The Glenanne gang or Glenanne group was a secret informal alliance of Ulster loyalists who carried out shooting and bombing attacks against Catholics and Irish nationalists in the 1970s, during the Troubles.The Cassel Report (2006) , cain.ulst.ac.uk; retrieved 28 September 2013. Most of its attacks took place in the "murder triangle" area of counties Armagh and Tyrone in Northern Ireland.Tiernan, Joe (2000). The Dublin Bombings and the Murder Triangle. Ireland: Mercier Press. It also launched some attacks elsewhere in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. The gang consisted of soldiers from the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), police officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).The Cassel Report (2006), pp. 8, 14, 21, 25, 51, 56, 58–65.Collusion in the South Armagh/Mid Ulster Area in the mid-1970s . Pat Finucane Centre; retrieved 2 January 2011. Twenty-five UDR soldiers and RUC police officers were named as purported members of the gang.Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland - Conclusions , PatFinucaneCentre.org; accessed 7 May 2015. Details about the group have come from many sources, including the affidavit of former member and RUC officer John Weir; statements by other former members; police, army and court documents; and ballistics evidence linking the same weapons to various attacks. Since 2003, the group's activities have also been investigated by the 2006 Cassel Report and three reports commissioned by Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron, known as the Barron Reports.The First Barron Report (2003); retrieved 14 December 2010. A book focusing on the group's activities, Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland, by Anne Cadwallader, was published in 2013.Lethal Allies review, irishtimes.com; accessed 7 May 2015. It drew on all the aforementioned sources, as well as Historical Enquiries Team investigations. The book was the basis for the 2019 documentary film Unquiet Graves, directed by Sean Murray.
According to Lethal Allies, permutations of the group killed about 120 people – almost all of whom were Catholic civilians with no links to Irish republican paramilitaries. The Cassel Report investigated 76 killings attributed to the group and found evidence that UDR soldiers and RUC police officers were involved in 74 of those.The Cassel Report (2006), p. 4 John Weir said his superiors knew he was working with loyalist militants but allowed it to continue.The Cassel Report (2006), p. 63 The Cassel Report also said that some senior officers knew of the crimes but did nothing to prevent, investigate or punish. It has been alleged that some key members were double agents working for British military intelligence and RUC Special Branch.The First Barron Report (2003). pp. 136, 172
Attacks attributed to the group include the Dublin and Monaghan bombings (1974), the Miami Showband killings (1975), the Reavey and O'Dowd killings (1976) and the Hillcrest Bar bombing (1976). Many of the victims were killed at their homes or in indiscriminate attacks on Catholic-owned pubs with guns and/or bombs. Some were shot after being stopped at fake British Army checkpoints and a number of the attacks were co-ordinated.The Cassel Report (2006), p.12 When it wished to "claim" its attacks, the group usually used the name "Protestant Action Force". The name "Glenanne gang" has been used since 2003 and is derived from the farm at 59 Lough Road, Glenanne (three miles south of Markethill, County Armagh) that was used as the gang's main 'base of operations'.The First Barron Report (2003). pp. 144-45."Victims' families sue over UVF Glenanne gang collusion claims". BBC News, 15 November 2013. It also made use of a farm near Dungannon."Book claims 'indisputable evidence of security forces collusion'", BBC News, 24 October 2013.
Political situation in Northern Ireland
By the mid-1970s the violent ethno-political conflict known as the Troubles had radically transformed the daily lives of people in Northern Ireland; after five years of turbulent civil unrest, the bombings and shootings showed no signs of abating. The armed campaign waged by members of the loyalist paramilitary groups Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) increased greatly in response to the Provisional IRA carrying out attacks in England and increasing its attacks on the British security forces within Northern Ireland. Suspected Catholic civilians had become the primary targets of loyalist gangs forces. Active members of the RUC Special Patrol Group (SPG) believed that the situation was rapidly deteriorating and that the IRA were actually 'winning the war'. As early as the end of 1973, it was suggested that drastic measures had to be taken to defeat the organisation.Liam Clarke. "RUC men's secret war with the IRA", The Sunday Times (7 March 1999). The SPG was a specialised police unit tasked with providing back-up to the regular RUC and to police sensitive areas.
