None Shall Divide Us

by Michael Stone

  As a teenage boy I ruled the ‘middle Braniel’ with an iron will and at fifteen I was already showing signs of the man I would become. There were fights every weekend and sometimes on weekday evenings with the Braniel’s two other gangs – Terminus and Lower – who felt our tough justice. I also enjoyed leading the gang into rival turf in Castlereagh, Corduff and Tullycarnet in a bid to lure gangs from these areas back to my patch for a real fight. I had tough street rules and was proud of my ‘nine to ninety’ rule: any male from a ganged-up area who was between those ages was fair game.

  The gang had weapons. There were no guns but we did carry small flick knives, and during a scrap we would use anything that came to hand, including lumps of wood and bricks. We even strapped coins to the inside of our hands. Our uniform was distinctive and made up of jeans and ox-blood-red Doctor Marten’s boots. It was our badge. The gang lasted a year. It disbanded when the Troubles erupted and the Braniel became a tinderbox. Catholic families were forced to flee, grab what belongings they could and run for their lives. They had windows broken and threats shouted at them, but the houses were never burnt. That was a deliberate ploy to keep it ready for the new Protestant family who were waiting to move in, after being kicked out of another part of the city. All over Belfast thousands of displaced families were on the move, intimidated out of the areas they called home. Areas once mixed now became ghettos. Northern Ireland had drawn her sectarian battle lines.

  Overnight the Braniel became almost exclusively Protestant. Only a handful of Catholic families chose to stay. A good friend of mine was one of the final victims, and when his family left I broke up the gang. To this day he probably thinks his family was forced to flee because Protestants didn’t want them on their estate. The truth is, they were forced to flee because an angry young Catholic set fire to a wheelie bin and pushed it up against the family’s back door in a fit of rage. Two nights before they were forced to leave, a gang from an estate in Woodstock in East Belfast had come into the Braniel to target Catholic families. They had escaped, but another friend Tim was targeted. He was furious that his house was trashed and my other friend’s was untouched, so he set the wheelie bin on fire and calmly walked away. I witnessed the incident. When I tackled him about what he was doing he just said, ‘I’m not leaving on my own. He can come with me.’

  They were gone that evening. They didn’t even take their furniture. They were terrified they would be ambushed if they hung around packing up. The family moved to Twinbrook and so did Tim.

  Like many young boys, I followed my father into Harland & Wolff, but it would not be long before I would be in trouble again and fired for assaulting a workmate. In working-class Protestant families it was more than tradition for a boy to follow his father into the world-famous yard. It was obligatory. I had left school just weeks before and was just four months off sixteen. I started as a ‘hammer boy’ in the blacksmith shop at the Deep Water dock. I loved my new job and looked forward to going into work in the mornings. I felt grown up.

  One of my duties in the blacksmith shop was to direct a massive steam-driven sledgehammer on to sheets of white-hot metal. Hammered into smaller, workable sizes, these were then fashioned by the craftsmen into fittings for the ships. I loved the Deep Water. I worked hard and kept myself out of bother. The highlight of my working day was mealtimes, when I would slope off and fish for mackerel and mullet using home-made harpoons made from welding rods. I felt like Huckleberry Finn.

  My good behaviour lasted just a couple of months. One lunchtime I put a mullet on an anvil and hit it with the hammer, splattering fish guts all over the men and their lunch. The men wanted to paint my balls with red lead and I would have been in agony for a month. I had to stay away from the yard for a week.

  Within the year Harland & Wolff indentured me. I was signed up as an apprentice steelworker. I wasn’t looking forward to being cooped up in a classroom and hated the move from the freedom of the Deep Water to the dark indoor enclosures of the training school. I knew it was a job for life and I knew it would be safe and secure employment until my retirement, but I didn’t want it. My wild and reckless streak kicked in and I began looking for a way out.

  There were a lot of hard men in the yard. These men had to be tough, and some were doing terrible jobs. ‘Stagers’, for instance, were the men who erected the scaffolding around the ships and boats. They had to be physically and emotionally tough. There were a lot of deaths, about six a year: guys falling from a height and being sliced in two when they hit the scaffolding. Young apprentices learnt very quickly that if you messed with these guys they would turf you into the Deep Water.

