Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[various musical genres playing in sequence]
[rotor blade whirring]
[man] The Troubles here in Northern Ireland,
there was 30 years of conflict.
And during that period of time, around about 3,700 people were killed,
and upwards of 40,000 people were injured.
[indistinct shouting]
[reporter] The result of all this has been that a whole generation of teenagers
have grown up deprived of the normal social outlets
that kids can expect elsewhere.
That's why it's so important when some kind of entertainment survives.
[cheering and applause]
[reporter 2] Right now, many dance halls may have to close down
and that's because of what happened to the most popular group in Ireland.
That group could fill any hall north or south of the border.
[crowd cheering]
It was called the Miami Showband.
♪ Well, I brushed down my shoes Forgot my workday blues ♪
♪ And headed off into the night ♪
[man] The Miami Showband was Ireland's most glamorous band.
Often, we couldn't even hear ourselves playing.
You know, it was just all the screaming.
♪ Movin' out in my car Shinin' bright like a star ♪
♪ I feel like things... ♪
[woman] You just squashed in. You didn't care what pain you suffered.
You stood on your foot once you were there.
[man] They were our superstars.
♪ Ooh ♪
I was absolutely over the moon.
Here am I, band leader of one of the best bands in the world.
The Irish Beatles.
[chuckles]
♪ I'm gonna have a wild night! ♪
-[siren wailing] -[man] I was devastated.
[automatic gunfire]
[man] Why would anyone want to hurt the Miami?
Everybody loves the music.
[woman] The showband scene was never the same again.
The music died the night the Miami died.
[reporter] Do you think that the Miami Showband
could've been a random assassination?
[man] I don't think that it was random. I think that they were singled out.
[man 2] It shocked people to the core here.
[man 3] I'm determined to find out who murdered Miami Showband,
even if it leads up to the very top of the British government.
[man 4] It's been over 40 years,
but we're finally getting closer to the truth.
I was born and raised in South Tipperary, which is in the Irish Republic,
far south of where the Troubles erupted in Northern Ireland,
which is part of the United Kingdom.
My father was very much a nationalist.
My father would definitely want to see a united Ireland.
I mean, that's what Irish people want.
But there was no hatred, there was no dislike of Britain.
My dad volunteered
to join the British Army at the outbreak of World War II.
I was brought up with the respect for a uniform.
They represented all that was good.
I was never in any way suspicious of...
of the Irish state or of the British state.
I knew nothing about politics.
My parents, they had seen what politics can do,
so they were really happy when I decided to play an instrument
and devote my life to that, you know?
-Hi, lads. -Nice to see you.
-Hello, mate. -How are you doing?
[Travers] In '62 and '63, the Beatles took over the world.
♪ Love, love me do ♪
[Travers] I heard "Love Me Do" on the radio.
So, at the ripe old age of 11, I decided to join The Beatles.
Uh, It was that simple.
♪ Love me do ♪
[Travers] One day, this young lad asked me
if I were interested in playing bass guitar in his group.
And I had never played bass guitar.
But I thought, "If it's good enough for Paul McCartney,
it's probably good enough for me."
And the minute I touched it,
it was like somebody plugged me into a socket.
I played it until big blisters came up on my fingers.
And, uh, I started to get better and make some sense of it.
♪ Oh, come on down and let's dance To the rock and roll motion ♪
[Travers] And that was the start of my music.
♪ Come on down and let's dance... ♪
[Travers] And I rose up the totem pole very quickly.
Well, at that time, the conflict in Ireland was raging.
[explosion]
[screaming]
[man shouting indistinctly]
[nearby explosion]
[reporter] More bombs in Northern Ireland,
leaving the now very familiar piles of rubble.
There'll never be peace until these people recognize
Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom,
and will remain so.
[cheering, clapping]
[female reporter] Northern unionists, mostly Protestant,
want Northern Ireland to maintain the union with Britain.
And nationalists, mostly Catholics, want a united Ireland.
There'll never be any friendship between Protestants and Catholics again.
There's a bitterness.
[female reporter] The most potent paramilitary groups -
on the loyalist side, the UVF, or Ulster Volunteer Force,
and on the Republican side, you have the Provisional IRA,
the Irish Republican Army.
