Adding Insult To Injury . . . And Multiple Murders
This Saturday evening (2nd August) in Portadown at least fifteen bands and several hundred other participants and supporters will take part in yet another controversial, sectarian parade in the County Armagh town. On average, well over forty such parades are held in Portadown each year, the majority of them organised by the Orange Order, the Black Institution, and other unionist groups.
This weekend, the planned parade around the Killicomaine area of the town will be slightly different. This weekend's parade will be an outright celebration of pure, unadulterated sectarianism and murder.
Billed as a ‘commemorative’ event, the sole purpose of the parade is to ‘honour’ a mass murderer - Harris Boyle - killed by his own bomb during the massacre of the Miami Showband on the 31st July, 1975.
Both Harris Boyle and a second Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) member, Wesley Somerville, also killed by their bomb that night, were serving members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), an integral part of the British Army.
The UVF gang was led by Robin Jackson from Lurgan, Co. Armagh, a serial killer who was involved in a wide range of deadly unionist death squad attacks across the counties of Armagh and Tyrone, as well as other murders and bombings in Dublin, Monaghan and Dundalk.
It is estimated that Jackson was directly involved in over 80 murders!
Another person who has been repeatedly named as being present with the death squad that night was the British Army's undercover agent, Captain Robert Nairac. One of the survivors of the attack, Des McAlea, has publicly named Nairac on a number of occasions.
Those who were with Jackson and Nairac that night in July were part of a British-controlled terror group, often referred to as the Glenanne gang. That unionist death squad included up to twenty-five serving members of the RUC and UDR along with members of the UVF. Various combinations and permutations of the Glenanne gang have been linked to well over 120 murders.
The overwhelming majority of the gang's victims were innocent Catholics with absolutely no political connections. As far as the killers were concerned, the victims' crime was their religion.
The five members of the showband were travelling home after playing a gig in Banbridge when they were flagged down at what appeared to be military checkpoint on the main Banbridge to Newry road. They were asked to get out of their minibus and to stand to one side while it was searched and their ID's were checked.
All seemed relatively routine. In all, there were ten men involved in manning the checkpoint, all wearing British Army battledress. The fact that one of those at the checkpoint spoke with "an upper-class, cultured English accent" seemed to provide some degree of reassurance to the musicians.
However, unknown to the band members and just out of their line of sight, two members of the ‘military patrol’ were placing an explosive device into the rear of the minibus beside the group's instruments, PA system and speakers. Suddenly, a massive explosion erupted, instantly killing the two men loading the bomb into the band's vehicle.
As the UVF bomb exploded prematurely, the remaining members of the UVF/UDR gang immediately opened fire on the five members of the Miami Showband before escaping.
Three band members were killed outright - including the group's lead singer, Fran O'Toole; trumpet player, Brian McCoy; and guitarist, Tony Geraghty.
Bass player Stephen Travers survived, but was gravely wounded by a dum-dum bullet. The saxophone player, Des McAlea, had received less serious injuries and was able to make his way to safety to get help and assistance.
So, as Portadown reverberates to the sounds of flutes and drums celebrating the deeds of a death squad member on Saturday night, little or no thought will be given to the UVF's victims who were gunned down fifty years ago on the night of the 31st of July, 1975 - the night when the music really did die.