Jackie Mahood

Jackie Mahood (born c. 1954) is a Northern Irish former loyalist activist with both the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). He later split from these groups and became associated with the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), founded in 1996 by Billy Wright.

Family

Mahood was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, one of the three children of John Alexander and Sarah Mahood. He has a sister, Sandra and a deceased brother, Bobby. Mahood was brought up a Protestant in Ainsworth Avenue, a street that marks the dividing line between two staunchly loyalist areas of the upper Shankill Road and Woodvale Road. However, Ainsworth Avenue had a significant Catholic minority population and linked directly to the mainly Catholic Springfield Road until the early years of the Troubles when the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) erected temporary barricades which were later replaced with peace lines. He is married to Rae, by whom he has three children. His father, a member of the Orange Order, died in January 2008.

UVF and PUP activity

A member of the UVF, Mahood was sentenced to 14 years in 1975 for wounding with a firearm during a gun attack on a pub and possession of an illegal gun. Like a number of his contemporaries, Mahood joined the PUP after serving time in prison for offences related to his membership of the UVF.McDonald & Cusack, ''UDA'', p. 282 Following his release from prison, Mahood returned to the UVF and served as commander in north Belfast in the mid-1990s.

Following the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) ceasefire of 1994, Mahood was part of the first PUP delegation to hold talks with representatives of the British government. Mahood was on poor terms with David Ervine, who feared the growth of the hawkish Billy Wright and his allies. Ervine threatened to resign from the talks team over the inclusion of Mahood.Ed Moloney, ''Voices From the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland'', Faber & Faber, 2011, p. 459 Mahood eventually left the PUP after becoming disillusioned with the Belfast Agreement.

Dissident loyalist

Although based in Belfast, Mahood was close to UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Billy Wright and helped to establish the LVF in 1996 after Wright and his Portadown unit were stood down by the UVF Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership) in August of that year. According to David Ervine, Mahood had acted as the liaison between the Brigade Staff and Wright; in this capacity he agitated for Wright to be accepted as the UVF's chief strategist just before the split, although Ervine also suggested that Mahood was highly unpopular with the rest of the UVF leadership, apart from Wright, due to his involvement in criminality. Ervine went on to claim that Mahood had provided the gun which was taken from the UVF Shankill Road arms dump that the Mid-Ulster Brigade used to kill Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick in July 1996 at the height of the Drumcree stand-off, an act which led to Wright's expulsion from the UVF as the leadership had not sanctioned the murder. According to Ervine, the gun was procured from the arms dump to incriminate the Belfast UVF while the organisation was on ceasefire at the time. These allegations were published in Ed Moloney's book ''Voices From the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland'' in 2010 and infuriated Mahood who publicly denied Ervine's claim that he had provided the weapon used in McGoldrick's killing, maintaining that he was the victim of a UVF "smear campaign". Following the LVF's establishment, Mahood encouraged Wright to challenge the Brigade Staff and return the entire UVF to a war footing. Mahood also enjoyed a close relationship with UDA leader Jim Spence and encouraged Spence to link up with Wright. However, Spence, who had no desire for a feud with the UVF, kept his distance from the man he nicknamed "Billy Wrong". Mahood was shot by masked men as he sat in his office in Belfast's Crumlin Road on 27 November 1997. He was hit three times in the neck and jaw and left for dead, although he survived the attack.Shooting victim was shot before
/ref> Mahood claimed that the UVF was behind the attack and also claimed to know the identity of the shooter.

Mahood also became an ally of dissident former Red Hand Commando hitman Frankie Curry and, in 1999, when Curry was killed, Mahood allegedly used the cover name "Red Hand Defenders

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