is often considered to cover the events leading up to the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army ceasefire, the end of most of the violence of the Troubles, the Belfast Agreement, and subsequent political developments.-Towards a...
.
Drumcree standoff
The Drumcree conflictDrumcree conflict
The Drumcree conflict or Drumcree standoff is an ongoing dispute over a yearly parade in the town of Portadown, Northern Ireland. The dispute is between the Orange Order and local residents. The residents are currently represented by the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition ; before 1995 they were...
, stemming from an Orange Order
Orange Institution
The Orange Institution is a Protestant fraternal organisation based mainly in Northern Ireland and Scotland, though it has lodges throughout the Commonwealth and United States. The Institution was founded in 1796 near the village of Loughgall in County Armagh, Ireland...
's protest at Drumcree Church
Drumcree Church
Drumcree Parish Church, officially The Church of the Ascension, is the parish church of Drumcree Church of Ireland parish. The church is within the townland of Drumcree, roughly 1.5 miles to the northeast of Portadown, County Armagh....
after their parade had been banned from marching through the predominately nationalist Catholic Garvaghy area of Portadown, returned to the headlines in 1995 with trouble expected in Wright's Portadown stronghold. Just before the July marching season Irish government representative Fergus Finlay
Fergus Finlay
Fergus Finlay was for some years the chef de cabinet of the Irish Labour Party, and is the chief executive of the charity Barnardo's in Ireland. He is also a weekly columnist with the Irish Examiner and the author of a number of books....
held a meeting with Wright in which the latter pledged his loyalty to the peace process and David Ervine
David Ervine
David Ervine was a Northern Irish politician and the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party .-Biography:...
in particular, although Wright also warned Finlay that loyalist views had to be respected. Cracks began to show however as Wright felt that the UVF response to the trouble had been inordinately low-key whilst his taste for the Progressive Unionist Party
Progressive Unionist Party
The Progressive Unionist Party is a small unionist political party in Northern Ireland. It was formed from the Independent Unionist Group operating in the Shankill area of Belfast, becoming the PUP in 1979...
(PUP) strategy also began to wane as the party moved increasingly towards a form of socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, an ideology repugnant to Wright. A further problem arose when Wright, who by that time was a popular loyalist figure across Northern Ireland, travelled to the Shankill Road in Belfast in late 1995 in order to try to overturn a ban that had been placed on an Orange Order parade in that was entering a neighbouring Catholic area. Wright had hoped to bring local UVF units onto the streets of the Shankill in order to force an overturning of the ban but the Shankill commanders refused to put their units at Wright's disposal, having assured the British authorities that they would not in a series of secret negotiations. Wright returned to the Portadown in disgust, accusing the Belfast UVF of having surrendered. Nonetheless when Wright was arrested in late 1995 for intimidation he was still on good terms with the UVF, whose magazine Combat called for his release.
In January 1996, Wright once again travelled to Belfast where he dropped a verbal bombshell by announcing that the Mid-Ulster Brigade would no longer operate under the authority of the Brigade Staff. That same year Wright was ordered to attend a meeting called by the Brigade Staff at "the Eagle", their headquarters above a chip shop (bearing the same name) on the Shankill Road, to answer charges of alleged drug dealing and being a police informer. The latter accusation came about after the loss of a substantial amount of weapons from the Mid-Ulster Brigade and a large number of its members had been arrested. Wright refused to attend and continued to flout Brigade Staff authority.
Following the decision by RUC Chief Constable Hugh Annesley
Hugh Annesley (police officer)
Sir Hugh Norman Annesley is a retired Northern Irish police officer. He served as Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary from June 1989 to November 1996....
to ban the Orange parade in the summer of 1996 a campaign of road blockages and general disruption broke out across Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
as a protest organised by the Ulster Unionist Party
Ulster Unionist Party
The Ulster Unionist Party – sometimes referred to as the Official Unionist Party or, in a historic sense, simply the Unionist Party – is the more moderate of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland...
(UUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party
Democratic Unionist Party
The Democratic Unionist Party is the larger of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland. Founded by Ian Paisley and currently led by Peter Robinson, it is currently the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly and the fourth-largest party in the House of Commons of the...
