Ken Gibson | |
|---|---|
 Ken Gibson with VPP rosette, 1974 | |
| Born | Kenneth Gibson EastBelfast, Northern Ireland |
| Occupation | Manual worker |
| Known for | Chairman of theVolunteer Political Party (VPP) Spokesman and Chief of Staff of theUlster Volunteer Force (UVF) |
Kenneth Gibson was a Northern Irish politician who was the Chairman of theVolunteer Political Party (VPP), which he had helped to form in 1974. He also served as a spokesman and Chief of Staff of theloyalist paramilitary organisation, theUlster Volunteer Force (UVF).
Born in predominantly unionist EastBelfast,Northern Ireland, Gibson was brought up in the Willowfield area.[1] He was a member of theFree Presbyterian religion before splitting with the church. He had been active as a member of the Sunday men's Bible study group at the Martyrs' Memorial Church, the Free Presbyterians' headquarters on the Ravenhill Road in south-east Belfast.[2] From an early age he identified strongly with loyalism and Unionism.[1] Author Sarah Nelson described him as a "skilled manual worker".[3]
In the early stages ofThe Troubles, he joined the loyalistUlster Volunteer Force (UVF) and soon had a seat on its Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership on theShankill Road). According to journalist Joe Tiernan, Gibson, leaderJim Hanna from the Shankill Road UVF, and senior West Belfast memberBilly Mitchell, comprised part of the UVF team that planted the Liberty Hall and Sackville Place car bombs inDublin in December 1972 and January 1973, which left a total of three men dead and 133 people injured.[4] Tiernan also maintained that Gibson and his bombing unit were directed and controlled by officers from the British Intelligence community operating out of Army Headquarters in Lisburn.[4] From January 1973 to December of that year Gibson, described as a "top intelligence officer" in the UVF, wasinterned inLong Kesh Prison.[5][6] This experience inside Long Kesh, including contact with Gusty Spence, left him a vehement opponent of internment and a critic ofIan Paisley and theDemocratic Unionist Party (DUP), Gibson having previously been chairman of the DUP East Belfast Branch.[3][7] He then became a leading figure in theLoyalist Association of Workers, a joint UVF-Ulster Defence Association (UDA) front organisation which was eventually merged into theUlster Workers' Council.[8]
By 1974 Gibson was the UVF's Chief of Staff or Brigadier-General as well as the official spokesman. With the Supreme CommanderGusty Spence in prison since 1966, Gibson became the organisation's "leading personality".[9]Tim Pat Coogan has stated that in 1974 Gibson was the "leader of the UVF".[10] He was one of the organisation's strike leaders during theUlster Workers' Council Strike in May 1974,[11] having been brought onto theUWC's central committee the previous March. Indeed, Gibson had been one of only three paramilitaries to be invited to the secret meeting withStanley Orme that was held immediately prior to the strike in an attempt to avoid the industrial action. The others in attendance were UDA commandersAndy Tyrie andTommy Lyttle.[12] When asked a direct question by Orme, Gibson, who was the trio's representative, replied: "We are only here as observers".[13] Thegeneral strike had been called byunionists and loyalists to protest against theSunningdale Agreement. This was an attempt at power-sharing, setting up aNorthern Ireland Executive and a cross-borderCouncil of Ireland which would have given theIrish Government a voice in running Northern Ireland. On 17 May 1974, the third day of the UWC strike, theUVF exploded three no-warningcar bombs in the city centre of Dublin and a fourth car bomb inMonaghan, resulting in the deaths of 33 people. Almost 300 were injured; many scarred and maimed for life. Nobody was ever charged in connection with the bombings which were carried out by units from the UVF's Belfast andMid-Ulster brigades.[14]
Classified government documents discovered by the Pat Finucane Centre reveal that Gibson was one of a four-man UVF delegation that secretly met withMI6 officials in Laneside, a house inHolywood, County Down which was used by the British Secret Service for clandestine meetings. The meeting between the UVF and MI6 commenced 10 days after the car bombings and lasted over two days. The other three UVF members present at the talks were Tom Best, Stanley Grey and John Falls. Gibson was concerned that the interests and opinions of the loyalist working-class were being ignored by theUnited Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) politicians who were instead using the UWC strike for their own ends. He also demanded more UVF participation in politics. Gibson also discussed his support of the return of IRA prisonersDolours andMarion Price to Northern Ireland along with loyalist prisoners held in England.[15]
Following his release from prison in 1973, Gibson was chosen to serve as the public spokesman for the UVF.[6] He was subsequently appointed as the Chairman of the short-livedVolunteer Political Party (VPP) that was formed in June 1974 by members of the UVF, which had been legalised two months before bySecretary of State for Northern Ireland,Merlyn Rees.[16]
He publicly stated that the new party endorsed the idea of the establishment of an all-party talks forum, a policy that was seen as attractive to the British government.[6] Gibson also added that if the UVF's efforts did not yield results then "there's going to be nothing left in Northern Ireland but for the Ulster Volunteer Force to go ahead and fight for Ulster".[17] Gibson's campaign also focused on the poor standard ofsocial housing on theShankill Road, in particular the blocks of flats that were known colloquially as "Weetabix" due to a supposed resemblance to the cuboid shaped, crumbly breakfast cereal.[18]
