by Ed Moloney
[After the killing of Trevor King, there was] nervousness piled on top of more nervousness. Had we got it right, were we right about our assessments about where this was going? We were very nervous about that. The mood of our own community massively enhanced the degree of nervousness, because our community were dismayed [by the IRA cessation]. I think James Molyneaux described it as more or less the worst thing that ever happened, and I’m saying to myself, ‘People alive, that’s good news!’ but I understood the complexities in the minds of the people in the Unionist community. Was there a secret, surreptitious deal done by Republicans? But we had done our homework as far as we could, but the Unionist politicians had not done their homework. I think many of them were oblivious, absolutely oblivious to what was coming. Not all of them, [but] many of them.
Q. When you say not all…?
A. I think elements of the Ulster Unionist Party were relatively well tuned in to what was coming up.
Q. On an individual basis?
A. Yeah, I think Ken Maginnis was relatively well tuned in, I think that [Reg] Empey, [Michael and Chris] McGimpsey were a little nucleus around [James] Molyneaux, they seemed to have an idea. One just saw the DUP cower, cowed if you like, fearful of what was happening. I remember meetings with Ulster Unionists and, shortly after the IRA ceasefire, they were keen that Loyalism should respond, unlike elements of the Democratic Unionist Party who were keen that Loyalism should not respond.
I think there were those who believed it was pretty damn close to being in the bag, that the Loyalist ceasefire could be achieved, but you couldn’t achieve that just moments after the IRA ceasefire. We hadn’t been involved in the game between the government and the IRA. Why should we rush? The IRA took eight months to respond to the Downing Street Declaration, and meanwhile back at the ranch Loyalism was getting chided for not responding within days of the IRA. I remember Bruce Morrison,* the American, saying: ‘The government will now have to move to crush the Loyalists.’ That’s the way it was all meant to be. Of course the Loyalists were ahead of the game, the Loyalists had analysed, assessed and knew that it had to come but you could not do it with undue haste. It would have been madness and it would have been detrimental in our own community and detrimental to the organisations. They needed the time and space to watch and see how the IRA ceasefire was likely to develop, what the political atmosphere around it was like, the mood music in the community. There were attempts by us to try and build up a bit of confidence in the Unionist community around that time and again that was all about our capacity to respond, and eventually we did respond six weeks later.
On 31 August 1994 the IRA finally announced a ceasefire that came into effect at midnight, following a day of flag-waving cavalcades through Republican areas of the city organised by Sinn Fein and intended to convey the impression that a great victory had been won. But there were differences with past IRA ceasefires that marked this one out as significantly unusual, that perhaps made the street celebrations a little premature. The ceasefires of 1972 and 1975 had been predicated on secret talks with the British but this cessation was attached to nothing more concrete than ‘the potential of the current situation’, as the IRA described the position post-Downing Street Declaration.54 While in prior cessations the IRA leadership played the more prominent role, this time the centre stage would be occupied by its political wing, Sinn Fein. In other ceasefires the IRA was seeking a commitment from Britain for a withdrawal date from Northern Ireland but in this ceasefire that issue had been consigned to the back burner and instead Sinn Fein was seeking admittance to political talks that inevitably would leave the essence of the constitutional status quo largely untouched.
Reaction to the IRA statement was nothing if not predictable. While the Irish government and the SDLP gave it an unequivocal welcome, Unionist leaders chose not to read the ceasefire positively, focusing instead on the use of the word ‘complete’ instead of the adjective ‘permanent’ in the IRA’s description of its action. The British premier, John Major, had ‘no option’ except to reject the IRA’s bona fides because it had not gone far enough in this regard, protested the Ulster Unionist leader, James Molyneaux. His DUP counterpart, Ian Paisley, declared, ‘I don’t see in the document any renunciation of violence; I hear the salute to murderers.’
