Billy Wright (terrorist)

William Stephen Wright (7 July 1960 – 27 December 1997) was a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary leader during the Troubles. He joined the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in his hometown of Portadown around 1975. After spending several years in prison, he became a born again Christian preacher. Wright resumed his UVF activities around 1986 and became commander of its Mid-Ulster Brigade in the early 1990s, taking over from Robin "the Jackal" Jackson. According to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Wright was involved in the sectarian killings of up to 20 Catholics, although he was never convicted for any. It has been alleged that Wright, like his predecessor, was working with RUC Special Branch.

Wright drew media attention during the Drumcree standoffs of 1995 and 1996, when he supported the Protestant Orange Order in its bid to march its traditional route through the Catholic area of Portadown. In 1994, the UVF and other paramilitary groups had called ceasefires. However, during the July 1996 Drumcree crisis, Wright's unit carried out several attacks, including a sectarian killing. Wright became a staunch opponent of the Northern Ireland peace process, seeing it as a sell-out to Irish nationalists and republicans. For breaking the ceasefire, Wright and his Portadown unit were stood down by the UVF leadership. He was expelled from the UVF and threatened with execution if he did not leave Northern Ireland. Wright ignored the threats and, along with many of his followers, defiantly formed the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), becoming its leader. The group carried out a string of killings of Catholic civilians.

In January 1997 he was arrested for making death threats against a woman, and that March was convicted and sent to the Maze Prison. While imprisoned, Wright continued to direct the LVF's activities. In December that year, he was assassinated inside the prison by Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners. The LVF carried out a wave of sectarian attacks in retaliation. There was speculation that the authorities colluded in his killing as he was a threat to the peace process. An inquiry found no evidence of this, but concluded there were serious failings by the prison authorities.

His image adorned murals in loyalist housing estates and many of his devotees have tattoos bearing his likeness. He was also a figure who struck fear into the local Catholic community.

Early life

William Stephen "Billy" Wright, named after his grandfather, was born in Wolverhampton, England on 7 July 1960 to David Wright and Sarah McKinley, Ulster Protestants from Portadown, 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 many of their neighbours 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 Robert Wright had once served as a Royal Commissioner. His father found employment in the West Midlands industrial city of Wolverhampton.

In 1964, the family returned to Northern Ireland and Wright soon came under the influence of his maternal uncle Cecil McKinley, a member of the Orange Order. About three years later, Wright's parents separated and his mother decided to leave her children behind when she transferred once more to England. None of the Wright siblings would ever see their mother again. Wright and his four sisters (Elizabeth, Jackie, Angela and Connie) were placed in foster care by the welfare authorities. He was raised separately from his sisters in a children's home in Mountnorris, South Armagh (a predominantly Irish republican area). Wright was brought up in the Presbyterian religion of his mother and attended church twice on Sundays. The young Wright mixed with Catholics and played Gaelic football, indicating an amicable relationship with the local Catholic, nationalist population. His family were not extreme Ulster loyalists. Wright's father, while campaigning for an inquest into his son's death, later described 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-Irish republican and anti-IRA."Billy Wright: Dying by the sword". ''Politico''. Emer Woodful. 1 February 1998.
Retrieved 4 September 2011 For a while David Wright cohabitated with Kathleen McVeigh, a Catholic from Garvagh.

Whilst attending Markethill High School, Wright 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 conflict known as the Troubles had been raging across Northern Ireland for about five years by this stage, and many young men such as Wright were swept up in the maelstrom of violence as the Provisional IRA ramped up its bombing campaign and sectarian killings of Catholics by loyalists 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 Catholic 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.

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 paramilitary 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 in 1974 when he was 14 years of age. 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 own UVF membership to the activities of his heroes Boyle and Somerville added an origin myth to his own life as a loyalist killer.

In 1975, shortly after Wright joined the organisation, he was caught in possession of illegal weapons and 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 later claimed 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. Inside the Maze he became the wing commander of H Block 2.

Wright later claimed that his decision to join the YCV had been influenced by the Kingsmill massacre of January 1976, when ten local Protestant civilians were killed by republicans. Wright's cousin Jim Wright, 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."
Locals say he was also "indoctrinated" by local loyalist paramilitaries; however he had personally come to the conclusion that the UVF was the only organisation that had the "moral right" to defend the Protestant people.

Wright was released from the Maze Prison in 1980. Whilst inside he had nursed a deep resentment against the British state for having imprisoned him for being a loyalist. He was met in the car park by his aunt and girlfriend. In a final act of defiance against the authorities, Wright raised his face up towards a British Army observation tower on the Maze's perimeter fence and shouted "Up the UVF". Following his release, 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 Great Britain.

Not long after his release from the Maze Prison, Wright was re-arrested, along with a number of UVF operatives in the area on evidence provided by Clifford McKeown, a "supergrass" within the movement. Wright was charged with murder, attempted murder, and the possession of explosives. He was detained in Crumlin Road Prison for ten months. The cases, however, ended without any major convictions after McKeown changed his mind and ceased giving evidence.

Born-again Christian

Wright returned to Portadown and initially tried to avoid paramilitarism. He found 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 Angela'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 preacher in County Armagh. He had studied Christianity whilst in prison to pass the time."The State sanctioned the murder of my son". ''Sunday Herald''. Chris Anderson. 5 September 1999.
Retrieved 5 September 2011

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 illegal drugs. He read a lot, including Irish history and theology. In particular he 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 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".

Angela Wright later claimed that her brother 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 Center towers would be destroyed from the air.

