Fortnight Publications Ltd.

UDA Fights the FlabAuthor(s): Brian RowanSource: Fortnight, No. 268 (Dec., 1988), p. 6Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25551764 .

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of the Irish Sea are involved in a massive hunt for an IRA active service unit which appears to have gone to ground".

Next morning, in the Mirror, this became IRA SQUAD OUT TO KILL THATCHER'. The story read: "The

assassination team?two men and a woman?was pinpointed after three Provo suspects were picked up near the house of Ulster supremo Tom King".

Next day, the press began to put names to the 'IRA squad'. The choice was predictable. 'HIT GIRL GUN NING FOR MAGGIE', cried the

Sunday Express, explaining: "IRA hit

girl Evelyn Glenholmes was believed last night to be stalking Mrs Thatcher,

using an innocent six-year-old child as

cover." The Sunday Mirror, however, claimed that "IRA henchman Patrick

Murray, nicknamed the Minder" was the

target of the police search. After Sunday stories about "excep

tional security" at the Queen's Scottish home at Balmoral when Mrs Thatcher

joined the royal family at church, the three were charged on the Monday, with the panoply of security measures?snif fer dogs, marksmen, helicopter?re ported at length. ITN followed its report on the hearing with the announcement that police had set up a "confidential anti-terrorist hotline" in Blackpool in their search for the "IRA hit squad".

The trial opened on October 1 Oth this

year, in the same week as the Tory con

ference?marked by a ?1.4 million se

curity operation?was held in Brighton for the first time since the 1984 bomb.

The emotive conference scenes were

carried in the bulletins close to reports of the prosecution case.

Over footage of Norman Tebbit

pushing his wife in a wheelchair, BBC news announced: "TheTebbits returned to Brighton to the hotel where an IRA bomb nearly killed them four years ago tomorrow\" The picture changed to Mr

King and the voice-over continued: "Three Irish people facing conspiracy charges are said to have had a list of 19

important people including the Northern Ireland secretary. Tom King." Some of that day's papers had no doubt where

guilt lay. 'KING'S DAUGHTER FOILS IRA GANG' proclaimed Today.

On the 20th came Mr King's heavily publicised announcement that the right to silence was to be ended. The 'Wilt shire three' had just opted not to give evidence. ITN explained: "The police in Northern Ireland say that for some time now they've been faced with an organ ised stay-silent campaign among those

arrested on suspected terrorist or racket

eering offences." Mr King said on the

bulletin that it was "not common sense" for the courts to be unable to draw an

inference from a person's silence. The three were convicted by major

ity verdict a week later. Though the

prosecution had admitted it had been unable to prove any link between them and the IRA, most of the media had no

doubts. BBC reported: "The Northern

Ireland secretary, Tom King, is one of the people the IRA most wants to kill...

for days, possibly weeks, last summer, the IRA had their spies hidden in woods

150 yards from his home." The tabloids were exultant. 'EVIL

IRA THREE FACE LIFE', 'KING MURDER TEAM GUILTY: hunt for fourth terrorist in IRA plot to kill cabinet

minister' and THE THREE DEADLY DROP-OUTS: IRA spies guilty of King plot' were some of the headlines.

Liz Curtis

The scene of Craig's murder?he wasn't liked

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UDA fights the flab THIS month sees the anniversary of the death of John McMichael. the leading Ulster Defence Association figure, in an

IRA booby-trap explosion outside his

Lisburn home. It's been a critical year for the UDA.

The killing, on a winter's night just before Christmas, sent a chill through the ranks of the loyalist paramilitary

organisation. The blast removed its most

politically minded and astute figure and

brought to a head a tide of discontent. Since the McMichael murder the

UDA leadership has tried to shrug off its

widespread and damaging conse

quences. There was talk of collusion? that McMichael, anxious to detach the

loyalist group from its gangster image, might have been 'fingered'.

The man most suspected of setting up McMichael was Jim Craig, whose

racketeering activities in the paramili tary underworld had made him a public enemy. Craig's dealings became the

subject of an internal UDA inquiry and his death in October in an east Belfast bar was highly predictable.

The UDA's military wing, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, admitted the shoot

ing. A 68-year-old man, Victor Rainey, also died in the bar-room attack.

But the bitter UFF statement said: "This is not the first time innocent

people have died because of Jim Craig, whose treasonable activities resulted in the death of John McMichael and many

others. Let those who weep crocodile tears remember the suffering and an

guish of those betrayed." A fortnight after the Craig murder

another key UDA figure, Davy Payne, was jailed in Belfast for 19 years. In

January he had been caught in Por tadown transporting a huge consign

ment of munitions, including 61 Kalashnikov rifles, 30 Browning pis tols, 150 fragmentation grenades and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Payne, who at the time of his arrest was UDA 'brigadier' in north Belfast, had like Craig become persona non

grata within the loyalist group in the new order following the sacking of

Andy Tyrie in March.

