Robin Jackson
Robert John Jackson, also known as The Jackal, was a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary and part-time soldier. He was a senior officer in the Ulster Volunteer Force during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Jackson commanded the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade from 1975 to the early 1990s, when Billy Wright took over as leader.
From his home in the small village of Donaghcloney, County Down, a few miles south-east of Lurgan, Jackson is alleged to have organised and committed a series of killings, mainly against Catholic civilians, although he was never convicted in connection with any killing and never served any lengthy prison terms. At least 50 killings in Northern Ireland have been attributed to him, according to Stephen Howe and David McKittrick.
An article by Paul Foot in Private Eye suggested that Jackson led one of the teams that bombed Dublin on 17 May 1974, killing 26 people, including two infants. Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Patrol Group officer John Weir, also maintained this in an affidavit. The information from Weir's affidavit was published in 2003 in the Barron Report, the findings of an official investigation into the Dublin bombings commissioned by Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron. Journalist Kevin Dowling in the Irish Independent alleged that Jackson had headed the gang that perpetrated the Miami Showband killings, which left three members of the cabaret band dead and two wounded. Journalist Joe Tiernan and the Pat Finucane Centre also made this allegation and adverted to Jackson's involvement in the Dublin bombings. When questioned about the latter, Jackson denied involvement. Findings noted in a report by the Historical Enquiries Team confirmed that Jackson was linked to the Miami Showband attack through his fingerprints, which had been found on the silencer specifically made for the Luger pistol used in the shootings.
Jackson was at one-time a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment but was discharged from the regiment for undisclosed reasons. It was stated by Weir, as well as by others including former British Army psychological warfare operative Major Colin Wallace, that Jackson was an RUC Special Branch agent.
Early life and UDR career
Jackson was born into a Church of Ireland family in the small, mainly Protestant hamlet of Donaghmore, County Down, Northern Ireland on 27 September 1948, one of seven children of John Jackson, a farmhand and Eileen Muriel. Some time later, he went to live in the Mourneview Estate in Lurgan, County Armagh before making his permanent home in the village of Donaghcloney, County Down, southeast of Lurgan. In the late 1960s he married Eileen Maxwell, by whom he had a son and two daughters. When the marriage later failed he began a serious relationship with another woman. Jackson made a living by working in a shoe factory and delivering chickens for the Moy Park food processing company throughout most of the 1970s.The conflict that was known as "the Troubles" erupted in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, and people from both sides of the religious/political divide were soon caught up in the maelstrom of violence that ensued. Described as a "hard man" in his teens, Jackson took part in the Paisleyite demonstrations against the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. In 1972 he joined the locally recruited Ulster Defence Regiment, an infantry regiment of the British Army, in Lurgan. He was attached to 11th Battalion UDR. On 23 October 1972, a large cache of guns and ammunition were stolen during an armed raid by the illegal Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force, on King's Park camp, a UDR/Territorial Army depot. It is alleged by the Pat Finucane Centre, a Derry-based civil rights group, that Jackson took part in the raid while a serving member of the UDR. Journalist Scott Jamison also echoed this allegation in an article in the North Belfast News, as did David McKittrick in his book Lost Lives.
UVF history
Around the same time Jackson was expelled from the regiment for undisclosed reasons, he joined the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade's Lurgan unit. The UVF drew its greatest strength as well as the organisation's most ruthless members from its Mid-Ulster Brigade, according to journalist Brendan O'Brien. The Pat Finucane Centre's allegation that he had taken part in the UVF's 23 October 1972 raid on the UDR/TA depot indicates that he was most likely already an active UVF member prior to being dismissed from the UDR. Anne Cadwallader states in her 2013 book Lethal Allies that Jackson was expelled from the UDR on 4 March 1974; by then he was discernibly involved in UVF activity. As the Provisional IRA continued to wage its militant campaign across Northern Ireland throughout 1972, many loyalists felt their community was under attack and their status was being threatened and sought to retaliate against Irish nationalists and republicans by joining one of the two main loyalist paramilitary organisations, the illegal UVF or the legal Ulster Defence Association. The proscription against the UVF was lifted by Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, on 4 April 1974. It remained a legal organisation until 3 October 1975, when it was once again banned by the British government.Many members of loyalist paramilitary groups such as the UVF and UDA 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 the Intelligence Corps and the RUC 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.
