Prime suspects – Miami Showband Massacre, 31 July 1975

All are among a number of UDR soldiers and RUC officers believed to have been members of ‘The Glenanne Gang’ of the Ulster Volunteer Force in Mid-Ulster

IT WAS DISCOVERED that the two soldiers who died in the attack – Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville – were also members of the Ulster Volunteer Force at the same time as they were members of the Ulster Defence Regiment and the British Army.

A severed arm was found a hundred yards from the scene with a UVF tattoo on it.

Both UDR soldiers were given UVF funerals.

Two other UDR men, Thomas Crozier and Rodney McDowell, were sentenced in 1976 to 35 years each for the murders. Later, James Somerville, Wesley Somerville’s brother and also a UDR soldier, was also tried and given 35 years.

All are among a number of UDR soldiers and RUC officers believed to have been members of what has been dubbed ‘The Glenanne Gang’ of the Ulster Volunteer Force in Mid-Ulster.

Named after the County Armagh farmhouse owned by an RUC Reservist that served as a base for many UVF attacks, the Glenanne Gang has been implicated in dozens of attacks, including:-

•    The Dublin/Monaghan bombings in May 1974, which left 33 dead and more than a hundred injured;

•    The bombing of Kay’s Tavern in Dundalk the week before Christmas 1975, killing two people and injuring 21;

•    A bomb and gun attack on Donnelly’s Bar in Silverbridge, County Armagh, on the same night as Kay’s Tavern, in which three people were killed and dozens injured.

The Irish Government complained to the British Government in August 1975 that four members of the RUC in the Portadown area were also members of the UVF linked to Glenanne, which was run by the then UVF commander in Portadown, Robin Jackson, also known as ‘The Jackal’.

And who was the British Army officer with the distinctive English accent who stood head and shoulders above the UDR soldiers who murdered the Miami?

Former British Army Intelligence officer Captain Fred Holroyd, who ran undercover intelligence operations in Portadown between 1972 and 1975, has said that Captain Robert Nairac (killed by the IRA in 1977) organised the attack with the UVF on the Miami.

Colin Wallace, a former British Army Senior Information Officer who carried out psychological warfare operations for British Army HQ in Lisburn, told the Barron inquiry into the Dublin/Monaghan bombings that Nairac “‘seems to have had close links with the Mid-Ulster UVF, including Robin Jackson and Harris Boyle”.

In his research for the book, Stephen Travers met a UVF leadership figure nicknamed ‘The Craftsman’.

“He said Robert Nairac’s involvement was a possibility he wouldn’t rule out. I don’t know who it was.”

This article first appeared in An Phoblacht on 27 September 2007