Mid-Ulster UVF commander

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 unionists because it gave the Irish Government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government. There were frequent 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 his mentor Robin "the Jackal" Jackson, who had been the leader since July 1975 and one of Wright's instructors in the use of weaponry. 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 of them.

While most of Wright's unit's victims were Catholic civilians, some were republican paramilitaries. On 3 March 1991, the Mid-Ulster UVF shot dead 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 attack. According to Paul Larkin in his book ''A Very British Jihad: collusion, conspiracy and cover-up in Northern Ireland'', UVF members at Cappagh claimed they had to drag Wright into the car as he became so frenzied once he started shooting that he didn't want to stop. British journalist Peter Taylor, however, stated in his book ''Loyalists'' that reliable UVF sources told him Wright was not involved. The RUC arrested Wright after the shootings. During the interrogation he provided the RUC with an alibi which placed him in Dungannon when the Cappagh attack occurred, and the RUC confirmed this. Wright 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". The Cappagh attack surprised the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade, as it had been carried out in a village which was an IRA stronghold, a departure from the usual arbitrary killings of Catholic civilians. Wright boasted that he and his Mid-Ulster unit had "put the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA on the run" and "decimated" them.

The IRA tried unsuccessfully to kill Wright on five occasions. On 23 October 1992 they planted a bomb under his car on West Street, Portadown. Wright found the bomb, which had fallen off, after being told a man was seen crouching beside the car. In June 1994, RUC officers visited Wright to warn him that someone had been seen tampering with his car. The officers were with him while he searched his car, but found nothing. Wright then sat in the car and started it, which detonated a bomb planted in the engine and set the car on fire. He escaped with minor injuries. The North Armagh Brigade of the IRA claimed responsibility.

As part of the Northern Ireland peace process, the IRA called a ceasefire in July 1994. This was followed by the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) calling a ceasefire on 13 October 1994. Wright was initially caught up in the euphoria, calling it "the happiest day of my life". However he became skeptical of the IRA's ceasefire, and soon he publicly disagreed with the UVF leadership calling their ceasefire. Wright "detested what he saw as concessions to rishnationalists enshrined in the tentative peace process, and accused the leaders of unionism and loyalism of betraying the cause". He eventually denounced the peace process as a sell-out.

Journalist Susan McKay, writing in ''The Guardian'', was one of the first to report 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.

King Rat

Wright's unit called themselves the "Brat pack". The nickname "King Rat" was first given to Wright by the Mid-Ulster Ulster Defence Association (UDA) 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 sobriquet of "King Rat"."Death of a Journalist". ''Cic Saor''. 20 December 2006. Retrieved 21 June 2011
/ref> ''Sunday World'' journalists Martin O'Hagan and Jim Campbell picked up on it and satirically named them the "rat pack"; they 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.

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 break-up of his marriage. He nevertheless maintained cordial relations with his ex-wife, Thelma, whom he described as a "good Christian".

Drumcree standoff

The Drumcree conflict, stemming from an Orange Order protest at Drumcree Church after their parade had been banned from marching through the predominantly 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 to try to overturn a ban preventing an Orange Order parade entering a neighbouring Catholic area. Wright had hoped to bring local UVF units onto the streets of the Shankill 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 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.The Billy Wright Inquiry – Report, chaired by The Right Honourable Lord MacLean. 14 September 2010. pp.56–57
Retrieved 6 September 2011 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.Bruce, Steve (2004). "Turf War and Peace: Loyalist Paramilitaries Since 1994", ''Terrorism and Political Violence'', Vol.16, Number 3, pp.501–21. Routledge. p.510

Following the decision by RUC Chief Constable Hugh Annesley to ban the Orange parade through the Garvaghy Road area of Portadown in the summer of 1996, a protest campaign of road blockages and general disruption was organised across Northern Ireland 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, was personally 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 British 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.

Wright stood around six feet tall, had close-cropped blond hair and cold, pale blue eyes.
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 T-shirt and wearing a single gold earring, he displayed a muscular build. 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 Wright as having been heavily tattooed, 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".Billy Wright: the loyalist assassin too violent for his comrades
"Billy Wright: the loyalist assassin too violent for his comrades". ''Belfast Telegraph. David McKittrick. 15 September 2010]. Retrieved 10 September 2011 Martin Dillon, who had interviewed him in his home in Portadown, admitted that he had been pleasant and charming throughout the interview, yet throughout the encounter Dillon had "sensed a dark side to his character". Wright was also considered to have been a "political thinker and capable strategist".The Rosemary Nelson Inquiry Report. p.155. Retrieved 27 September 2011

As a result of the Belfast leadership's inaction, Wright ordered several killings on his own initiative. On 9 July 1996, at the height of the Drumcree standoff, the dead body of Catholic taxi driver, Michael McGoldrick, was found 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 UDA 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 Wright, was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment for his involvement in the murder.

Leader of the Loyalist Volunteer Force

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 with journalist Emer Woodful in late August 1996:

My heart goes out to my family at a time like this. Well, if you think you're right, then you're right. Although I have done nothing wrong except express an opinion that's the prevalent opinion of the people of Northern Ireland and I will always do that, dear, no matter what the price. Well, I've been prepared to die for long many a year. I don't wish to die, but at the end of the day no one will force their opinions down my throat – no one.

Other units of the Mid-Ulster Brigade soon affirmed their loyalty to the leadership. Wright ignored an order to leave Northern Ireland by 1 September 1996, and hours before the deadline attended a Royal Black Preceptory

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