[Travers] As terrorism by the paramilitary groups
from both sides escalated,
it was the civilians who suffered mostly.
But at the same time that this was happening,
showbands were hugely popular in Ireland,
North and South.
♪ Just let me hear some Of that rock and roll music ♪
♪ Any old way you choose it ♪
[Travers] And the showbands covered the popular music of the day,
anything that you could dance to.
The showband scene was fantastic,
because people were living in the Troubles and it was a release for them.
To get dressed up and go to a showband, it was like therapy.
[girls screaming]
[Travers] There were so many showbands back then,
but the biggest show in the country was the Miami Showband.
I had to audition,
but I had absolutely no doubt whatsoever
that I would just walk up and get that job.
I was that confident.
♪ I didn't even know your name ♪
♪ I didn't care 'cause I was searchin' ♪
♪ But you were always meant to be ♪
I remember their front man, Fran O'Toole, because he was just an icon.
All the girls fell in love with him.
[Travers] The girls would have Fran's picture in their bedroom,
all that type of thing.
In fact, he was once described as Ireland's greatest ever soul singer.
He was that good.
[audience applauds]
This show is called Me and My Music.
It's all about songs that I write with a friend of mine called Des Lee.
♪ I haven't even slept a wink ♪
Des was the band leader.
And seriously into his songwriting. He was Fran's songwriting partner.
We slept...
drank, and ate music.
And my primary instrument was the saxophone.
Brian McCoy was highly respected in the music industry.
Great trumpet player, and he idolized his family and his children and his dog.
[dog barks]
[chuckles]
Ray Millar was the drummer.
He was great fun to be with, and that told in his drumming.
And our guitarist Tony Geraghty, who was unusually gifted as a musician.
We got very close very quickly.
He'd look over at me and we'd smile at each other
and we'd put something extra into the music.
Sort of like a telepathy.
[Lee] We all lived in the Republic, in Dublin,
but we were an extremely popular band in Northern Ireland.
[Travers] There was terrible atrocities being committed.
But through the middle of all of this murder and mayhem,
we were equally popular on both sides of the border,
north and south, to a mixed audience.
You look down at an audience and...
you can't pick out the Catholic and the Protestant.
They all looked the same, they spoke the same.
Back then, I actually didn't know
what religion anybody was in the band.
Ray Millar and Brian McCoy were from the North and were Protestants.
The rest were Catholics.
It was never a question of religion or politics.
The only currency in our band was...
"How well can this guy play?"
That was it. Yeah, that was the religion for us: music.
Like all of the other bands on the circuit,
we were criss-crossing the border into the North on a weekly basis.
I bought into this, uh, idea that musicians were immune.
None of the bands were ever affected by the problems of Northern Ireland.
So...
what happened to us on the 31st of July came as an absolute shock.
[Travers] The venue was the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge.
[Lee] Banbridge is in Northern Ireland.
We had come from Dublin, which is in the Republic.
We got to the gig,
everything was as normal.
And on that particular night,
they would've shouted up, "Clap your hands! Stomp your feet!"
'Cause that was Fran's number one.
♪ Clap your hands! ♪
♪ Stomp your feet! ♪
[Devlin] I remember "Clap Your Hands, Stomp Your Feet,"
'cause we would've been about three feet off the ground when we were doin' it.
Just went crazy! We just went crazy when they played it!
We called our last song,
and the people started screaming and shouting.
They wanted "more, more, more." That's all you heard.
[screaming]
We left Banbridge... It was probably around about two o'clock in the morning.
Now, there were five in the van, because Ray, the drummer,
had gone straight back to Antrim in his own car.
And within a period of about ten, fifteen minutes,
we saw the torches...
flagging us down.
Brian turned back to us and said, "Guys, there's a check up ahead."
[car engine idling]
[Travers] Once you got into the North, you were liable to be stopped
by, uh, authorities.
This particular night,
we were asked to get out of the van.
[Travers] We got out. Stood near the van.
I could see about five soldiers. They were all armed with machine guns.
And the soldiers were very friendly. They were actually joking with us.
But there was a man who appeared on the scene who seemed to be in charge.
The minute he arrived, everybody became more professional.