(DUP). The protests, which led to a reversal of the ban, saw no official UVF involvement although Wright, despite not being a member of the Orange Order, personally was involved and led a sizeable force of his men to Drumcree. Wright and the Mid-Ulster Brigade attracted considerable attention from the global media as they made a formidable show of strength and staunchly defended the Orangemen's right to march their traditional route. The brigade manned the barricades, and brought homemade weapons to the church; among these was a mechanical digger and a petrol tanker. There was intelligence that Wright and his unit had planned to attack the Army and police who were blocking the Orangemen's passage. Television cameras broadcast Wright directing rioters on Drumcree hill against the security forces. Wright even held a meeting with one of the central figures in the operation, UUP leader David Trimble
David Trimble
William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, PC , is a politician from Northern Ireland. He served as Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party , was the first First Minister of Northern Ireland , and was a Member of the British Parliament . He is currently a life peer for the Conservative Party...
, and he was often seen in the company of Harold Gracey, Grand Master
Grand Master (Masonic)
In Freemasonry a Grand Master is the leader of the lodges within his Masonic jurisdiction. He presides over a Grand Lodge, and has certain rights in the constituent lodges that form his jurisdiction....
of the Portadown District Orange Lodge.
Peter Taylor had been at Drumcree that July and got a close-up view of Wright. Taylor described Wright as a "charismatic leader". Clad in neat jeans, white tee shirt and wearing a single gold earring, physically he was short and muscular, with close-cropped hair. Flanked by two bodyguards, Wright's sudden appearance at Drumcree had inspired much admiration from the young boys and girls who were present. Journalist David McKittrick in the Belfast Telegraph described him as having been heavily tattoed, who walked with a "characteristic strut that radiated restrained menace"; and had a "bullet head, close-cropped with small ears and deep-set, piercing eyes". Martin Dillon, who had interviewed him in his home in Portadown, said that while he had been pleasant and charming throughout the interview, Dillon had "sensed a dark side to his character". Wright was also considered to have been a "political thinker and capable strategist".
As a result of the Belfast leadership's inaction, Wright ordered several killings on his own initiative, according to republican sources. On 9 July 1996, at the height of the Drumcree standoff, the body of Catholic taxi driver, Michael McGoldrick, was found shot dead in his cab in a remote lane at Aghagallon, near Lurgan
Lurgan
Lurgan is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town is near the southern shore of Lough Neagh and in the north-eastern corner of the county. Part of the Craigavon Borough Council area, Lurgan is about 18 miles south-west of Belfast and is linked to the city by both the M1 motorway...
, a day after having picked up a fare in the town. He had been shot five times in the head. Both the UVF and the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) released statements emphatically denying involvement in McGoldrick's killing. According to PUP leader David Ervine, Wright had ordered the killing for the purpose of incriminating the UVF Brigade Staff by making it appear as if they had sanctioned it. To further Wright's ploy, a handgun had been sent down to the Mid-Ulster Brigade from the Shankill UVF arms dump, but as the weapon had no forensic history the plot backfired. Several years later, Clifford McKeown, the former supergrass, was convicted of the murder of McGoldrick. McKeown, who had claimed that the killing was a birthday present for Billy Wright, was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment for his involvement in the murder.
Leader of the Loyalist Volunteer Force
Billy Wright, along with the Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade, was stood down on 2 August 1996 by the UVF's Brigade Staff for the unauthorised attack on McGoldrick, insubordination, and undermining the peace process. Wright was expelled from the UVF and also threatened with execution by the Combined Loyalist Military Command if he did not leave Northern Ireland.Wright expressed the following sentiments regarding the CLMC death threat in an interview he conducted with journalist Emer Woodful in late August 1996:
Most of the other units of the Mid-Ulster Brigade soon affirmed their loyalty to the leadership although Wright ignored an order to quit Northern Ireland by 1 September 1996, and hours before the deadline attended a Royal Black Preceptory
Royal Black Preceptory
The Royal Black Institution, also known as the Royal Black Preceptory or The Imperial Grand Black Chapter Of The British Commonwealth or simply as the Black Institution is a Protestant fraternal society....
march and a celebration at a club in Portadown's Corcrain estate, receiving a hero's welcome at both events. Some days later at least 5,000 loyalists turned up for a rally in support of Wright, with the DUP Reverend William McCrea
William McCrea (politician)
Robert Thomas William McCrea is a politician from Northern Ireland, and a member of the Democratic Unionist Party.-Career:...