The Loyalist paramilitary response was a study in contrasts. The CLMC, which included the UDA, said, ‘[We] wish to make it clear that we will not be dancing to the Pan-Nationalist tune … Is our constitution being tampered with or is it not? What deals have been done?’ Scepticism, fear and suspicion ran through the statement but the UVF’s reaction was mixed. Within a day of the ceasefire, graffiti appeared on a Shankill Road gable wall which reflected both the UVF/PUP analysis of the peace process and their need to cope with the Loyalist anxiety generated by the ceasefire. Past IRA ceasefires usually signalled British treachery, at least in Loyalist minds and a Belfast Telegraph poll showing that 56 per cent of people believed there had been a secret deal with the IRA demonstrated that it was no different this time. So the UVF slogan was designed to calm and reassure: ‘On behalf of the Loyalist people on the Shankill Road, we accept the unconditional surrender of the IRA.’ But it was clear that not everyone in the UVF believed the message from their own leadership. Although the ceasefire had been well telegraphed in the preceding days, the UVF went out to kill a Catholic just a few hours before the IRA announcement. Using sledgehammers to break into a house in Antrim, the UVF kidnapped thirty-seven-year-old Sean McDermott, a Catholic building worker who was later found dead in his car, killed by two shotgun blasts to the head. Three days after the IRA announcement, the UVF planted a bomb outside Sinn Fein’s headquarters, a small device was placed on the Belfast–Dublin train, much to Chris Hudson’s anger, and an attempt was made to assassinate a Republican on the Falls Road.
As Gerry Adams flew off to the United States to an ecstatic reception, this time on a regular and unrestricted visitor’s visa, the UVF’s fears that Adams would attempt to claim all the credit for peace looked prescient. With the IRA declaration made, the spotlight turned on to the UVF and UDA. The first indication that a Loyalist ceasefire was on its way came when the CLMC distanced itself from Ian Paisley. In the wake of the IRA’s ceasefire, Ian Paisley had sounded his customary alarm and offered to create a pan-Unionist forum. But this time the Loyalist paramilitaries shunned his offer, beginning a period of bitter rivalry and hostility between them. To stymie Paisley and accelerate the Loyalist journey towards a ceasefire, the CLMC hosted its own pan-Unionist conference in mid-September which the DUP refused to attend.
By October 1994, the UVF and UDA were ready to call their own cessation although there were telling differences in the approach favoured by the two groups. The UDA was most eager to make the move and wanted to announce it in the car park of the Maze prison, a clear sign that its prisoners, who at that point included the already notorious gunman Johnny Adair, played a dominant role in the decision-making process. The UVF and the PUP preferred a more formal, dignified affair which could generate valuable publicity and kudos for the Loyalists. The UVF got its way and from that as well as the nature of the event that was held, it is reasonable to suggest that within the internal counsels of the CLMC, David Ervine and his people held greater sway. The venue for the announcement was Fernhill House, which during the Home Rule crisis of 1912 had been the headquarters of the West Belfast UVF. To underscore the significance of the ceasefire and to suggest a deeper sincerity than the IRA had shown, Gusty Spence, the first paramilitary prisoner of the Troubles, wrote and read the ceasefire announcement. The words that attracted most media attention came at the start of the last but third paragraph: ‘In all sincerity, we offer, to the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past twenty years, abject and true remorse.’