When he spoke, it was a distinct, very posh, educated English accent.
Not a Northern Ireland accent.
When you were stopped at a roadblock in Northern Ireland,
it was not normal to hear a British accent.
That voice stood out for me above all the rest.
[Travers] Brian nudged my elbow,
and he said, "We'll be away quickly. This is the British Army."
I felt safe.
Uniform to me meant law and order.
They were there to protect us.
Just then, I heard other soldiers opening our Volkswagen minibus.
And, all of a sudden...
[Lee] The van exploded. There was fire like mad.
There was shooting. There was screaming.
There was crying. There was mayhem.
And the impact of the actual bomb going off on the van
blew me over the ditch down into the field.
[Travers] The whole world for me turned red.
Everything was in slow motion. And I tried to run. I heard the gunfire.
[automatic gunfire]
The soldiers jumped down into the field after us,
and they started shooting.
[automatic gunfire]
[Travers] I could hear Fran saying,
"Please, don't shoot!"
-[man sobbing] -[automatic gunfire]
And I could hear voices screaming,
saying...
[sighs]
"Are you sure all those bastards are dead?"
I heard a voice from the road, in a Northern Ireland accent, that said,
"Come on! I got those bastards with dumdums. They're dead."
-[vehicle door closes] -[engine starts]
I got onto that main road.
It was like an absolute war zone.
There is blood everywhere.
There's body parts everywhere.
I called out Fran, Brian, Tony's names.
None of the three of them answered.
Huh.
And Steve was moaning.
I called out, "Steve?
I'm going to Newry Police Station to get help."
[siren wailing]
[Devlin] I came on duty the next morning to see the Miami Showband...
had been ambushed...
and there was three members killed.
And one in intensive care.
[Travers] I had been shot with, uh,
what they call a dumdum bullet, which is an explosive bullet.
It exploded into...
it was something like 16 pieces inside me.
So it did a lot of damage.
[Devlin] All the staff was concerned whether he would survive or not.
[inhales]
Everybody was just...
[exhales] sick.
I just willed God for him to live.
[woman] I expected Brian home about two,
so I fell asleep, and didn't hear anybody coming in.
[phone ringing]
[woman] And I got a phone call about seven o'clock in the morning
from Brian's brother-in-law.
He said, "Oh, I heard there was a band ambushed at the border."
I said, "But I... [shudders]
I don't know. I've got a bad feeling."
And I put the radio on to get the eight o'clock news.
And it announced Brian was killed. [inhales]
Oh...
[Travers] When I woke up in hospital,
I would say, "How are Tony and Fran and Brian?
When can I see them?"
The answer I got from everybody was,
"Well, some are better and some are worse."
But eventually they had to tell me...
that they were dead.
[sighs wearily]
[woman, a cappella] ♪ Of all the money ♪
♪ That here I spent ♪
♪ I spent it in good company ♪
♪ And of all the harm ♪
♪ That here I've done ♪
♪ Alas, it was to none but me ♪
[sobbing]
♪ So fill to me the parting glass ♪
♪ Good night and joy be with you all ♪
The morning after the massacre...
there were police officers who brought me into a room...
and asked me to help them draw an Identi-Kit of someone
who I remember was involved that night.
And there was one thing that stuck out in my mind.
I was always a fan of Buddy Holly's.
One of the guys had these heavy-rimmed, dark glasses.
And they found part of his glasses on the main road.
So, that's how they caught one of the murderers.
[Travers] Two men had been arrested and charged for the murders.
As I got better,
I began to realize then that I'm a witness to this thing.
We were very nervous about going back up North to testify.
But I said to Stephen,
"We need to do this for the lads.
We need to go to court to help the lads get these guys convicted."
[Travers] When I saw the men who murdered my friends,
I didn't recognize them. Des recognized one of them.
[Lee] The families of those that were accused were screaming at me,
"One day we will get you! No matter where,
no matter when!"
[Travers] But when I mentioned that, on the night of the incident,
there was a British officer arrived at the scene
and that he was the man in charge of the operation,
it was always dismissed. We were always told, you know,
"Well, you know, you're wrong there." Or, "It doesn't matter."
At the time of the trial, I wasn't interested.