making a speech critical of David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson
Billy Hutchinson
Billy Hutchinson is the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party in Northern Ireland. He was elected to Belfast City Council in 1997 and to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998. He lost his assembly seat in 2003 and his council seat in 2005...
for what he felt was their involvement in the death threats. McCrea's sharing of the stage with a militant such as Wright cause uproar although he argued that he was merely supporting Wright's entitlement to freedom of speech. Ignoring the threat, Wright, in a public show of defiance, formed the Loyalist Volunteer Force
Loyalist Volunteer Force
The Loyalist Volunteer Force is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed by Billy Wright in 1996 when he and the Portadown unit of the Ulster Volunteer Force's Mid-Ulster Brigade was stood down by the UVF leadership. He had been the commander of the Mid-Ulster Brigade. The...
(LVF), taking members mainly from the officially-disbanded Portadown unit of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade. Appearing at a Drumcree protest rally, Wright made the following statement: "I will not be leaving Ulster, I will not change my mind about what I believe is happening in Ulster. But all I would like to say is that it has broken my heart to think that fellow loyalists would turn their guns on me, and I have to ask them, 'For whom are you doing it?'". Wright's hardline stance won the support of a number of leading loyalists, including UVF colleague Jackie Mahood, Frankie Curry
Frankie Curry
Frankie Curry nicknamed "Pigface", was an Ulster loyalist who was involved with a number of paramilitary groups during his long career...
of the Red Hand Commandos
Red Hand Commandos
The Red Hand Commando is a small loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, which is closely linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force...
and Alex Kerr
Alex Kerr (loyalist)
Alex Kerr is a Northern Irish former loyalist paramilitary. Kerr was a brigadier in the Ulster Defence Association before becoming one of the two founders of the Loyalist Volunteer Force . He is no longer active in loyalism....
of the Ulster Defence Association
Ulster Defence Association
The Ulster Defence Association is the largest although not the deadliest loyalist paramilitary and vigilante group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 and undertook a campaign of almost twenty-four years during "The Troubles"...
(UDA). Kerr, another key figure at the Drumcree standoff, had also been ordered by the Combined Loyalist Military Command to leave Northern Ireland on pain of execution.
They were joined by other loyalists disaffected by the peace process, giving them a maximum strength estimated at around 250 activists. They operated outside the Combined Loyalist Military Command and ignored the ceasefire order of October 1994. Wright denounced the UVF leadership as "communists", for the left wing inclinations of some of their public statements about reconciliation with the nationalist community. Wright was strongly anti-communist and his belief in this was increased by a series of meetings he held with representatives of far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
Christian groups from the southern states of the USA. From these meetings, organised by Pastor Kenny McClinton
Kenny McClinton
Kenneth McClinton is a Northern Irish pastor and sometime political activist. During his early years McClinton was an active member of the Ulster Defence Association...
, Wright was introduced to conspiracy theories about the role of communists in bringing down Christian morality, ideas that appealed to him. In a somewhat similar vein Wright also enjoyed closed relations with a Bolton
Bolton
Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...
-based cell of activists belonging to the neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18
Combat 18
Combat 18 is a violent neo-Nazi organisation associated with Blood and Honour. It originated in the United Kingdom, but has since spread to other countries. Members of Combat 18 have been suspected in numerous deaths of immigrants, non-whites, and other C18 members...
and had members of this group staying in Portadown during the build-up to the Drumcree stand-off in 1997. The UVF in its turn, regarded Wright's setting up a rival loyalist organisation in the Mid-Ulster area as "treason". The LVF was proscribed by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, informally the Northern Ireland Secretary, is the principal secretary of state in the government of the United Kingdom with responsibilities for Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State is a Minister of the Crown who is accountable to the Parliament of...
Mo Mowlam
Mo Mowlam
Marjorie "Mo" Mowlam was a British Labour Party politician. She was the Member of Parliament for Redcar from 1987 to 2001 and served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.Mowlam's time as Northern...
in June 1997.
The LVF published a document stating their aims and objectives: They also published a magazine entitled Leading the Way.
