UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade
By 1972 the Provisional IRA's bombing campaign had escalated in its intensity, which triggered a violent response from loyalist paramilitary groups such as the UVF and Ulster Defence Association (UDA).
When the religious and political conflict that came to be known as "the Troubles" had broken out in the late 1960s, unionists had immediately formed vigilante groups, ostensibly to protect loyalist areas from nationalist attacks.
Hanna appointed himself the brigade's commander, and personally recruited and trained young men from the Portadown and Lurgan areas who were "prepared to defend Ulster at any cost".
[2] Tiernan also suggested that Hanna carried out bank and post office robberies and intimidated local businessmen into paying protection money to the Mid-Ulster UVF.
[6] The Mid-Ulster UVF had always operated as a semi-autonomous, self-contained group maintaining its distance from the Belfast leadership, even if Hanna did have a seat on the Brigade Staff.
[9] It covered a wide area of operations, drawing membership from Portadown, southern County Londonderry, Dungannon, Armagh, Lurgan, Cookstown, and rural settlements near these towns, although it had little or no membership in County Fermanagh, where loyalist paramilitaries never joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British Army as the defenders of choice in the eyes of local unionists to the degree they did elsewhere.
Composed of members of the UVF, UDR, RUC, Ulster Defence Association (UDA), and covert agents, the Pat Finucane Centre attributes at least 87 violent attacks to this .
[16] The UVF was a proscribed paramilitary organisation since its formation in 1966; however the ban was lifted on 4 April 1974 by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees in an effort to bring the group into the democratic process.
Organised and led by Billy Hanna, with Robin Jackson of the Lurgan unit playing a key role, the Mid-Ulster Brigade, along with a team from Belfast, planted three car bombs in Dublin.
RUC Special Patrol Group officer, John Weir, who worked with the Mid-Ulster UVF, stated in an affidavit that Hanna and Jackson had led one of the Dublin bombing teams.
[22] Former British soldier and psychological warfare operative Major Colin Wallace confirmed this, stating in a letter he had written to a friend in 1975 that he had been told the previous year that Jackson worked as an agent for the RUC's Special Branch.
[24] On 27 July 1975, Billy Hanna was shot dead outside his home in Lurgan, allegedly by Robin Jackson, who assumed command of the Mid-Ulster Brigade.
[25] Four days later, under the auspices of Robin Jackson, the Mid-Ulster Brigade carried out an attack against The Miami Showband, one of the most popular cabaret bands in Ireland at the time.
As the showband was returning to Dublin on 31 July at about 2.30 a.m. after a performance in Banbridge, they were flagged down at a bogus vehicle checkpoint on the main road at Buskill outside Newry by armed members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade wearing British Army uniforms.
[26] Martin Dillon suggested that the plan was for the device to explode across the border, wiping out the band as well as making it appear as if the Miami Showband was smuggling bombs on behalf of the Provisional IRA.
They were blown to pieces, and the remaining UVF gunmen opened fire on the dazed band members, killing three (trumpeter Brian McCoy, lead singer Fran O'Toole, and guitarist Tony Geraghty) and wounding two (bassist Stephen Travers and saxophonist Des McAlea).
[26] An international panel headed by Professor Douglass Cassel was commissioned by the Pat Finucane Centre to investigate collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces in a series of sectarian attacks and killings in the 1970s.
[15] Other attacks carried out by the UVF Mid-Ulster brigade included the killing of high-ranking Provisional IRA member John Francis Green in 1975, and the double shooting of the Reavey and O'Dowd families in 1976.
Two men were killed in the attack, Michael Devlin, a civilian and Liam Ryan, an important figure in the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade.
[30] A series of tit-for-tat shootings began between the Mid-Ulster Brigade and the Provisional IRA, with Catholic civilian Martin Byrne and ex-IRA man Sam Marshall killed in two separate attacks in Lurgan in early 1990.
The UVF men succeeded in killing IRA volunteers John Quinn, Dwayne O'Donnell and Malcolm Nugent before entering the bar and opening fire.
A member of the Mid-Ulster Brigade staff would later claim that the Cappagh attack was "one of the best things we did militarily in thirty years" as it proved they could strike directly at the Provisional IRA in an area which was a republican stronghold.
[36] Although senior UVF figures consistently claimed he was not involved in the Cappagh attack, the media blamed the killings on the leader of the Portadown unit, Billy Wright, known as "King Rat".
[37] However, it was certain that Wright's unit became the most active in Mid-Ulster with the killing of two teenage girls and an adult civilian at a mobile shop on a Catholic housing estate in Craigavon on 28 March 1991, one of their more ferocious acts.
Authors such as Martin Dillon argue that the Mid-Ulster Brigade had long established a reputation as a being a 'rogue' unit within the UVF that was responsible for some of the most savage sectarian attacks of the Troubles.
[45][page needed][46] Under Wright, the Mid-Ulster Brigade became notorious for attacks that involved shooting female Catholic civilians at close range.
[48] The Sunday World published an article on 18 September 2011 in which the paper stated that the attack was "planned by Billy Wright and fellow UVF murderer, Mark Swinger Fulton, in a flat in Portadown's loyalist Corcrain Estate.
Whilst the entire Portadown UVF defected to the LVF, other important Mid-Ulster Brigade units based in Lurgan, Donaghcloney, Richill and Banbridge instead swore loyalty to the Belfast leadership.
[53] A month later, members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade beat and stabbed Protestant teenagers, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine to death on a country road outside Tandragee, County Armagh after one of them had made disparaging comments about Jameson's killing earlier on at a drinking party.