I just wanted this over and done with,
and if these guys were guilty, send them to jail,
and if not, let us go home.
Well, there... Of the original band, we have two of the lads.
We have Ray, our drummer here,
and we have Stephen on bass guitar. Two of the original members.
-[man] And yourself. -And myself, making it three. Yeah.
[Lee] Putting the Miami back together was...
to a great extent, it was naivety.
We just wanted to push it aside.
[reporter] Without playing even a single note,
the Miami had become Ireland's top showband again,
mainly due to the universal sympathy they've received.
[Travers] The crowds were even bigger.
The hysteria.
I had this impression, "They're coming to see us, not to hear us."
It was more voyeurism than appreciation of music.
♪ If you could see them ♪
[Travers] I shouldn't have gone back. I was... severely traumatized.
I got physically better reasonably quickly.
I was young. I was only 24 years of age.
But it's just something that...
presses in on you and stops you from living a normal life.
The management persuaded me to stay until the summertime.
I couldn't wait to get out of the band.
Anne and I decided that we'd go to London and start a new life
and become anonymous.
I thought, "I'll never again have to worry about anything.
I'll just stay here, then forget that night.
I'll keep this pushed away.
This is not part of my life anymore. This is just history."
We lived in London for about 17 years.
But, no matter what I did in my life,
this thing was always there.
While we were in London, Ireland had changed.
We decided, "Look, it's safe.
Let's move back to Ireland."
But questions were being raised about the murder of the Miami Showband.
So I was asked to give evidence at the Barron tribunal,
which suggested that it was more than just a bunch of thugs
that were responsible for our event.
Perhaps these questions are worth following up.
I said, "I owe it...
not just to the guys who were killed, not just to our friends.
I owe it to myself as well
to get some answers here. I've waited a long time."
That's when I met Margaret Urwin,
who had already done extensive work investigating cases, including ours.
Obviously, the Miami Showband was particularly targeted.
The intention clearly was that...
the bomb would kill all of them.
[explosion]
[Urwin] But the bomb exploded prematurely.
[reporter] The bodies of two men were discovered
near the wreckage of the van.
[Urwin] And the people who were killed were Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville.
[reporter] Tattoo marks identified them
as having been members of the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force, the UVF.
[Travers] Obviously, I knew the name UVF, Ulster Volunteer Force.
But I knew nothing else about them, until my investigation.
Loyalist paramilitaries like the UVF
were prepared to do anything to maintain the union with Britain,
including murder.
-[man] You've got guns? -Yes.
-And you're prepared to use them? -True.
-And you have used them? -Yes.
[crowd chanting]
[Urwin] There were many arrests in the days following the attack.
Two of those convicted were Thomas Raymond Crozier
and James Roderic McDowell,
also members of the UVF.
[man] "Killings like the Miami Showband's must be stopped," said the judge,
as he sentenced McDowell and Crozier
to the longest life sentences in Northern Ireland's history.
[Travers] There was one other name that surfaced all the time.
The local branch of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the UVF,
had just recently had a new leader called Robin Jackson.
He was known as the Jackal.
Robin Jackson was possibly the most prolific murderer
in the entire history of the conflict in Northern Ireland.
[Travers] It's alleged Jackson was responsible
for between 50 and 135 murders,
either carrying out the murders himself or with his gang.
And the former prisoners who served time with Jackson
unrelated to the Miami Showband incident told us that he would lift his shirt
and show off the burn marks that he received from the bomb blast.
Robin Jackson had been brought in for questioning
about the Miami Showband massacre.
I was an active police officer for 37 years.
I was the head of the intelligence within J Division, where Jackson lived.
Jackson was actually, uh, a number one target of ours.
He was lifted in connection to the Miami Showband
because of A - the locality where it happened,
it was Robin Jackson's home territory -
the fact he was a leading light in the UVF,
the fact that he was an associate of Boyle and Somerville.
But they didn't have circumstantial evidence or forensic evidence.
And Jackson just remained totally silent when interviewed.
So, he walked out.
[Travers] And because I had to know more about this,
I spoke to two former British intelligence officers.
[Wallace] During the late '60s and early '70s,
I was with the Army in Northern Ireland.