Imprisonment
Despite a series of sectarian murders and attacks on Catholic property attributed to the LVF from 1996 to early 1997 (although they were not claimed by the organisation), Wright was not successfully imprisoned until 7 March 1997 when he was convicted of two offences: doing an act with intent to pervert the course of justice and making threats against the life of Gwen Read. This threat by Wright, which led to his arrest in January 1997, followed an altercation with Read's family and LVF members. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for both offences and initially imprisoned at HMP MaghaberryMaghaberry (HM Prison)
HMP Maghaberry was built on the site of a World War II airfield near Lisburn, Northern Ireland that was used as a transit base for the United States Army Air Force....
. On 18 March, he received a visit from DUP politician Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson (politician)
Peter David Robinson is the current First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party...
(who would be elected First Minister of Northern Ireland in 2008). During the interview Wright told Robinson that he believed an attempt on his life by republicans was imminent.
He was sent to the Maze in April 1997. He demanded and was granted an LVF section in C and D wings of H-block 6 (H6) for himself and 26 fellow inmates. INLA prisoners were housed in the A and B wings, and the Irish Republican Socialist Party
Irish Republican Socialist Party
The Irish Republican Socialist Party or IRSP is a republican socialist party active in Ireland. It claims the legacy of socialist revolutionary James Connolly, who founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896 and was executed after the Easter Rising of 1916.- History :The Irish Republican...
(IRSP, the political wing of the INLA) warned there would be trouble if the prisoners were not kept segregated. In August 1997, LVF prisoners, led by Wright, rioted over their visiting accommodation in the Maze.
Wright continued to direct LVF operations from the prison, although his deputy Mark "Swinger" Fulton
Mark Fulton (loyalist)
Mark "Swinger" Fulton was a Northern Irish loyalist. He was the leader of the Loyalist Volunteer Force , having taken over its command following the killing of the paramilitary organisation's founder, Billy Wright, in the Maze Prison in 1997 by members of the Irish National Liberation Army .Fulton...
served as its nominal leader. LVF membership increased during Wright's imprisonment; by October 1997, membership in the organisation was between 150 and 200, many of them former UVF members disillusioned with the ceasefire. It was afterwards discovered that he had kept an irregular diary whilst in prison. On some of the pages he had made subtle threats to Catholic human rights solicitor Rosemary Nelson
Rosemary Nelson
Rosemary Nelson was a prominent Northern Irish human rights lawyer who was killed by a loyalist paramilitary group in 1999...
(killed in 1999 by a Red Hand Defenders
Red Hand Defenders
The Red Hand Defenders is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in 1998 by loyalists who opposed the Belfast Agreement and the loyalist ceasefires. Its members were drawn mostly from the Ulster Defence Association and Loyalist Volunteer Force...
car bomb) and her client, IRA prisoner Colin Duffy
Colin Duffy
Colin Duffy is the most recognisable name and face among dissident republicans in Northern Ireland according to BBC. He is a former IRA prisoner from Lurgan, County Armagh....
, charged with killing two RUC constables. The charges against him were later dropped. Wright's appeal was scheduled to be heard in February 1998.
Killing
A tense situation existed within the Maze Prison. INLA inmates had told staff "they intend, given a chance, to take out the LVF". The Prison Officers Association said precautions had been put in place to ensure inmates from the two groups did not come into contact with each other. Prison officers, however, had grave concerns over security measures in H Block 6, where Wright and the LVF were housed. The situation was made more volatile because, unlike the IRA, the UVF, and the UDA, neither the LVF nor the INLA were on ceasefire.The decision to kill Wright inside the Maze was made in mid-December 1997 at an INLA Ard Chomhairle which was attended by the INLA Chief of Staff. The assassination was to be carried out in retaliation for the LVF killing of GAA
Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an amateur Irish and international cultural and sporting organisation focused primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball and rounders...
member Gerry Devlin which had taken place shortly before. On 16 December a senior INLA member who had been at the Ard Chomhairle went to the Maze to pay a visit to the Officer Commanding
Officer Commanding
The Officer Commanding is the commander of a sub-unit or minor unit , principally used in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. In other countries, the term Commanding Officer is applied to commanders of minor as well as major units.Normally an Officer Commanding is a company, squadron or battery...
of the INLA at H Block 6.
