Willie Frazer

William Frederick Frazer (8 July 1960 – 28 June 2019) was a Northern Irish Ulster loyalist activist and advocate for those affected by Irish republican violence in Northern Ireland. He was the founder and leader of the pressure group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR). He was also a leader of the Love Ulster campaign and more recently, the Belfast City Hall flag protests. In 2019, from evidence gained in a police report, journalist Mandy McAuley asserted that the Ulster Defence Association had been supplied weapons, in the late 1980s, by the Ulster Resistance and that Frazer was the point of contact for those supplies. She asserted that multiple sources also confirmed this to be true. Those weapons were linked to at least 70 paramilitary murders.

Background

William Frazer grew up in the village of Whitecross, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, as one of nine children, with his parents Bertie and Margaret. He was an ex-member of the Territorial Army, and a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. He attended a local Catholic school and played Gaelic football up to U14 level. Frazer described his early years as a “truly cross-community lifestyle”. Growing up, he was a fan of the American actor John Wayne and wrestling. His father, who was a part-time member of the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and a council worker, was killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 30 August 1975. The family home had previously been attacked with petrol bombs and gunfire which Frazer claimed were IRA men, due to Bertie's UDR membership. Frazer has stated that his family was well respected in the area including by "old-school IRA men" and received Mass cards from Catholic neighbours expressing their sorrow over his father's killing. Frazer believes an IRA member helped carry the coffin at his father's funeral. Over the next ten years four members of Frazer's family who were members or ex-members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary or British Army were killed by the IRA. An uncle of Frazer's who was a member of the UDR was also wounded in a gun attack.

Soon after his father's death, the IRA began targeting Frazer's older brother who was also a UDR member. Like many South Armagh unionists, the family moved north to the village of Markethill. After leaving school, Frazer worked as a plasterer for a period before serving in the British Army for nine years. Following this he worked for a local haulage company, then set up his own haulage company, which he later sold.

During the Drumcree conflict, Frazer was a supporter of the Portadown Orange Order who were demanding the right to march down the Garvaghy Road against the wishes of local residents. Frazer was president of his local Apprentice Boys club at the time.

For a brief period after selling his haulage firm Frazer ran "The Spot", a nightclub in Tandragee, County Armagh, which closed down after two Ulster Protestant civilians who had been in the club, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, were stabbed to death in February 2000 by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), after one of them had allegedly made derogatory remarks about dead UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Richard Jameson. Frazer was confronted in an interview on BBC Radio Ulster about the murders by the father of one of the victims, Paul McIlwaine. During the Smithwick Tribunal (set up to investigate allegations of collusion in the 1989 Jonesborough ambush) it was alleged by a member of Garda Síochána that Frazer was a part of a loyalist paramilitary group called the Red Hand Commando. Frazer denied the allegations, saying they put his life in danger.

Frazer applied for a licence to hold a firearm for his personal protection and was turned down, a chief inspector said, in part because he was known to associate with loyalist paramilitaries.

In 2019, the BBC
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