I was the Senior Information Officer.
But that was a cover title for psychological operations.
My role was to collect information
about how we could disrupt the terrorist organizations.
We were dealing with a huge level of violence.
People now forget just how violent it was.
My job was to recruit sources
within the terrorist organizations who would give us information,
which would help us fight terrorism in all its forms.
Both sides, Protestant and Catholic.
And towards the end of my time there, I did most of my work for MI6.
[indistinct shouting]
[Holroyd] MI6 is the British equivalent of the American CIA.
So, in other words, they're spies.
We were pretty clued up on who was carrying out the violence,
what their political motivation was,
and what they were trying to achieve.
The reason we were monitoring, uh,
Harris Boyle and that particular gang
was because we knew they were terrorists.
Robin Jackson, the Jackal,
was one of the up-and-coming thugs in the area
who was muscling his way into the organization.
And it's my belief that Robin Jackson was involved
in the Miami Showband attack.
The terrorists set up a roadblock,
dressed as members of the Ulster Defense Regiment.
In other words, looking like real members of the Army.
[Holroyd] The Ulster Defense Regiment was the Army in Northern Ireland.
[Urwin] In fact, uh, the two were arrested for the Miami murders,
McDowell and Crozier were both
serving members of the Ulster Defense Regiment.
Many loyalist paramilitaries had infiltrated into the local Army,
and were taking guns from them and using them to kill people.
[man] In one burst if you wish. But when you're firing, fire in short bursts,
short, sharp bursts. And you can judge it by squeezing the trigger:
squeeze, one, two, release.
[Wallace] Robin Jackson also had been a member
of the Ulster Defense Regiment in the early '70s.
[siren blares]
By 1972, almost 100 weapons were stolen from a UDR Reserve Army base.
It quite clearly was an inside job.
We believed Robin Jackson was one of the people involved in that robbery.
The police searched Jackson's home
and they discovered that he had some ammunition he shouldn't have.
But Jackson was allowed to stay free. Why did that happen?
Almost every single weapon used in the Miami Showband murders
originated from the UDR or the police in Northern Ireland.
Every one of them.
Senior officials were very quick to deny
that there was any police or Army involvement in the Miami attack.
Then, of course, Crozier was charged.
[man] Major, it's difficult for people to understand
how the killers of the Miami Showband
could've been allowed into the Ulster Defence Regiment.
If...
there was nothing known about them...
when they applied, then there's no way
that one could disbar them from joining it.
I would've been one of the people that thought,
"It was just a few bad apples."
That these people were renegades or exceptions.
I just refused to accept any notion of collusion.
Collusion is cooperation between...
terrorist groups and the Army and the police.
I wanted to believe that the system worked.
2005 was an important milestone.
It's the 30th anniversary of the Miami Showband massacre.
It brought it all back,
not just to me, not just to the families and friends,
but the entire country, North and South.
It's a hard day to be back here today, ah,
at the actual spot.
[Travers] It forced me to think about it
in a way that I hadn't really thought about it before.
That we were fighting for truth.
Maybe even more than justice.
I felt a duty.
I was determined to keep going.
And in 2005, there was a breakthrough.
I first met Alan Brecknell when he was investigating
the murder of his father, who was also killed by the same gang
that murdered the Miami Showband.
So, I suppose that's what's brought me into the work in 2005, 2006.
The police service in Northern Ireland set up the Historical Enquiries Team
with the sole purpose of trying to answer questions for families,
to review every single death.
[reporter] Police intelligence papers have at last come to light.
They were found by detectives from the Historical Enquiries Team, the HET.
[Travers] I thought it was just another group
that I was going to give evidence to.
As it turned out, it was quite important.
What has been made public is new and disturbing information
that centers on this man, UVF Commander Robin Jackson.
[gunshot]
[Urwin] One of the weapons tested
and found to have been used in the Miami murders,
a Luger pistol, was found about ten months after the murders.
Now, with the pistol was found a silencer wrapped in insulating tape.
Robin Jackson's fingerprints were found on the silencer.
But there was a mistake made
by the fingerprinting department initially in their report.
And they said that his fingerprints were on the tape.