On the morning of Saturday 27 December 1997, just before 10.00 a.m., Wright was assassinated by INLA prisoners inside the Maze Prison. The operation was undertaken by three INLA volunteers – Christopher "Crip" McWilliams, John "Sonny" Glennon and John Kennaway – armed with two smuggled pistols, an PA63
FEG PA-63
The FÉG PA-63 is a semi-automatic pistol designed and manufactured by the FÉGARMY Arms Factory of Hungary.-History:FÉGARMY Arms Factory of Hungary started producing Walther PP/PPK clones in the late 1940s starting with their Model 48 which differed from the Walther PP only in minor details...
semi-automatic and a .22 Derringer. He was shot in the forecourt outside H Block 6 as he sat in the back of a prison van (alongside another LVF prisoner, Norman Green and one prison officer acting as escort) on his way to the visitor's complex where he had an arranged visit with his girlfriend, Eleanor Reilly, and their son Stephen. John Glennon had been pretending to paint a mural in the sterile area between A and B wings which placed him in a position to see and hear what happened in the forecourt. Upon hearing the announcement over the prison Tannoy
Tannoy
Tannoy Ltd is a Scottish-based manufacturer of loudspeakers and public-address systems. The company was founded in London, England as Tulsemere Manufacturing Company in 1926, but has been based in Coatbridge, Scotland, since the 1970s...
system that Wright and Green had been called for their respective visits, Glennon gave a pre-arranged signal to his two waiting comrades. They moved into position at the A wing turnstile; Glennon ran into the canteen and he mounted a table situated beneath a window which gave him a clearer view of the block forecourt. When he saw Wright entering the van at 9.59 a.m. he gave a second pre-arranged signal, which was: "Go, go, go".
The three INLA men rushed through the turnstile leading to A wing's exercise yard. Peeling away a pre-cut section of wire fence, they climbed onto the roof of A wing and dropped into the forecourt where the Renault van containing Wright had just started to move forward towards the exit gates. The van was ordered to stop by the armed INLA men; however, the driver, John Park, thinking that he and the other officer were about to be taken hostage, intended to accelerate through the partially opened gates in a bid to escape. He was prevented from doing so when the gates were automatically shut. The other prison officers stationed at the forecourt gates had spotted the men on the roof, and assuming there was a prison escape in progress, activated the alarm system. The van was ten feet away from the gates when it came to a halt. Neither of the two prison officers inside the van was armed.
While an unarmed Kennaway physically restrained the driver, Glennon, armed with the Derringer, gave cover beside the van as McWilliams opened the side door on the left at the rear, and shouted the words: "Armed INLA volunteers". With a smile on his face, he then took up a firing stance and aimed his PA63 pistol inside the van at Wright, who was sitting sideways facing the side door beside Norman Green, with Prison Officer Stephen Sterritt seated behind the driver. Wright had been in the middle of a conversation, discussing the "cost of Christmas", with both men. Sterritt and Green instantly dropped to the floor to protect themselves; however, Wright stood up and kicked out at his assailant who began firing at point blank range. McWilliams climbed into the van and continued shooting at Wright, hitting him a total of seven times. Wright, despite being shot, continued to defend himself by moving forward, kicking and lashing out at McWilliams. Wright was fatally wounded by the last shot, the bullet having lacerated his aorta
Aorta
The aorta is the largest artery in the body, originating from the left ventricle of the heart and extending down to the abdomen, where it branches off into two smaller arteries...
. He slumped against the legs of Green. After screaming "they shot Billy", Green made an attempt to resuscitate Wright, but to no avail; he was brought to the prison hospital, where a doctor pronounced him dead at 10.53 a.m. None of the others inside the van were hurt. Immediately following the shooting attack, the three gunmen returned the way they had come and surrendered to prison guards. They handed over a statement:
Aftermath
That night, LVF gunmen opened fire on a disco in a mainly nationalist area of DungannonDungannon
Dungannon is a medium-sized town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is the third-largest town in the county and a population of 11,139 people was recorded in the 2001 Census. In August 2006, Dungannon won Ulster In Bloom's Best Kept Town Award for the fifth time...
. Four civilians were wounded and one, a former Provisional IRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
member, was killed. Police believed that the disco itself was the intended target.