Tyrie, 'supreme commander' for 15

years, had struggled to maintain control of the UDA after the McMichael killing. His leadership was deemed ineffec

tive?especially in curbing corruption and racketeering?and, three days after a loyalist attempt to murder him near his

Dundonald home, he was stood down. Since then the organisation has been

under the control of an' inner counc i V of UDA brigadiers in Belfast, south-east

Antrim, mid-Ulster and Derry. So far it has spent much of its time attempting to sort out the many internal wrangles.

An amnesty was last month offered to those the UDA suspects of colluding

with republican groups and the leader

ship now believes that the organisation has been returned to a position of

strength. What implications that has for the main objects of UDA activity in the

past?Catholics?only time will tell.

Brian Rowan

August 1914: on a Cologne railway sta

tion platform, an English Quaker and a

German pastor discuss the onset of the

first world war. "The lights," they agree, "are going out all over Europe." 1942: an

Austrian schoolgirl refuses to join the rest of her class in the Nazi salute.

Disconnected events?but the en

counter led eventually to the formation of the International Fellowship of Rec onciliation. And the schoolgirl was Hil

degard Mayr, vice-president of IFOR,

along with her husband Jean Goss. For 35 years, the Goss-Mayrs have

taken their message of non-violence and

social justice around an extraordinary list of the world's flashpoints. And last

month the indefatigable couple made

their second trip to Northern Ireland.

Hildegard (58) has a serenity which commands instant respect. "I lived

through the second world war. I saw the

horrors, the destruction?not only mate

rially but also of the psychology of the human being. After being through this I

felt I had to give my life to peacemak ing?otherwise it didn't make sense.

And when you start, you can't stop." Indeed, they haven't. They began by

challenging the cold war: in 1959, Hil

degard and Jean (75) organised the first

meeting after the war between Germans and Poles, in Vienna. In 1961 they

staged, again in Vienna, the first meet

ing between theologians from the Rus sian Orthodox Church and western

counterparts, leading to the formation of a centre for east-west relations.

"We tried to show that there is no

alternative to a third world war unless the people east and west in Europe learn to respect each other and leam more

about each other, about their enemy

images?these are important, you have them here?of each other," she said.

In the early 60s the Goss-Mayrs lobbied the Second Vatican Council?

apogee of Catholic liberalism?per

Global peacemakers

^____ill W JmL, ?_fl_______HQ u-MM / w Jr __B_^____Hfc iHl_________l ___ __________ ____ _________________ ->

mBmJk^^jJmB^_JBL-JBBBB% Hildegard and Jean Goss-Mayr?tireless campaigners

suading the international church hierar

chy to endorse conscientious objection. Vatican II was one of the influences

in the emergence of 'liberation theol

ogy' in Latin America. And for the fol

lowing 15 years, they worked there with the leaders, like the Nobel Prize winner

Adolfo Peres Esquival, of the "non-vio lent liberation movement" against the

military dictatorships which spanned much of the sub-continent. In 1974 an

organisation expressing these ideals,

Serpaj, was established under Esquival. It now operates in 10 countries.

Serpaj, said Hildegard, "has contrib uted greatly to overcoming military dictatorships in Latin America and it is

continuing to press for human rights and the necessary deep-going social re

forms". Since leaving the region, Hilde

gard has remained involved through a

European support network for Serpaj, which presses for the relief of Latin American countries from their impos sible debt burdens.

Through their work in Latin Amer

ica, the Goss-Mayrs were invited in

1984 to the Philippines, then labouring under the Marcos dictatorship, shortly after the assassination of the opposition

leader, Ninoy Aquino. The Goss-Mayrs were to become involved in seminars on

non-violent action which helped shape the movement for 'people's power'.

With Ninoy's widow, Cory, and the

primate, Cardinal Sin, they discussed how to plan for the expected split in the

army. Their preparations paid off in the vast peaceful demonstrations that pre vented a massive bloodletting.

The Goss-Mayrs' pilgrimage for

peace has taken them to many other

countries across the continents, but last month they made a series of shorter

journeys across Northern Ireland, visit

ing political parties and churchpeople, Corrymeela, the Peace People and com

munity projects, and travelling to Ennis

killen, Derry and Craigavon. They were reluctant to plunge in

with views on the 'troubles', but a gen eral comment they make may perhaps be

appropriate. "The line which divides

right from wrong, good from evil," they say, "does not run between the conflict

partners. Right and wrong are found on

both sides?even though often in radi

cally unequal degrees."

Robin Wilson 6 December Fortnight

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