Billy Hanna
William Henry Wilson Hanna, MM, was a high-ranking Ulster loyalist who founded and led the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the Ulster Volunteer Force until he was killed, allegedly by Robin Jackson, who took over command of the brigade.
Hanna had been awarded the Military Medal for gallantry while serving with the British Army's Royal Ulster Rifles in the Korean War. He then joined the Territorial Army and later the Ulster Special Constabulary. When the latter was disbanded in 1970, he joined the newly formed Ulster Defence Regiment, a locally recruited infantry regiment of the British Army, as a part-time member. He held the rank of sergeant in C Company, 11th Battalion UDR, and served as a permanent staff instructor.
According to Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Patrol Group officer John Weir, Hanna was a leader of one of the two UVF units that planned and carried out the Dublin car bombings on 17 May 1974, which killed 26 people. Former British soldier and psychological warfare operative Colin Wallace suggested that Hanna had been the principal organiser of the Dublin attacks. Journalist Joe Tiernan confirmed this and stated that he had also directed the Monaghan bombing which occurred that same evening and claimed an additional seven lives.
Military career
Billy Hanna was born in Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, in about 1929, and brought up as an Ulster Protestant. He was the son of William Armstrong Hanna and Anna Jane Lavery. According to journalist David McKittrick in his book Lost Lives, Hanna at an early age became "obsessed with guns and military paraphernalia in general".He began his military career in the British Army, serving in the Royal Ulster Rifles where he held the rank of lance-corporal. He was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry during the Korean War.
After Hanna left the regular Army, he joined the North Irish Militia, Territorial Army unit, and later the Ulster Special Constabulary, commonly known as the B Specials, which was a reserve police force in Northern Ireland. Upon their disbandment in May 1970, he then became a part-time member of the newly formed Ulster Defence Regiment.
He was in 2 UDR's C Company before it became C Company, 11th Battalion Ulster Defence Regiment, in 1972. He served as a permanent staff instructor, holding the rank of sergeant, although he was for a time weapons instructor at 2 UDR's base in Gough Barracks in Armagh. According to David McKittrick and UDR historian John Potter, Hanna was dismissed from the UDR after serving two years as a sergeant "for UVF activity"; however, authors Malcolm Sutton and Martin Dillon suggested he was still a member of the regiment at the time of his death. His brother Gordon served as a full-time member of the UDR.
Members of militant groups such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association managed to join the UDR despite the vetting process. Their purpose in doing so was to obtain weapons, training and intelligence. Vetting procedures were carried out jointly by British military intelligence and the RUC's Special Branch, and, if no intelligence was found to suggest unsuitability, individuals were passed for recruitment and would remain as soldiers until the commanding officer was provided with intelligence enabling him to remove soldiers with paramilitary links or sympathies. With his previous military experience and decoration for bravery, Hanna was just the type of recruit needed. He would have been fast tracked on a refresher course to sharpen up his military skills, and would have been part of the UDR's front line of experienced soldiers when the regiment began duties in 1970. In the regimental history of the UDR the author commented on men like him and suggested that, "he may have regarded himself as a true blue loyalist but had so little understanding of the meaning of loyalty that he would betray his regiment and his comrades....."
UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade
In the late 1960s, the violent religious and political conflict known as the Troubles broke out in Northern Ireland. Many people from both sides of the religious/political divide were caught up in the violence that ensued. Hanna was no exception as attacks waged by the Provisional IRA escalated in the early 1970s, and many Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland, feeling that their status was being threatened and the state response insufficient, sought to retaliate with illegal violence by joining one of the two main loyalist paramilitary organisations, the legal UDA or the illegal UVF. Up until his death in 1975, Hanna was the leader of the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the UVF, having established the brigade and set up the first unit in his home town of Lurgan in 1972. Hanna appointed himself 'brigade commander' and his leadership was endorsed by the UVF's supreme commander, Gusty Spence. On 23 October of that same year, an armed UVF gang raided King's Park camp, a UDR/Territorial Army depot in Lurgan, and stole a large cache of sophisticated guns and ammunition. Hanna was the depot's guard commander when the raid took place.A member of the UVF's Brigade Staff on the Shankill Road, Hanna was described by journalist Joe Tiernan as having been a "brilliant strategist and an able leader". Hanna's place on the Brigade Staff was remarkable in itself because, since the formation of the modern UVF by Gusty Spence, almost all of the UVF Brigade Staff members have been from the Shankill Road or the neighbouring Woodvale area to the west. Hanna, a native of Lurgan, was one of the few exceptions. A Garda Síochána document dating from 1974 to 1975 revealed that the Republic of Ireland's police knew Hanna was the Officer Commanding of the Mid-Ulster Brigade's Lurgan unit. Tiernan alleged that Hanna personally recruited and trained young men from the Lurgan and Portadown areas who were "prepared to defend Ulster at any cost". Directed by Hanna, the brigade became the most lethal loyalist paramilitary group operating in mid-Ulster. He then began carrying out bank and post office robberies, and intimidated local businessmen into paying protection money to the Mid-Ulster UVF.