[Brecknell] Robin Jackson come with a ready-made excuse
for why the fingerprint would have been on the insulating tape.
Clearly, somebody had tipped him off.
And the question has to be asked: why was someone within the police force
giving Robin Jackson information
if this is the most notorious Loyalist gunman in the North at that time?
[Travers] The result of the HET inquiry handed us the police on a plate.
They gave us a smoking gun.
[Cadwallader] The Historical Enquiries Team found
that the detective who questioned Jackson
initiated a complaint against officers that tipped off Jackson.
The report went up the chain of command, and then... poof!
Nothing happened.
There are no records as to where that actually went,
and what the outcome of it was.
And that wasn't the first time that he has escaped justice.
-[explosion] -[siren wails]
[male reporter] Within 90 seconds, central Dublin had been devastated.
[alarm blares]
[male reporter] Thirty-three lay dead, and nearly 300 were injured.
To this day, it remains the worst atrocity of the Troubles.
There have been bombs here before, but nothing of the scale of yesterday's.
[Urwin] Three bombs exploded in Dublin during rush hour,
and then, about an hour and a half later,
a fourth bomb exploded in Monaghan Town in Northern Ireland.
The terrible atrocity in 1974,
which was just a year before the Miami,
we're talking about May '74 and July '75.
I can tell you that I do know and believe that some of those that were involved,
uh, in the Miami had a hand in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
[male reporter] Also named were three leading loyalists
as the planners of the bombings.
Harris Boyle, a UVF major,
and a loyalist killer, known as the Jackal.
Atrocities were allowed to be carried out by the Protestants. We knew who they were.
We had information, and no action was ever taken against them.
[male reporter] Captain Holroyd was surprised
that he was not ordered to investigate the Dublin bombings,
since he was the Military Intelligence Officer
where the suspects were based.
We've got a list of names, uh, that we call the Protected List.
[Brecknell] Colin Wallace actually provided a list,
a year before the attack on the Miami,
of people who he knew to be loyalist paramilitaries.
And on that list is quite a few of the people
who were involved in the Miami.
[Travers] Colin Wallace asked for permission
to target some of the people on the Protected List.
But he was never given permission for that.
Jackson...
and the other people on that list, had they been taken in,
had they been arrested, had they been charged with offenses,
they wouldn't have been there to kill our guys.
[Wallace] In my view, the UVF had links that were much too close
with members of the British intelligence community.
I was the youngest Senior Information Officer in the Ministry of Defense.
My reports were extremely good,
and, overnight, I was out.
Why did that suddenly change?
[Travers] There's no other conclusion we can come to
other than members of terrorist groups
were working either for or with British Military Intelligence.
[Cadwallader] We believe that and other evidence against him
clearly demonstrated that Robin Jackson was an agent!
[Travers] An agent is someone
who is working for British Military Intelligence, MI5 or MI6.
You have somebody who is...
murdering people at the same time as he's being controlled by the state.
That, in my view, makes the state complicit.
I knew all of this. A lot of people knew all of this.
But what could we do with it?
All we could do was feed it into the system.
And if the system doesn't allow you to act on it, you can't act on it.
[Travers] I just couldn't deny it anymore,
that there was collusion, as part of a system.
And I had to find out how far up this went.
I have no interest whatsoever in anybody being punished,
but I have every interest that we change the system,
because it is not right to kill innocent people.
I'm extremely hard to turn.
But once I turn, I do not, I will not back down.
The more I learned, the more I realized,
there's something that was glaringly obvious.
The British officer that had arrived at the scene.
And I began to think...
maybe the reason that this British officer is being dismissed out of hand
on so many occasions is that it's not that he wasn't relevant.
It was because he was very relevant.
[Travers] Then when I insisted to the HET, “I want to know more about this officer,"
they said, "Well, it wasn't really a British officer.
McDowell was putting on an English accent to fool you."
It didn't make any sense.
Why would a man who knows you're going to be dead in ten minutes
try to disguise his accent?
There was nobody wearing a balaclava. It was just nonsense.
[Travers] I felt that the HET were keeping guilt on this side of the Irish Sea.
The HET was set up by the British government,
so they were answerable to the British government.
We've trusted that their conclusions would be fair,
accurate, without bias.