  Most workers had a go at making ‘old rattlies’, home-made sub-machine guns, in the yard machinery shop. They were basic but worked. Loyalist paramilitaries used them in the early days and they were fine for a couple of rounds before becoming volatile. They tended to jam or even explode unexpectedly.

  I hated the training school, being indoors and being told what to do. Small groups of apprentices would work together at the one bench, sharing equipment and machinery, and every day we had something new to build or learn. Brian Moorehead, who was murdered by the Shankill Butchers, sat at the bench next to mine and so did Danny McDowell, a young lad from East Belfast. Danny was quiet and I was brash, but we ended up pals. I looked out for him because older men, who should have known better, picked on him.

  One day, about five months into our apprenticeship, he was thumped in the face and called an ‘East Belfast bastard’ by a man from the Shankill. Danny told me about it at the morning teabreak. I hated bullies, despising them from the day that teacher thumped me, so I told Danny he had to stand up to them. Danny shook his head and said he couldn’t because that would only make things worse. So I vowed to do something about it. If Danny couldn’t help himself, then I would help him. I chose lunchtime and followed the man who thumped Danny into the toilets.

  He was a big lad with Afro-type hair that stood like a halo around his head. I would make sure he didn’t act the bully any more. He was wearing hairspray. I recognised the smell. It was the same one my mother wore. He had a cigarette lighter in his hand, one of the plastic Zippo type that had just hit the shops. I asked him if I could see it. He handed it over. I lit it and whoomph, his hair went up like a burning bush. He screamed. I kneed him in the stomach and he fell, hitting his head on one of the urinals. I kicked him a couple of times and warned him that if he ever assaulted my friend again he would get a chisel in the neck. He lay on the ground blubbering like a baby. An instructor heard the commotion and ran in. I was hauled before my bosses and the union representative. Danny and the bully were also present. My friend never opened his mouth. He stood hanging his head and refused to look at anyone. I was disappointed. He refused to confirm that he had been punched and to my disgust the bully kept crying and saying, ‘Stone attacked me, Stone attacked me.’

  As far as the authorities were concerned, it was an unprovoked, one-sided attack. I was suspended. The Harland & Wolff bosses called the Harbour Police and I was removed from the premises. They arrived in a small police van with just two seats in the front. In the back they kept their Alsatians, and I had to sit on the floor on newspaper they had put down for the dogs. When we got to the front gate of the shipyard the Harbour Police let me out. I preferred to walk the length of Queen’s Road rather than stay a minute longer in the van.

  There were terrible rows at home over the suspension and my father kept saying, ‘Michael, I am a union man. You can’t do this.’

  I was reinstated four weeks later but I turned it down. My father was disappointed because John was doing really well in his apprenticeship at the shipyard. I had my eye on other pursuits. Danny never lasted at the yard and that doesn’t surprise me. He couldn’t stand up for himself. I heard he is now working as a caretaker in a block of flats in East Belfast.

  By the end of 1970 the Provisional IRA had begun their indiscriminate bombing campaign. The following year they started to
target soldiers and policemen. I was beginning to sit up and take notice. Like many young Loyalist men, I recognised that there had to be a response to the Republican assault and there had to be a counter-attack. Some chose to defend their country wearing the uniform of the police force or the newly formed Ulster Defence Regiment. The rest of us chose the paramilitaries.

  On 6 February 1971 an IRA unit from the Ardoyne shot dead three young British Army soldiers in the Belfast hills. The three, who were Scottish and had just arrived in Northern Ireland, died in an horrific way. Aged just seventeen, eighteen and twenty-three, the squaddies were off duty and drinking in a bar in the city centre. Two young and pretty girls lured them to a fake party but, instead of being driven to the late-night party, the trio were taken to a lonely spot in the hills outside the city and shot one by one in the head. The youngest was just a year older than me. In memory of the Scottish soldiers, young Loyalists in the Shankill set up ‘Tartan gangs’. They wanted to cause trouble for Catholics because, in their eyes, Catholics supported the IRA and it was the IRA who had murdered three young men.