When the Loyalist ceasefire came, it came with a rush. We were saying in the CLMC, ‘Yes, we’re working towards it’, but the UDA wanted to call it virtually instantly. I think one suggestion by the
UDA, and you can check this with the UVF leadership, was to drive up to Long Kesh car park and declare a ceasefire there. This was always one of the confusions with the UVF and the UDA, certainly in the media’s mind. The UVF never placed its prisoners on the same plane as the UDA seemed to place theirs. Individually they placed their prisoners on a very high plane, but collectively the prisoners were an incarcerated battalion. They had no greater authority than any other battalion; they were entitled to an opinion, were certainly entitled to discussion and dialogue, but they weren’t entitled to have such influence. People said [to the UDA], ‘Hold on a minute, you can’t do it that way … This needs to be vigorous, it needs to make a splash because it is coming on the back of the IRA ceasefire.’ There had to be a splash in order to force our way into the frame. We were being left out of the frame, and that the Loyalist ceasefire was going to be called was brilliant, but how was it going to make serious headline news, how was it going to change the atmosphere and the mood within our whole society? In discussion, between the UDA, UVF, Red Hand, it became clear that, ‘OK, maybe that’s not a bad idea, how would you do that?’ ‘OK, we could … put all our people up on the platform.’ So next was: ‘Who wants to be on the platform?’ All of the very reticent military people said, ‘Well, it’ll not be me, I’m not going anywhere near a camera.’ In the main the UVF is still a bit like that. UVF personnel have never sought the cameras; the PUP who are very close to the UVF do, because we’re involved expressly and directly in politics, but while other paramilitaries have sought the cameras, the UVF personnel have very, very rarely done that. It was clear that it needed to be of significance. I can’t remember who came up with the idea of the alpha and omega, [but] Spence was effectively the first Loyalist prisoner as far as this phase of Northern Ireland’s nightmare is concerned, and somebody came up with the idea of alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, which is quite significant, and if you look at the sentiment behind that, it’s huge. I think it was quite brilliantly handled. One guy told me he was in a hotel room in Pakistan, he just happened to be watching – I think it was Sky or CNN or whatever – and, you know, flash, big news. You don’t have to travel very far to know that Loyalism doesn’t exist … in the minds of many people beyond these shores, and all of a sudden they did, and that was important for a number of reasons. They were heady days and interesting times and I actually think that the style and nature of the way it was approached, with the media briefed the evening before to be at … Fernhill House, and, you know, Fernhill House had its own significance as well, not just [because of] its relationship with the UVF, [but] … its relationship with fighting Ulstermen and Ulstermen prepared to say, ‘Well, I’m not going to be bullied, I’m not going to be downtrodden, I’m going to stand up and do something about it’ … and remember, this had never been done before, and I actually think it was done quite well, and it was the PUP and the UDP who took the platform and Gusty Spence who read out the statement. You could argue that Gusty Spence wrote the statement, which I think is fair enough, but only in draft form and then to be read and discussed … and then copper-fastened. I don’t remember, although others may, the draft being adjusted, because it had some interesting, quite fundamental issues in it, like abject and true remorse to all of the innocent victims. And we’re still waiting on the IRA saying that. Also it said that never again shall we allow our society to dissolve into bloody conflict … They were quite brilliant pieces. I mean, somebody needs to take it apart word for word and see what does it really mean, because those sentiments were real. I think they still are …
Q. Was there any opposition within the UVF that you sensed at that time towards the notion of ceasefire?
A. Yes, but not jumping up and down or breathing fire or threatening splits, no …
Q. Nervousness?
A. Nervousness … people who were the leaders were nervous, people like me who were analysts were nervous. People … had the right to be nervous, we’d never been there before, and … there’s also parts of the jigsaw that you are always conscious are either in shadow or can’t be seen at all and we admitted that … if all that we know is as we know it this could be OK, but then if it was ‘if’, it was a big risk, and I can remember one UVF leader saying, ‘It is risky, but sure there are no guarantees in life’, and … that phrase has been played in my head for a very long time, but played alongside it is: ‘Well, we’re at the crossroads’, and the UVF has managed to maintain itself at the crossroads, I would say, very well. It’s had discipline difficulties like many others, in fact less than many others, but nevertheless has sat solidly at the crossroads.
The positive language notwithstanding, the UVF ceasefire was called on exactly the same terms as the IRA’s: it was not final but was conditional on events and could be called off if it was felt necessary. In the months that followed, those circumstances evolved twice, the first time with the publication of the so-called Frameworks documents which outlined very ambitious, and for Unionists, provocative British and Irish ideas about Northern Ireland’s possible future relationship with the government in Dublin, and the second was in February 1996 when the IRA’s ceasefire broke down. In neither instance, however, did the UVF’s nerve break. As things turned out, the Framework papers were much diluted down in the Good Friday Agreement while the IRA ceasefire was restored in the summer of 1997.