Wright's paramilitary funeral took place in Portadown on 30 December. The LVF ordered all shops in the town to shut as a mark of respect; bus and taxi services were also suspended, and the Union Jack flew at half-mast. The media was kept at a distance. After a private service inside Wright's Brownstown home, the funeral cortège, led by a lone bagpiper
Bagpipes
Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes of many different types come from...
, proceeded to Seagoe Cemetery, two miles away. Thousands of mourners were in attendance as the hearse containing Wright's coffin moved through the crowded streets, flanked by a guard of honour and preceded by women bearing floral wreaths. The Reverend John Gray of the Free Presbyterian Church
Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster
The Free Presbyterian Church is a Presbyterian denomination founded by the Rev. Ian Paisley in 1951. Most of its members live in Northern Ireland...
officiated at the graveside service. Wright's friend, the former UDA member Pastor Kenny McClinton
Kenny McClinton
Kenneth McClinton is a Northern Irish pastor and sometime political activist. During his early years McClinton was an active member of the Ulster Defence Association...
, also delivered an oration in which he eulogised Wright as having been "complicated, articulate, and sophisticated". LVF gunmen fired a volley of shots over his flag-draped coffin.
Wright's close friend and deputy, Mark "Swinger" Fulton assumed control of the LVF leadership after Wright's death.
The LVF became more closely tied to the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) organisation that was led by Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair
Johnny Adair
Jonathan Adair, better known as Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair is the former leader of the "C Company", 2nd Battalion Shankill Road, West Belfast Brigade of the "Ulster Freedom Fighters" . This was a cover name used by the Ulster Defence Association , an Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation...
.
The LVF committed a series of attacks on Catholic civilians, which it termed a "measured military response" in response to Billy Wright's death. Martin O'Hagan, the Sunday World journalist whom Wright especially disliked, was killed in September 2001 by the Red Hand Defenders
Red Hand Defenders
The Red Hand Defenders is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in 1998 by loyalists who opposed the Belfast Agreement and the loyalist ceasefires. Its members were drawn mostly from the Ulster Defence Association and Loyalist Volunteer Force...
, a cover-name used by the UDA and LVF.
On 20 October 1998, Christopher McWilliams, John Glennon, and John Kennaway were convicted of murdering Billy Wright, possession of a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life. The three men had pleaded not guilty. Although they were sentenced to life imprisonment, they only served two years of their sentence due to the early release provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.
Inquiry and allegations
The nature of Wright's killing, within a high security prison, has led to speculation that the authorities colluded with the INLA to have him killed as he was a danger to the emerging peace process. Four days before his death, Wright himself believed that he would shortly be killed within the Maze Prison by agents of the British and Irish governments in collusion with loyalist informers and the INLA. The INLA strongly denied these rumours, and published a detailed account of the assassination in the March/April 1999 issue of The Starry PloughThe Starry Plough (newspaper)
The Starry Plough is the official newspaper of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. It states on its website: "The Starry Plough is the only paper that stands firmly against British rule and the destruction of capitalism in Ireland." The paper also focuses on socialist solidarity issues around the...
newspaper. Wright's father, David had campaigned for a public inquiry into his son's murder and had appealed for help to the Northern Ireland, British and Irish authorities for help in the matter. The murder was investigated by the Cory Collusion Inquiry
Cory Collusion Inquiry
The Cory Collusion Inquiry was established to conduct an independent inquiry into deaths relating to the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland.A retired Canadian supreme court judge, Peter Cory was appointed to undertake a thorough investigation of allegations of collusion between British and Irish...
and it was recommended that the UK Government launch an inquiry into the circumstances of Wright's death. The Cory Inquiry concluded that "whatever criticism might properly be made regarding the reprehensible life and crimes of Billy Wright, it is apparent that he met his death bravely", and described his killing as "brutal and cowardly".
June 2005 saw the Billy Wright inquiry open, chaired by Lord MacLean
Ranald MacLean, Lord MacLean
Ranald Norman Munro MacLean, Lord MacLean is a retired Scottish judge.Born on 18 December 1938, MacLean was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh, where he was Head of School. He graduated BA from Clare College, Cambridge, LLB from the University of Edinburgh and LLM from Yale University...