  Soon other Loyalist areas were following and the Braniel, in turn, formed its own gang. We had a uniform like the Hole in the Wall Gang: denims and DM boots. The only difference was the small piece of tartan sewn into the collars of our denim jackets. But our Tartan gang was different from the Hole in the Wall in another, important way: it was a paramilitary street gang and it was sectarian. The Braniel Tartan was run along proper military lines and made the Hole in the Wall look like babies having a water-pistol fight. It was organised and structured. We copied the military and had a general to lead the team. There were deputy leaders, or sergeants, and we had officers – the gang members.

  I was General of the Braniel Tartan and had 140 teenagers in my gang. I was known as the ‘heavy digger’ – fast fists, hard fists, first in and last out. Every weekend I would lead my Braniel Tartan into the city centre. We would meet with other Tartan gangs, such as Young Newtown or Woodstock, and rampage through Belfast. Any Catholics stupid enough to stray into our path would be shoved through glass windows or beaten up. Every weekend the Catholic shop opposite the church on Castle Street would be trashed. The Belfast Telegraph newspaper described it as a ‘sea of denim moving through the city centre’. It must have been an unnerving sight to passers-by because, on any weekend, there would be five hundred or more Tartan gang members on the streets. It was as the General of the Braniel Tartan that I came to the attention of Tommy Herron. For many months the UDA leader just watched me and made no approach.

  It was 1971 and Northern Ireland was literally exploding all over the place. That was the year that sectarian strife touched my family. I have a cousin, Wesley Lambe, who lived in Farringdon Gardens, on the edge of the Catholic Ardoyne area of the city. He was unmarried and, an only child, lived with and cared for his wheelchair-bound mother and frail father. It was a weekday evening when Wesley was alerted by his Protestant neighbours that Republicans were on their way to burn them out. His neighbours fled, taking what belongings they could carry, and Wesley and his ailing parents were left facing a Republican mob. His mother and father watched, helpless, as the mob beat him and put a revolver to his head, chanting, ‘Kill the Orange bastards.’ Wesley said one Catholic woman who lived in the same street shouted at the mob, ‘Leave him alone, he’s only a big softie who looks after his ma and da.’

  The mob did let him go and he walked up the street, away from the home and area he loved, pushing his mother in a wheelchair and with his father holding his hand. He told me he cried as he made that last journey from Farringdon Gardens, the place he always called home. I listened to him sobbing as he told me his story in the front room of our family home. I felt pity for the man as he related how he thought he was going to die, but pity turned to anger when he said he thought his father would die from the shock. Wesley’s experience touched a raw nerve. I was furious.

  This sectarian attack on my family sowed the seeds of hatred and resentment that would stay with me for most of my adult life. The seeds took root, pushing me nearer and nearer to the big paramilitary organisations. I began to take an interest in what was going on around me. I bought newspapers and listened to news bulletins. I familiarised myself with the deteriorating situation. I vowed to never forget the sobs of a grown man who thought that he was going to die and his parents would be left with no one to care for them. I knew someone, somewhere sanctioned this activity and, just like the school bullies I despised, they had to be sorted out.

  But worse was to come. Once again my family would be touched by sectarian violence and this time loved ones would be injured and killed. Harry Beggs and his sister, Doreen Beggs, were frequent visitors to our family home. Harry, an educated young man, was blown to bits in the electricity showroom where he worked in August 1971. He died saving the lives of two young female colleagues. Seven months later Doreen took her two little children into the city centre on a Saturday afternoon shopping trip. They stopped for some dinner in the Abercorn, a popular restaurant in Cornmarket. It was 4.30 and the place was packed with women and kids. A bomb ripped through the restaurant, killing two women and injuring seventy others. Doreen and her two youngsters were among the seriously wounded, suffering severe leg injuries. The bomb was planted by members of West Belfast’s 1st Battalion of the IRA, who hid it under a table. The warning was phoned from a pub on the Falls Road, just two minutes before the bomb went off. The two women who died were Catholics.