… there was only one major issue for me … in calling a ceasefire the UVF signed up to nothing. The language used meant the UVF placed itself at the crossroads, interested in viewing down that street … but retaining the capacity to go in whatever direction it felt [was] required … The ceasefire meant, ‘We’re looking’; it didn’t mean you’ve gone away, it didn’t mean you’ve no weaponry, it didn’t mean you haven’t got the ability. I can remember Francie Molloy, the Sinn Fein councillor from Coalisland, saying, ‘If things go wrong we can always go back to what we do best’, and I can remember saying similar things, because it was actually true. You’re sitting at the crossroads, you’re having a juke down the road, you might sent a few scouts out, to find out what’s up the road; if you don’t like what’s up the road, if up the road is dishonourable, you come back and you retain the option to go in whatever direction is required. And that is where the UVF were. No, I think that we need to extrapolate that a little, that’s where the UVF are. Journalists who play games with the existence of paramilitaries … need to waken up and smell the coffee, [and understand] that neither the IRA, the UVF nor the UDA signed up to anything; they signed up to the ceasefire for exploration. And [even] what came out of the exploration has not been signed up to. The Good Friday Agreement, for instance, is not signed up to by either the IRA or the UVF or the UDA or the Red Hand for that matter. In that respect I think we all need to think very carefully about what we think people’s mindsets are, and if people’s mindsets are confused, as they always have been in this society by the perceived distrust of the other, well then we’re going nowhere. It’s slow, it’s laborious, it’s tedious, it’s painful; against that backdrop there’s also a loss of discipline because the war isn’t being fought and what do you do with your ‘soldiers’ when the war is not being fought? All those are nightmare management positions for leaderships to deal with … Some cope better than others … but it seems to me that the UVF was saying, ‘Well, we’ll have a look, let’s explore, let’s see …’ And of course then, you know, we hit all kinds of shit when the Framework for the Future documents appeared, I think it was February 1995. That was a nightmare … because they were expressly green; they were Provo-pandering material, there’s no question about that. But you had to outwork [the questions]: ‘What is that for, what game is being played …?’ Certainly, in those early days, you have to realise that the ceasefire was constantly, constantly under threat, and effectively under review, because we had the IRA’s abandonment of a ceasefire again in 1996, never mind the nightmare of the Framework document, and Loyalism pulling itself apart and Unionism pulling itself apart, politically and int
ellectually, over what the future might hold, who is honourable, who is dishonourable. I’ve never known the British government to be considered honourable by the Unionist community … and where I think the UVF got this right was in this way … Our great leaders within Unionism accused British governments of being betrayers then demanded that the betrayer look after their interests, [whereas] the UVF was moving away from the betrayer looking after our interests and thinking, ‘Well, fuck me, we need to do this, this has to be done by us, or people like us, insomuch as that we take responsibility for ourselves, that the judgement isn’t going to be Robin Eames’s for ever … we can’t keep playing this third-party game, we’ve got to take responsibility’, and I think that in many ways that was another brave step by the UVF. I can remember as well the Framework documents. We took those apart and put them together, and I mean took them apart and put them together again, through a process of conference and dialogue … and it was, I have to say, another interesting time and a time of great fear because those ceasefires were under strain and stress. And then of course the IRA detonated bombs in Canary Wharf that killed two people … it was very, very difficult against that backdrop and yet Loyalism held. And the same scumbags of journalists, and they’re not all scumbags, but the same scumbag journalists who play the tittle-tattle were shocked beyond belief at Loyalism’s capacity to hold … I think the Loyalist paramilitary leadership need serious appreciation for the way in which they held the line … there were … a few wobbly bits, you know, the beginnings of ‘no claim, no blame’, but in the main, and certainly the people that I was dealing with, were absolutely solid as a rock … It wasn’t a question of ‘Oh well, they’ve done this so we’ll do that’; it was a question: ‘What does all this mean, where is this going?’ That required analysis, and they pulled in all the avenues for analysis and, and stayed their hand, thankfully, because it was, it was, it was serious enough …