. Also sitting on the inquiry were academic professor Andrew Coyle
Andrew Coyle
Andrew Coyle, CMG is Emeritus Professor of Prison Studies in London University and Visiting Professor in the University of Essex. He is Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies, a post which he also held from between 1997 and 2005...
from the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
and the former Bishop of Hereford
Bishop of Hereford
The Bishop of Hereford is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Hereford in the Province of Canterbury.The see is in the City of Hereford where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of Saint Mary and Saint Ethelbert which was founded as a cathedral in 676.The Bishop's residence is...
, the Reverend John Oliver. On 14 September 2010, the findings of the panel were released publicly at Stormont House in Belfast and found that there was no evidence of collusion between the authorities and the INLA. The inquiry, which had cost £30 million, did find a number of failings within the security of the prison. There was the main question of how the weapons were successfully smuggled inside the prison to the killers. There was also the issue regarding the decision to house the INLA and LVF in H Block 6, when it was known that they were deadly rivals, neither of which was on ceasefire, and the INLA had vowed to kill Wright given the opportunity. McWilliams and Kennaway had been transferred to the Maze from Maghaberry the previous May. One month before their transfer, when Wright had still been at Maghaberry, they had organised an unsuccessful hostage-taking incident at the prison. This was meant to end in the assassination of Wright; he was subsequently moved to the Maze. Other questions were raised after the discovery that on the morning of the killing, Prison Officer Raymond Hill was stood down from his post in the watchtower overlooking A and B wings of H-Block 6 where the INLA prisoners were housed. The CCTV camera placed in the area was also found to have been nonfunctioning for several days prior to the shooting. The visitors lists for 27 December 1997 had been circulated in both the LVF and INLA wings the day before thereby giving Wright's assassins time to prepare for the killing as the list clearly stated that Wright was scheduled to receive a visit on 27 December. The LVF prison van had been parked outside the INLA wing that morning instead of following the normal procedure which was to park outside the LVF wing. And the gates leading from the forecourt were automatically locked as soon as the killers were spotted on the roof. This had prevented the van from driving off and thus effectively trapped Wright in the rear.
In an interview with The Guardian before his own death, one of the killers, John Kennaway said the security inside the Maze was "a joke". He claimed the weapons had been smuggled to McWilliams and Glennon inside nappies. He added that as soon as the "screws" [prison officers] had seen the INLA men on A wing's roof, they assumed the men were staging an escape and sounded the alarm system. The gates were automatically locked-down therefore preventing the van from leaving. Kennaway suggested that had the prison officers not seen them and quickly sounded the alarm, the van could have driven away in time and Wright might have escaped with his life.
Before he was gunned down by the Red Hand Defenders in 2001, journalist Martin O'Hagan revealed to fellow journalist Paul Larkin that a high-ranking RUC officer had told him that Wright had received operational assistance from RUC Special Branch
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in the Royal Thai Police...
along with the code name "Bertie". Years earlier, the UVF had conducted its own internal investigation into allegations that Wright was a police informer. UVF sources later spoke to journalists suggesting that Wright had worked for RUC Special Branch, who in turn provided him with alibis, protection, as well as information on suspected republicans. According to an IRA Intelligence officer, Wright had been specifically selected and trained by the Northern Ireland security forces to take over the role as key player in Mid-Ulster from former brigadier and alleged Special Branch agent Robin Jackson. Larkin had made a film in 1996 for BBC's Spotlight current affairs programme about the activities of Wright and his unit entitled Rat Pack. It was broadcast on 8 October of that year.
Shortly before the findings of the inquiry into Wright's death were released in September 2010, Ulster Television News broadcast a report regarding the question of collusion. South Belfast UDA brigadier Jackie McDonald
Jackie McDonald
John "Jackie" McDonald is a senior Northern Irish loyalist and the incumbent Ulster Defence Association brigadier for South Belfast, having been promoted to the rank by former UDA commander Andy Tyrie in 1988, following John McMichael's killing by the Provisional IRA in December 1987...
explained to Ulster Television's Live Tonight the UVF's mindset at the time Wright was threatened with execution by the CLMC in 1996, "It was obvious he [Wright] was doing his own thing and going his own way. I think he had become such an embarrassment to the UVF that they had to send word to him to get out of the country - that's when the LVF was formed, that's when the breakaway group appeared." When asked by the interviewer whether or not the CLMC had actually been prepared to carry out the death threat against Wright McDonald replied, "You have to be prepared to kill people if you tell them to do something and they don't do it - something of that magnitude. If you say they had to go and they don't go - the defiance alone, it doesn't leave many alternatives". McDonald expressed his personal belief that there had probably been no state collusion in Wright's death. Equally dismissive of the allegations of collusion, Willie Gallagher of the Republican Socialist Movement offered the suggestion that had the INLA not killed Wright, he would have been released from prison shortly afterwards. Once free, Wright would have continued to conduct and orchestrate his murder campaign against nationalists.