In part due to their focus on social deprivation Gibson and the VPP were attacked by a number of unionist politicians, most notably RevMartin Smyth andJohn Taylor of theUlster Unionist Party, who suggested that their working class approach to politics represented a form ofcommunism.[19] Much of this stemmed from the "Ulster Citizens Army", a supposedly loyalist paramilitary group that wrote a series of letters to the press expressing left-wing views on paper headed with the left-wing republicanstarry plough emblem. Rumours circulated that this group was in fact the UVF and that they had gone over to communism, although in fact the Ulster Citizens Army had never existed and was simplyblack propaganda spread by theBritish Army press office in Lisburn, known colloquially as the "Lisburn Lie Machine".[20] For their part the UVF issued a statement in their magazineCombat stating that they and the VPP were opposed to "all shades of communism, socialism and liberalism".[21] Gibson also disavowed theUlster nationalist ideas being proposed by the likes ofGlenn Barr andKennedy Lindsay at the time, arguing that Northern Ireland was too small to be economically viable as an independent state.[22] Gibson, out of frustration with his party's inability to win support from ordinary, working-class people, hit the table one night shouting: "Scum, rats [the politicians and Orangemen] 'I've told the people out there, but they're afraid. I've told them, you can run this country, you can have anything you want.'"[23]
Gibson stood as the VPP's candidate for theWest Belfast constituency in theOctober 1974 General Election. His candidacy came in for criticism from within the UVF. Gusty Spence, who supported the formation of the VPP, criticised Gibson's decision to run for election, arguing that it was much too soon for the party to think about making any inroads on the mainstream unionist vote.[24] Stronger criticism came from an anonymous commentator, identified by Jim Cusack andHenry McDonald as a "senior west Belfast UVF figure at the time", who claimed that not only did Gibson attempt to force him out of his role as head of theYoung Citizen Volunteers but even accused Gibson of orchestrating the assassination of former UVF Chief of Staff Jim Hanna, who was killed on 1 April 1974.[25] Although Gibson received the support of West BelfastUDA leaderCharles Harding Smith, Glenn Barr ofVanguard and independent Shankill councillorHugh Smyth, he finished fourth behind theDemocratic Unionist Party (DUP) candidateJohn McQuade, who garnered 16,265 votes against Gibson's 2,690,[26] with the seat won by the incumbent MP,Gerry Fitt of theSocial Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).
The VPP was dissolved shortly afterwards as the UVF accepted there was little interest in their forming a political arm. As a result, Hugh Smyth was elected to theNorthern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975 as anindependent Unionist.[18]
In July 1974 aloyalist feud between the UVF and the UDA broke out in east Belfast, where the UDA was much larger, as part of a wider deterioration in relations between the two paramilitary groups. As part of this strife Gibson had a grenade lobbed at his house by local UDA members.[27] Gibson publicly accused the UDA of "gangster activities" in the aftermath of the attack.[28] As the conflict escalated the UDA attempted to abduct Gibson outside an east Belfast bar on 6 May 1975. He broke free but broke his arm in the struggle before UVF members drinking at the bar came out to help him. In the resulting struggle one UDA member was shot and another stabbed, neither fatally.[29] The UVF responded to the attack on Gibson by attempting to blow up Roberta House, theNewtownards Road headquarters of the east Belfast UDA. The bomb, which journalists Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald stated was being transported by UVF member and futureProgressive Unionist Party leaderDavid Ervine,[30][31] was intercepted by security forces whose presence in the area had increased as a result of the feud.[32]
Around this time Gibson and Billy Mitchell met withIan Paisley at his Martyrs' Memorial Church in a largely unsuccessful attempt to heal the rifts that had opened between the paramilitaries and the UUUC with the UVF feeling that they had been sidelined in the new coalition. Gibson had already criticised Paisley for his failure to take the Carson route of publicly supporting the UVF. Both Gibson and Mitchell had been members of theFree Presbyterian Church of Ulster, although by the time of the meeting they had both long since left the religion.[33]
By the time the UVF was banned again, in October 1975, Gibson was no longer a member of its leadership but continued to give political advice to its Brigade Staff.[34] However, he made a show of presenting himself at a local police station to announce his membership of the group. He was turned away, the police remaining indifferent.[35] Several years later, he gave an interview to theBelfast Telegraph, in which he stated that he "wouldn't touch politics again".[36]
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| Preceded by | Ulster Volunteer Force Chief of Staff 1974 | Succeeded by Unnamed Chief of Staff |