On 10 February 1975, the Provisional IRA and British government entered into a truce and restarted negotiations. The IRA agreed to halt attacks on the British security forces and the security forces mostly ended its raids and searches.Extracts from The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA by Kevin J. Kelley . Zed Books Ltd, 1988. Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN) ; accessed 27 May 2014. However, there were dissenters on both sides. Fully opposed to the agreement, the UVF and UDA/UFF wanted no part of the truce, while British military commanders resented being told to stop their operations against the IRA just when—they claimed—they had the Provisionals on the run. There was a rise in sectarian killings during the truce, which 'officially' lasted until February 1976. Ulster loyalist paramilitaries, fearing they were about to be forsaken by the British government and forced into a united Ireland,Taylor, Peter (1999). Loyalists. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. p. 142 increased their attacks on Roman Catholic civilians and nationalists. Increased Loyalist attacks were partially due to their discovery that MI6 agent Michael Oatley had engaged in negotiations with a member of the IRA Army Council during which "structures of disengagement" from Ireland were discussed. While these 1:1 talks could potentially have meant a possible withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland, it is not known how far they ever progressed.Taylor, pp. 142–43 Loyalists killed 120 Catholics in 1975, the vast majority civilians.Taylor, Peter. Brits: The War Against the IRA. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001. p. 182 They hoped to force the IRA to retaliate in kind and thus hasten an end to the truce, but were unsuccessful.
Formation of the Glenanne gang It was during this exceptionally violent period that a group of loyalist extremists formed a loose alliance that in 2003 was belatedly given the name "Glenanne gang". The gang, which contained over 40 known members, included soldiers of the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), active police officers within the RUC and its Special Branch, covert agents from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), more commonly known as MI6 (i.e. Military Intelligence, Section 6) and extremists from both the illegal Mid-Ulster Brigade and the legal Ulster Defence Association (UDA).
This group began to carry out shooting and bombing attacks directed against Catholics and nationalists to retaliate for the IRA's intensified campaign. Most of these attacks took place in the area of County Armagh and Mid-Ulster referred to as the "murder triangle" by journalist Joe Tiernan. It also launched attacks elsewhere in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland.Seeing Red. John Weir affidavit, 3 February 1999 The name "Glenanne gang" is derived from the farm at Glenanne (near Markethill, County Armagh) that was used as the gang's arms dump and bomb-making site.
Alleged members The following people, among others, have been implicated by Justice Barron and Professor Douglass Cassel in their respective reports as having been members of the Glenanne gang:
Key figures John Oliver Weir (born 1950, County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland) — an officer in the RUC Special Patrol Group (an "anti-terrorist" unit) and UVF member. Weir was the son of a gamekeeper and was brought up on an estate near Castleblaney. He attended a Protestant boarding school in Dublin."RUC man's secret war with the IRA" by Liam Clarke, Sunday Times, 7 March 1999. After joining the RUC in 1970, he worked at Strandtown RUC station in Belfast. In 1972, he was transferred to Armagh where he was recruited by the SPG on 1 August 1973. Following the IRA killing of two members of the security forces in 1974 and 1975, he was sent for his own safety to the SPG unit in Castlereagh, Belfast. On an unspecified date between January 1975 and September 1976, he joined the Glenanne gang.The Barron Report (2003), p. 143 Weir then spent six weeks at the Lisanelly Army base in Omagh; in 1976 he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and transferred to Newry RUC barracks. He claimed to have been directly involved in the bomb attack at Tully's Bar in Belleek, the attempted bombing of Renaghan's Bar, Clontibret, County Monaghan, and to have visited the Glenanne farm regularly during the autumn of 1976. In November 1977, he was sent to Newtownhamilton RUC barracks. In 1980, he left the RUC upon his conviction for the 1977 killing of William Strathearn, a Catholic chemist. He was released from prison in 1992. During and after his imprisonment he made a number of allegations incriminating his former associates in the Glenanne gang. His 1999 affidavit was published in the 2003 Barron Report on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Weir also implicated Chief Inspector Harry Breen in having direct knowledge of the gang's activities in his Affidavit of 3 January 1999. Among other claims, he stated "In summary, Down Orange Welfare was using RUC officers in Newry RUC station - McBride, Breen, myself - and another RUC officer, Sergeant Monty Alexander from Forkhill RUC station - to supply weapons to the UVF in Portadown. I later learned that these weapons were being manufactured by Samuel McCoubrey in Spa, Co. Down." William "Billy" McCaughey (died 2006) — Armagh RUC SPG officer who had acted as a close protection guard for Ulster Unionist Party politician John Taylor and a UVF member. He was a former member of the Ulster Special Constabulary. McCaughey was implicated by his colleague Weir in many Glenanne gang attacks, such as the O'Dowd shootings and the assault on the Rock Bar, and he admitted to having kidnapped a Roman Catholic priest. McCaughey was convicted along with Weir for the killing of William Strathearn and sentenced to 16 years imprisonment. McCaughey received a seven-year sentence for wounding Michael McGrath during the attack on the Rock Bar, was sentenced on explosives and possession charges and was also sentenced to three years' imprisonment for the kidnapping of Fr Hugh Murphy.The Cassel Report (2006), p. 115