[Travers] But they weren't.
There was this concerted effort to throw anybody from Northern Ireland,
i.e. the UDR or the police,
they're gonna throw them to the wolves.
They didn't want to involve the British establishment.
When I wouldn't accept that,
they cornered me after one of the meetings.
It was very intimidating.
They said, "We don't know when you first brought
the British Army into the narrative!"
That worried me, because I thought,
"How do I prove that I've been talking about British Army
as opposed to UDR for all these years?"
So, I went home and...
I said to my wife, "I feel that they've won this argument."
And she immediately solved the problem.
She had newspaper cuttings
on an interview that I did exactly two weeks after the incident.
And I clearly say that Brian McCoy, our trumpet bearer, said,
"Don't worry, Steve. This is the British Army."
I sent it to the HET and I said, "Will you now revise your conclusions on this?"
And they refused even to acknowledge that I sent it to them.
I don't need any inquiries to convince me that there was collusion.
I don't need any inquiries to tell me
that there was a British Army officer on the scene,
in charge of the operation on the night. I know that.
The HET was not going to give me any answers about the British officer.
So I realized that I needed to find another source of information.
The obvious people that we needed to talk to, uh...
were the people who had been jailed, who had actually committed the crime:
Crozier and McDowell.
[whistling, applause]
At this stage, they were released, as part of the peace process.
After two years of talks and after a generation of bloodshed,
and decades of division and acrimony, a new era of peace.
[Ahern] The prisoners Tony Blair and I let out,
to an overwhelming majority,
were lifers, people who had got life sentences,
some of them for 40 years.
To get to them,
we would need permission
from the leadership of the organization that they were a part of,
the UVF, the Ulster Volunteer Force.
You don't find the UVF in the Yellow Pages.
You can't just dial the operator and say,
"Can you put me through to the UVF, please?"
But I remembered that there was a friend of Fran O'Toole's,
and I heard he had been involved in the peace process
as some sort of liaison between the UVF
and the British and Irish governments.
Stephen Travers contacted me,
and he had read a lot about the work I had done with...
loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
And he felt I might be able to open a door for him.
And he came back and he told us,
"Look, you won't be allowed to meet Crozier and McDowell.
But there's a possibility
that I can get you a meeting with the leadership of the UVF."
And what they always say is the second-in-command.
The code name was to be the Craftsman.
Chris rang me and he said, uh, "There's a taxi waiting downstairs for us.
We're going to meet this man now."
And I just looked at him and said,
"All they can do is kill us!"
Uh, which seemed perfectly logical to me,
but that just gives an indication as to how happy I was
to be close to getting some answers.
[Hudson] The Craftsman sat down and he took out handwritten notes,
probably about eight or nine pages.
And he said, "I knew this day would come."
[Travers] The Craftsman told me that...
the intention was that we would be at home safely in bed,
and this bomb would've gone off.
And they would've put out a statement that they can reach
into Dublin and into the heart of the Irish Republic.
But I knew from the scene-of-crime officer
that it was a short-term fuse, ten to fifteen minutes.
This would have exploded...
[explosion]
killing everybody on board.
I asked the Craftsman about the British officer. It was...
actually...
surprising.
He didn't deny that there was a British officer there on the night.
He said...
"He took some risk, that Brit." That's what he said to me.
But there's been a name bandied around all the time.
In 1987, in the British Parliament,
the identity of the officer was being discussed.
I'll read out what was said.
I quote:
"It has begun to emerge that Captain Robert Nairac
is quite likely to have been the person who organized the killing
of the three Miami Showband musicians." End of quote.
Mr. Livingstone outraged MPs
by making a series of unsubstantiated claims about Northern Ireland.
These included the allegation that Captain Robert Nairac,
who was killed by the IRA in 1977,
may have organized a series of murders in the province.
Mr. Livingstone, what is the point
of this gratuitous insult to the memory of the dead?
The more I got into politics, the more I discovered about odd things
that you didn't know so much about.
A - what was really going on in Northern Ireland.
Some of the horrors that had been carried out by British troops illegally.
Nairac wasn't some mad psychopath who enjoyed killing.
He thought he was working for Britain's long-term interest.