Hanna's Mid-Ulster unit was part of the group of loyalist extremists known as the Glenanne gang, comprising members of the RUC, UDR, UDA as well as the UVF, which carried out sectarian attacks in the 1970s in the area of south Armagh and mid-Ulster referred to as the "murder triangle". The gang was allegedly controlled by the RUC Special Branch and/or British Military Intelligence. The name is derived from a farm in Glenanne, County Armagh, which was used as a UVF arms dump and bomb-making site. According to the 2003 Barron Report, it was Hanna who had first obtained Mitchell's permission for the UVF to use his land to store weapons and assemble bombs.
In November 1973, Hanna was arrested after his home in Lurgan was searched by the RUC. He was charged with the possession of a round of ammunition and two six-volt batteries wired together which were found during the search. The Defence counsel described Hanna as a "former British Army soldier with a distinguished career in the Royal Ulster Rifles, having served in the Korean War".
Former British soldier and Troubles' writer Ken Wharton suggested in Wasted Years, Wasted Lives, Volume 1, his 2013 book, that the accusations against Hanna having been involved in loyalist paramilitary activities were unsubstantiated.
Dublin and Monaghan bombings
Planning and preparation
RUC Special Patrol Group officer John Weir named Hanna, along with senior UVF member Robin Jackson and Davy Payne, as having led one of the two teams that bombed Dublin on 17 May 1974. Weir additionally alleged that Hanna had been the main organiser of the attacks. Weir did not join the Glenanne gang until after Hanna's death; so it was highly unlikely that they had ever met. Weir maintained he had received the information of Hanna's central role in the Dublin bombings from James Mitchell. His allegations were published in 2003 in the Barron Report, which was the findings of the official investigation into the bombings by Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron.The 1993 Yorkshire Television documentary, The Hidden Hand: The Forgotten Massacre also named Hanna as having been part of the Dublin bombing unit. The idea to bomb Dublin had been conceived and authorised by the UVF leadership, and the planning of the proposed car bombings took place in Belfast, Lurgan, and Portadown throughout the end of 1973 and early 1974. Hanna was allegedly put in charge of the operation and carefully chose the team of bombers who would assist him in the attacks. The men were all experts in their own field and drawn from the Mid-Ulster and Belfast brigades. Joe Tiernan claimed that Hanna appointed William Fulton as quartermaster for the bombings, but he did not indicate his source for the information. The Barron Report alleged that two months before the car bombings, instructions in making bombs were given by Hanna on Monday evenings, and that his name was on the Garda and RUC lists of suspects for the Dublin bombings.
It was stated in the Barron Report that former British soldier and psychological warfare operative Colin Wallace also suggested that Hanna had been the principal organiser of the Dublin car bombings. The attacks took place on the third day of the Ulster Workers' Council Strike. This was a general strike in Northern Ireland called by hard-line loyalists and unionists who opposed the Sunningdale Agreement and the Northern Ireland Assembly which had proposed their sharing political power with nationalists and planned a greater role for the Republic of Ireland in the governance of Northern Ireland. The UVF deliberately timed the bombings to coincide with the strike. At the time the bombings occurred, the UVF was legal; the proscription against the organisation had been lifted on 4 April 1974 by Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in an effort to bring the UVF into the democratic process. It would once more be banned by the British Government on 3 October 1975.
In July 1993, a Garda detective received information from a reliable source that on 15 May 1974, a meeting had taken place inside the Portadown Golf Club in connection with the Ulster Workers' Council strike; the same informer added that a separate meeting was held in the club which was attended by Hanna and Samuel Whitten, a suspect in the Monaghan bombing. Hanna and Whitten were both regular customers at the golf club and were often accompanied by RUC officers.
Tiernan said in his book, The Dublin Bombings and the Murder Triangle, that the Monaghan bombing, which took place 90 minutes after the Dublin explosions, was executed by loyalists working under the direction of Hanna. According to Tiernan, a few days before the bombing, Hanna had visited a pub in Portadown to check that everything was in place for the operation to be carried out. The Monaghan bombing had been organised as a diversionary tactic to draw Gardaí away from the border, enabling the bombers to cross back into Northern Ireland undetected. According to submissions received by Mr. Justice Barron, the Monaghan bomb was assembled at the home of high-ranking UVF member Harris Boyle in Portadown.