Operating mainly around the Lurgan and Portadown areas, the Mid-Ulster Brigade had been set up in 1972 in Lurgan by Billy Hanna, who appointed himself commander. His leadership was endorsed by the UVF's supreme commander Gusty Spence. Hanna was a decorated war hero, having won the Military Medal for gallantry in the Korean War when he served with the Royal Ulster Rifles. He later joined the UDR, serving as a permanent staff instructor and holding the rank of sergeant. According to David McKittrick, he was dismissed from the regiment two years later "for UVF activity"; The regimental history of the UDR confirms this although journalist/author Martin Dillon states in his book, The Dirty War, that at the time of his death Hanna was still a member of the UDR.
Hanna's unit formed part of the "Glenanne gang", a loose alliance of loyalist extremists which allegedly functioned under the direction of the Intelligence Corps and/or RUC Special Branch. It comprised rogue elements of the RUC and its Special Patrol Group, the UDR, the UDA, as well as the UVF. The Pat Finucane Centre, in collaboration with an international panel of inquiry has implicated this gang in 87 killings which were carried out in the 1970s against Catholics and nationalists. The name, first used in 2003, is derived from a farm in Glenanne, County Armagh, which the UVF regularly used as an arms dump and bomb-making site. It was owned by James Mitchell, an RUC reservist. According to John Weir, the gang usually did not use the name UVF whenever it claimed its attacks; instead, it employed the cover names of "Red Hand Commando", "Protestant Action Force", or "Red Hand Brigade". Weir named Jackson as a key player in the Glenanne gang. He had close ties to loyalist extremists from Dungannon such as brothers Wesley and John James Somerville, with whom he was often spotted drinking in the Morning Star pub in the town.
Alleged shooting and bombing attacks
Patrick Campbell shooting
He was first arrested on 8 November 1973 for the killing on 28 October of Patrick Campbell, a Catholic trade unionist from Banbridge who was gunned down on his doorstep. Jackson's words after he was charged with the killing were: "Nothing. I just can't believe it". Campbell's wife, Margaret had opened the door to the gunman and his accomplice when they had come looking for her husband. She had got a good look at the two men, who drove off in a Ford Cortina after the shooting, and although she identified Jackson as the killer at an identity parade, murder charges against him were dropped on 4 January 1974 at Belfast Magistrates' Court.The charges were allegedly withdrawn because the RUC thought Mrs. Campbell knew him beforehand. Jackson confirmed this, saying that they had met previously on account that he worked in the same Banbridge shoe factory as Patrick Campbell. It was suggested in David McKittrick's Lost Lives that sometime before the shooting there may have been a "minor political disagreement" between Jackson and Campbell while the two men were on a night out. The disagreement was allegedly over the stoppage of machinery following the deaths of three British soldiers. Raymond Murray, in his book The SAS in Ireland, suggested that his accomplice in the shooting was Wesley Somerville. Irish writer and journalist Hugh Jordan also maintains this allegation.
When the RUC had searched Jackson's house after his arrest they discovered 49 additional bullets to those allotted a serving member of the UDR. A notebook was also found which contained personal details of over two dozen individuals including their car registration numbers.
Dublin car bombings
RUC Special Patrol Group officer John Weir claimed to have first met Jackson in 1974 at Norman's Bar, in Moira, County Down. Weir stated in an affidavit that Jackson was one of those who had planned and carried out the Dublin car bombings. According to Weir, Jackson, along with the main organiser Billy Hanna and Davy Payne, led one of the two UVF units that bombed Dublin on 17 May 1974 in three separate explosions, resulting in the deaths of 26 people, including two infant girls. Close to 300 others were injured in the blasts; many of them maimed and scarred for life. Journalist Peter Taylor affirmed that the Dublin car bombings were carried out by two UVF units, one from Mid-Ulster, the other from Belfast. Davy Payne has never been subsequently accused of involvement in the bombings nor was the UDA.The bombings took place on the third day of the Ulster Workers Council Strike, which was a general strike in Northern Ireland called by hardline unionists in protest against the Sunningdale Agreement and the Northern Ireland Assembly which had proposed their sharing political power with nationalists in an Executive that also planned a greater role for the Republic of Ireland in the governance of Northern Ireland. In 2003, Weir's information was published in the Barron Report, which was the findings of an official investigation into the bombings by Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron. Justice Barron concluded Weir's "evidence overall is credible". An article by Paul Foot in Private Eye also implicated Jackson in the bombings.
