Mad Dog - They Shot Me in the Head, They Gave Me Cyanide and They Stabbed Me, But I'm Still Standing. Johnny Adair
Mad Dog - They Shot Me in the Head, They Gave Me Cyanide and They Stabbed Me, But I'm Still Standing
and the community stuck together. After a night’s trouble, the mothers would meet in the street and gossip about what had been going on as they swept up the bottles and rocks that littered the ground.
Whenever I got caught rioting by the police, they would bring me home rather than lock me up. My father cuffed me as much as any other dad, especially when I was getting escorted home by the coppers most nights of the week. But, even though I was the one causing the trouble, he was always sure to have a go at them first. He would give them a mouthful and ask if they had nothing better to do with themselves. I never got away with it, though, because once he was done with them I was next in line.
My father wasn’t at all interested in the Troubles. Most of his friends were Catholics, many of them members of the same pigeon club as him. I remember being taken to their homes and told that they were Catholics but they were OK and there was no need to be afraid of them. All the same, the thought was still in the back of my mind that we were on enemy territory.
My father felt that since he had no involvement or interest in any of the fighting he was immune from it. He thought, I’m not a bigot, so I can go where I want and do what I want. It didn’t always work like that. He was beaten up while walking his dog in the Waterworks Park because he was a Protestant in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was nothing too serious, just a couple of black eyes and some bruises. Had it not been him, it would have been someone else.
I was in no way a special case, or a kid who had strayed way over the line. There were plenty of other kids in Belfast who were up to exactly the same things.
With all this going on, it is easy to see why I was never really that interested in school. I started in 1969 at Hemsworth Primary School, just around the corner from my house. By the time I started at Somerdale School six years later, I couldn’t wait to get out of the system. The only thing that kept my attention was the fighting. On the bus that we took to school there would be Catholic girls going to Our Lady of Mercy School. There were fights nearly every morning. Spitting, kicking, anything went. At nine in the morning on the way to school, and then again at midday when you got lunch from the chippie, you would be fighting with the guys from St Gabriel’s. I was always getting brought into school by the police because I spent most of my lunchtimes fighting with Catholic kids from that school. It was petty stuff, but the cops would still lift me and take me back to face my headmaster. I still have scars from the constant fighting.
There were days when we couldn’t make it to school because the road had been sealed off after the fighting of the previous night. At other times we would be allowed to pass by burned-out cars, buses and other smouldering wreckage from the skirmishes that had raged just hours before. All the way to the school gates the consequences of the fighting were there in full view.
Most mornings I would get some sweets from the local shop to take to school. But it wasn’t always that easy. One day I couldn’t get into the shop because the body of a Catholic man had been dumped in the alley next to it. He had been repeatedly stabbed. The police were all over the place trying to stop people getting in the way of the forensic team, but I was still able to see the body lying on the ground, wrapped in plastic sheeting.
The older I got the more I wanted to know what the fighting was about and why our street looked like a war zone nearly every day. When you heard the family talking around the kitchen table about another Protestant man being murdered or wounded for no reason, that was when the hatred started to grow inside you and you wanted to know why it was happening. In fact, in Belfast it was easy to educate yourself. The gable ends of buildings were covered in huge murals that celebrated the heroes of the conflict and there were Orange Walk parades, which were all about displaying our culture. The city was stark in its contrasts, so becoming well versed in your side’s beliefs wasn’t difficult.
It was also a smart idea to make sure you were streetwise. If you didn’t, it was easy to get into all sorts of trouble. There were parts of the city that were no-go zones. Even on your own patch, there was absolutely no guarantee that you were safe.
I was only 13 when I saw the aftermath of the murder of 45-year-old bus driver Harry Bradshaw during the Loyalist workers’ strike in May 1977. I was messing about on the roof of the entrance to a derelict cinema on Crumlin Road when the noise of gunfire filled the air as the double-decker bus pulled up. I had the perfect view of everything. After hearing the crack, crack, crack of his weapon, I saw the assassin run up the street with a snorkel jacket done up tight to hide his face. I didn’t think twice about getting down off the roof to see what had happened. In situations like this, you had to get there as fast as you could, because the minute the cops turned up they told you where to go.
I remember looking at the driver, still seated at the wheel of the bus, and watching him turn grey in the daylight. One of the passengers had opened his shirt and was trying to help him. I could see the bullet hole, but there was no blood coming out of it. Thinking that this meant he would be OK, I legged it before the police turned up.
A coalition of the UDA and the Reverend Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party had organised the workers’ strike. It was designed to put pressure on the politicians who were running the country at the time, but, when it failed to get the community’s backing, intimidation tactics were rolled out.
Days before his murder, Harry Bradshaw had been attacked by a female passenger who hit him over the head with an umbrella and insisted that he should take part in the strike. The father of five decided to work instead and as a result was killed.
Kenny McClinton carried out the hit and also that on a Catholic man called Daniel Carville. McClinton was a founding member of the UFF’s C Company, of which I would later become military commander. He was one of the hardest men in Ulster, and even when they locked him up he was still fighting with Republicans. Then one day he found God, turned his back on all the violence and became a pastor. He knew my father, and I met him for the first time at my dad’s funeral. Throughout most of my time behind bars, he wrote to me telling me to take the route that he had. McClinton had hung around in the same places as I had and thought that for this reason I would respect him and listen to him.
Even as a kid I had the habit of being in the wrong place at the right time. Our main place for hanging about was outside the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes in Century Street. Known as the ‘Buff Club’, this was a favourite haunt of prison officers from the notorious Crumlin Road jail, which housed terrorists such as Lenny Murphy, who was one of the ‘Shankill Butchers’, and the IRA informer Sean O’Callaghan. Outside the Buff Club I would meet up with friends of that time like Jackie Thompson and Mark Rosborough. Sometimes William ‘Winkie’ Dodds would turn up and join in the drinking on the street.
One night a screw came out of the club, clearly having had a lot to drink. We started to take the piss out of him because he could hardly stand up straight. The next thing, he pulled out a gun and started firing at us. He didn’t miss by much. The police were called and later he was thrown out of the Prison Service.
When I was 15, I saw the dead body of George Foster at the same place just after he had been gunned down by the IRA. It was 14 September 1979 and I was with a couple of the lads at the usual spot when there was a loud crack of gunfire followed quickly by a screech of brakes. The first thing we did was rush round to see what had happened. I’m not sure what I thought I was going to do when I got there. Foster, who was married with two kids, and three other prison officers regularly went for lunch in the Buff Club and they were returning to work when the IRA gunmen made their move.
Earlier that day, the killers had hijacked the car that was to be used in the hit. Later, around the corner from the club, they sat in the orange Fiat Strada waiting for their targets. When the three men appeared, the IRA team followed them into Century Street and let them get into a car before opening fire wildly. Foster was struck in the head, while one of the other men was hit in both arms. When I got to the scene Foster was already dead, his body slumped in the car. Lying next to the dented car was his blood-spattered pack of Craven A cigarettes. He must have had them in his hand when the assassins struck. Another guy nicked the smokes and puffed away on them. Stealing from the dead – not even I would do that.
Foster, who was 30, had joined