Drumcree Standoff
The Drumcree conflict, stemming from an Orange Order protest at Drumcree Church after their parade had been banned from marching through the predominately nationalist Catholic Garvaghy area of Portadown, returned to the headlines in 1995 with trouble expected in Wright's Portadown stronghold. Just before the July marching season Irish government representative Fergus Finlay held a meeting with Wright in which the latter pledged his loyalty to the peace process and David Ervine in particular, although Wright also warned Finlay that loyalist views had to be respected. Cracks began to show however as Wright felt that the UVF response to the trouble had been inordinately low-key whilst his taste for the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) strategy also began to wane as the party moved increasingly towards a form of socialism, an ideology repugnant to Wright. A further problem arose when Wright, who by that time was a popular loyalist figure across Northern Ireland, travelled to the Shankill Road in Belfast in late 1995 in order to try to overturn a ban preventing an Orange Order parade entering a neighbouring Catholic area. Wright had hoped to bring local UVF units onto the streets of the Shankill in order to force an overturning of the ban but the Shankill commanders refused to put their units at Wright's disposal, having assured the British authorities that they would not in a series of secret negotiations. Wright returned to Portadown in disgust, accusing the Belfast UVF of having surrendered. Nonetheless when Wright was arrested in late 1995 for intimidation he was still on good terms with the UVF, whose magazine Combat called for his release.
In January 1996, Wright once again travelled to Belfast where he dropped a verbal bombshell by announcing that the Mid-Ulster Brigade would no longer operate under the authority of the Brigade Staff. That same year Wright was ordered to attend a meeting called by the Brigade Staff at "the Eagle", their headquarters above a chip shop (bearing the same name) on the Shankill Road, to answer charges of alleged drug dealing and being a police informer. The latter accusation came about after the loss of a substantial amount of weapons from the Mid-Ulster Brigade and a large number of its members had been arrested. Wright refused to attend and continued to flout Brigade Staff authority.
Following the decision by RUC Chief Constable Hugh Annesley to ban the Orange parade through the Garvaghy Road area of Portadown in the summer of 1996 a campaign of road blockages and general disruption broke out across Northern Ireland as a protest organised by the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The protests, which led to a reversal of the ban, saw no official UVF involvement although Wright, despite not being a member of the Orange Order, was personally involved and led a sizeable force of his men to Drumcree. Wright and the Mid-Ulster Brigade attracted considerable attention from the global media as they made a formidable show of strength and staunchly defended the Orangemen's right to march their traditional route. The brigade manned the barricades, and brought homemade weapons to the church; among these was a mechanical digger and a petrol tanker. There was intelligence that Wright and his unit had planned to attack the Army and police who were blocking the Orangemen's passage. Television cameras broadcast Wright directing rioters on Drumcree hill against the security forces. Wright even held a meeting with one of the central figures in the operation, UUP leader David Trimble, and he was often seen in the company of Harold Gracey, Grand Master of the Portadown District Orange Lodge.
Physically, Wright stood around six feet tall, had close-cropped red hair and cold, pale blue eyes. Peter Taylor had been at Drumcree that July and got a close-up view of Wright. Taylor described Wright as a "charismatic leader". Clad in neat jeans, white t-shirt and wearing a single gold earring, he displayed a muscular build. Flanked by two bodyguards, Wright's sudden appearance at Drumcree had inspired much admiration from the young boys and girls who were present. Journalist David McKittrick in the Belfast Telegraph described Wright as having been heavily tattoed, who walked with a "characteristic strut that radiated restrained menace"; and had a "bullet head, close-cropped with small ears and deep-set, piercing eyes". Martin Dillon, who had interviewed him in his home in Portadown, admitted that he had been pleasant and charming throughout the interview, yet throughout the encounter Dillon had "sensed a dark side to his character". Wright was also considered to have been a "political thinker and capable strategist".
As a result of the Belfast leadership's inaction, Wright ordered several killings on his own initiative, according to republican sources. On 9 July 1996, at the height of the Drumcree standoff, the dead body of Catholic taxi driver, Michael McGoldrick, was found in his cab in a remote lane at Aghagallon, near Lurgan, a day after having picked up a fare in the town. He had been shot five times in the head. Both the UVF and the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) released statements emphatically denying involvement in McGoldrick's killing. According to PUP leader David Ervine, Wright had ordered the killing for the purpose of incriminating the UVF Brigade Staff by making it appear as if they had sanctioned it. To further Wright's ploy, a handgun had been sent down to the Mid-Ulster Brigade from the Shankill UVF arms dump, but as the weapon had no forensic history the plot backfired. Several years later, Clifford McKeown, the former supergrass, was convicted of the murder of McGoldrick. McKeown, who had claimed that the killing was a birthday present for Billy Wright, was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment for his involvement in the murder.
Read more about this topic: Billy Wright (loyalist)