Loyalist icon
Owing to his uncompromising stance as an upholder of Ulster loyalism and opposition to the peace process, Wright has, since his death, become the most revered loyalist icon and cult figure in the history of the Troubles. His image adorns countless murals in housing estates in Portadown and elsewhere throughout Northern Ireland. However one of the most well-known of these, that on a wall near Portadown F.C.Portadown F.C.
Portadown F.C. is a semi-professional, Northern Irish football club which plays in the IFA Premiership.The club was founded in the late 1880s and joined the Irish League in 1924. It is based in Portadown in County Armagh and plays its home games at Shamrock Park...
's Shamrock Park
Shamrock Park
Shamrock Park is a football stadium in Portadown, Northern Ireland. It is the home ground of Portadown F.C.. Shamrock Park used to be used for stock-car racing, but this has been discontinued in recent years...
home ground, was removed in 2006 with a mural of George Best
George Best
George Best was a professional footballer from Northern Ireland, who played for Manchester United and the Northern Ireland national team. He was a winger whose game combined pace, acceleration, balance, two-footedness, goalscoring and the ability to beat defenders...
painted in its stead. His picture appears on tee shirts, fridge magnets, key rings, and plates. He is regarded as a martyr and hero by hardline loyalists; many of whom have tattoos bearing his likeness. It is considered to be a status symbol in Portadown for loyalist men and women to display a Billy Wright tattoo on one's arm, leg, or back. Some of his more ardent devotees even have them on the private parts of their anatomy. His successor Mark "Swinger" Fulton had one tattoed over his heart.
Immediately after his death, his grave became a shrine. One teenaged girl in North Belfast set up a shrine to Wright in her bedroom complete with his photographs. She explained to a journalist, "I'm not interested in pop stars. Billy was a real Loyalist hero and I like to go to sleep at night looking at him". Gunmen at a paramilitary display in Portadown in 2000 told journalists: "He [Wright] did what he had to do to ensure that our faith and culture were kept intact." Wright was also taken up as an inspiration by Johnny Adair and the UDA West Belfast Brigade
UDA West Belfast Brigade
The UDA West Belfast Brigade is the section of the Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association based in the western quarter of Belfast in the Greater Shankill area...
. In the immediate aftermath of Wright's killing Adair told his main gunmen Stephen McKeag and Gary Smyth that they had a free hand to "avenge" Wright's death, with McKeag almost immediately launching a machine gun attack on a nationalist bar despite the UDA being officially on ceasefire. The West Belfast Brigade would later reference Wright as a true loyalist who had been a victim of the UVF in a leaflet circulated to foment a feud between the UDA and the UVF. Despite this the two men had had a fractured relationship during Wright's life and according to Adair's sometime girlfriend Jackie "Legs" Robinson, Adair had told her that Wright was a "bastard" when the UVF leader attended a party at Robinson's house. Robinson wrote the incident off as jealousy on Adair's part as Wright was already well established as a leading figure in loyalism by that stage whilst Adair was still making his name.
The Belfast Telegraph newspaper summed up Billy Wright as having been "one of the most fear-inspiring loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland since the Shankill Butchers in the 1970s". Peter Taylor offered an alternative insight into the reputation of Billy Wright by suggesting that popular myth had laid many killings and atrocities at Wright's door when there was actually little evidence to back them up.
Father's death
On 30 September 2011, David Wright died in Portadown at the age of 78. After his funeral service at the Killicomaine Baptist Church, he was buried, like Billy, in Seagoe Cemetery. Up until his death, he had contintued to profess his belief that there had been state collusion in his son's killing. He denounced the findings of the inquiry released in 2010 as a "total whitewash and a failure to get at the truth".External links
Further reading
- Sean McPhilemy The Committee : Political Assassination in Northern Ireland (Hardcover), Roberts Rinehart, May 1998, ISBN 978-1570982118