The producers of the 1993 Yorkshire Television documentary, The Hidden Hand: The Forgotten Massacre, referred to Jackson indirectly as one of the bombers. However, three of his alleged accomplices, Hanna, Harris Boyle, and Robert McConnell were directly named. Although the incriminating evidence against Jackson had comprised eight hours of recorded testimony which came from one of his purported chief accomplices in the bombings, the programme did not name him directly during the transmission as the station did not want to risk an accusation of libel. The programme's narrator instead referred to him as "the Jackal". Hanna, Boyle, and McConnell were deceased at the time of the programme's airing.
According to submissions received by Mr. Justice Barron, on the morning of 17 May 1974, the day of the bombings, Jackson collected the three bombs and placed them in suitcases onto his poultry lorry at James Mitchell's farm in Glenanne, which had been used for the construction and storage of the devices.
He then drove across the border to Dublin, crossing the Boyne River at Oldbridge. The route had been well-rehearsed over the previous months. Hanna, then the Mid-Ulster UVF's commander and the principal organiser of the attacks, accompanied him. At the Coachman's Inn pub carpark on the Swords Road near Dublin Airport, the two men met up with the other members of the UVF bombing team. Jackson and Hanna subsequently transferred the bombs from his lorry into the boots of three allocated cars, which had been hijacked and stolen that morning in Belfast. The Hidden Hand producers named William "Frenchie" Marchant of the UVF's A Coy, 1st Battalion Belfast Brigade, as having been on a Garda list of suspects as the organiser of the hijackings in Belfast on the morning of the bombings. The cars, after being obtained by the gang of hijackers, known as "Freddie and the Dreamers", were driven from Belfast across the border to the carpark, retaining their original registration numbers.
Journalist Joe Tiernan suggested that the bombs were activated by Hanna. Sometime before 4.00 p.m., Jackson and Hanna headed back to Northern Ireland in the poultry lorry after the latter had given the final instructions to the drivers of the car bombs. Upon their return, Jackson and Hanna went back to the soup kitchen they were running at a Mourneville, Lurgan bingo hall. With the UWC strike in its third day, it was extremely difficult for people throughout Northern Ireland to obtain necessities such as food. Neither man's absence had been noticed by the other helpers.
Following Hanna's orders, the three car bombs were driven into the city centre of Dublin where they detonated in Parnell Street, Talbot Street and South Leinster Street, almost simultaneously at approximately 5.30 pm. No warnings were given. From the available forensic evidence derived from material traces at the scene, the bombs are believed to have contained, as their main tertiary explosive a gelignite containing ammonium nitrate, packed into the usual metallic beer barrel container used by loyalists in prior car bombings. Twenty-three people were killed outright in the blasts, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child; three more people would later die of their injuries. The bodies of the dead were mostly unrecognisable. One girl who had been near the epicentre of the Talbot Street explosion was decapitated; only her platform boots provided a clue to her gender.
The bombers immediately fled from the destruction they had wrought in central Dublin in the two scout cars and made their way north using the "smuggler's route" of minor and back roads, crossing the border near Hackballs Cross, County Louth at about 7.30 pm. Thirty minutes earlier in Monaghan, an additional seven people were killed instantly or fatally injured by a fourth car bomb which had been delivered by a team from the Mid-Ulster UVF's Portadown unit. According to Joe Tiernan, this attack was carried out to draw the Gardaí away from the border, enabling the Dublin bombers to cross back into Northern Ireland undetected.
Jackson was questioned following the Yorkshire Television programme and he denied any involvement in the Dublin attacks. His name had appeared on a Garda list of suspects for the bombings. Hanna's name was on both the Garda and the RUC's list of suspects; however, neither of the two men were ever arrested or interrogated in connection with the bombings. The submissions made to the Barron Inquiry also stated that one week before the Dublin attacks, Jackson and others had been stopped at a Garda checkpoint at Hackballs Cross.
Nobody was ever convicted of the car bombings. Years later, British journalist Peter Taylor in an interview with Progressive Unionist Party politician and former senior Belfast UVF member David Ervine questioned him about UVF motives for the 1974 Dublin attacks. Ervine replied they were "returning the serve". Ervine, although he had not participated in the bombings, explained that the UVF had wanted the Catholics across the border in the Republic of Ireland to suffer as Protestants in Northern Ireland had suffered on account of the intensive bombing campaign waged by the Provisional IRA. On 28 May 1974, 11 days after the bombings, the UWC strike ended with the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the power-sharing Executive.