  When the IRA blew up a popular restaurant in Belfast city centre they pushed me into the arms of the UDA. I knew, when that bomb went off in March 1972, that I was on a path of no return that would eventually take me to prison, or to my death.

  Loyalist

  When I was just a boy

  This bloody war was begun

  With a rebellious violence

  Which killed and stunned.

  Indiscriminate terrorists

  Still slash and scar

  With sectarian attacks

  On Protestant bars.

  Bombs of destruction

  Tear the heart out of my city.

  Bloody Friday, Enniskillen,

  They never showed any pity.

  Republican death squads

  Spawned from hell.

  In ethnic-cleansing, they do excel.

  These hooded cowards

  With hate-filled eyes

  Create the horror

  Ignore the cries.

  Now a man

  I’ve answered the call.

  I am an Ulster Freedom Fighter, defender of all.

  4

  FOR GOD AND ULSTER

  TOMMY HERRON WATCHED MY FLOURISHING STREET CAREER WITH INTEREST. HE LIVED ON THE BRANIEL ESTATE AND SAW POTENTIAL IN THE ROUGH-AND-TOUGH KID WHO EXCELLED IN HIS ROLE AS LEADER OF THE TARTAN GANG. I sorted out the ‘anti-socials’, those who terrorised old people, trashed their neighbours’ properties and were a nuisance in the area. I gave offenders one chance. They were warned verbally, but there were no second chances. I never ‘kneecapped’ anyone, but beatings were a regular occurrence. Tommy Herron later told me it was my ability to keep the anti-socials under control that brought me to his attention. He said he was impressed with my street skills, which belonged to a man older than sixteen.

  A one-time security guard, Herron was a powerful and ruthless man who ran the East Belfast brigade of the UDA from a tiny office on the Newtownards Road. He was also vice-chairman of the Association, and this made him one of the most important and powerful figures in the early development of the UDA. He was a big, muscular man and always expensively dressed in a suit and tie and a long camel coat. Herron appeared frequently on television and gave countless press conferences, sometimes in a combat jacket and forage cap, at that time the standard UDA uniform. He was abrupt and he was rash, and he liked to shout and raise his voice, but when he talked, he talked sense. When Tommy Herron spoke I sat up and took notice.

  I first met him in 1972. Altho
ugh it was thirty years ago, I can still see him in my mind’s eye. It was a weekend evening in early summer when his car pulled up. In the middle of the Braniel estate was a small grassed area where kids would play and teenagers would congregate. I had my Alsatian, Wolf, with me. About ten of us, including a couple of girls, were larking about, when a silver Zodiac car pulled up alongside us and stopped. A man wearing a sharp suit got out, followed by two men. They wore dark glasses and were obviously there as personal security. The man in the sharp suit approached me, looked at me and then finally addressed me.

  ‘Hello, kid, I want a word with you.’

  I didn’t answer him. I had no idea who he was. He spoke again.

  ‘Listen, kid, I’m moving into the area. I know you live in Ravenswood Park. I know it’s your area. What’s it like to live here?’

  I didn’t know who the man was, but he looked important. His car was flash; he had expensive clothes and two bodyguards. Whoever he was, he knew my name and where I lived. He handed me an address in Ravenswood Crescent and instructed me to visit over the following weeks. I had no intention of going anywhere near his house. Two weeks later I found out who he was. He was on television, wearing a combat jacket, forage cap and dark glasses. The TV reporter addressed him as Tommy Herron, UDA Supreme Commander. I was livid. I didn’t want the UDA, whoever they were, moving into my turf. I asked around, to find out if anybody knew anything about him, but no one did, except one lad. The only thing he said was, Herron was capable of blowing your head off.

  I still had the UDA leader’s address, so I went to see him. I wanted to find out exactly what he wanted from me. I knew he wasn’t just passing the time of day when he stopped his flash car to speak to me. He wanted something and I knew it involved me. I rang his doorbell and he invited me in. He came straight to the point.