-[man issuing instructions] -[boots marching]
[Cadwallader] Robert Nairac was a member, we believe,
of the 14th Intelligence Company,
a shadowy British counter-insurgency group.
There are allegations that Nairac was the owner of the British voice
heard on the side of the road that night.
He was seen with Jackson.
He was seen with Harris Boyle, killed at the scene of the Miami.
Who knows what Robert Nairac was?
When I met him, he said he worked for the MI6 officer
that I was working for.
I knew Robert Nairac.
I think he's a person who was so... enthusiastic,
he could've been manipulated by people in the intelligence community.
He certainly lied to me about what he was there for.
As soon as he got information, he would carry out operations which,
we now believe, Colin and I, were actually...
to abuse that information and use it in collusion with the terrorists.
[reporter] Our information, from associates of the gang,
indicates that Captain Robert Nairac of the British Army Special Air Services,
played a key role in the Miami killings.
Captain Nairac handed over the bomb and the guns for the operation,
in the deserted car park of this cash and carry premises in Portadown.
And what I've not the slightest doubt
is that if these allegations about Captain Nairac are true,
he was merely following orders.
What we need to get to is those highly placed spies within MI5
who were prepared to authorize missions like that.
Prepared to actually see the innocent, um, completely innocent people,
like the Miami Showband musicians, murdered.
We are talking about treason at the heart of the British state.
I am the Right Honourable Michael Mates.
I was a member of Parliament for 36 years,
an Army officer for 20 years.
[man] How long do you think the people of Northern Ireland
will be able to call themselves British?
For as long as you and I are alive and for as long as they want to.
Towards the end of my time in the Army, I did five tours in Northern Ireland.
We were very nearly at war with these...
We would've been at war if it hadn't been on British territory.
And this was what you got into all the time,
tit for tat killing here, and tat for tit there,
between the two communities.
Some very nasty things were done by both sides.
And so it went on.
And the poor old British Army and Security Forces
just had to try to hold the ring.
You...
were watching out more for an IRA atrocity than you were for a Protes...
for a UVF atrocity.
[reporter] IRA gunmen continued to fire sporadic shots.
[volleys of gunfire]
[man] At the present moment, we are at war with the British Army.
They symbolize something in this country...
that has been hated for centuries.
It was the rule of...
British imperialism in Ireland.
[Mates] British soldiers, very soon they got to realize
who the enemy was. The enemy wasn't the Protestants.
The Protestant extremists only very rarely attacked the military, very rarely.
And so, they thought, well,
these guys may be pretty nasty,
but we're on the same side.
Well, the Provisional IRA is the only enemy we have.
Is it just the IRA?
Yes, the IRA:
the gunman, and the bomber.
Protestant terrorists were allowed to operate relatively unhindered.
They were working for the Security Forces in eliminating...
known or suspected, strongly suspected,
IRA members.
-And when I say Security Forces-- -Murdering them?
Murdering them. Assassinating them.
[Travers] The British use locals against locals.
They side with the one they think is going to win.
In this case, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the UVF.
And they use them to defeat the IRA.
That's what the British do.
That's how they built their empire and held on to it.
They've done it all over the world.
[indistinct shouting]
[Holroyd] The British Army, under political instruction,
started carrying out tactics which obviously
were excessive and unlawful.
I realize that, in fact,
they were deemed lawful by the authorities.
By my own authorities, by my own politicians,
and it came right down from the top.
[Holroyd] Colin Wallace and I wrote to Mrs. Thatcher
and sent her a 32-page letter,
a list of operations that were unlawful in Northern Ireland.
And none of that information was used.
The actions of the people who were involved in it
were allowed to carry on.
[Thatcher] The government have repeatedly declared
that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom,
and will remain so,
unless its people and the Parliament at Westminster decide otherwise.
And she should've taken action, and she didn't take action,
and then denied that she'd seen the documents.
[Livingstone] When I raised the issue of the Miami Showband in Parliament,
there was this bizarre moment.
Because Mrs. Thatcher was totally predominant.
She stood there like a pillar.
She sort of glared everybody down. [chuckles] They were questioning her.
And she wouldn't look in my face. She seemed hunched.
I just knew, clearly this was something she felt vulnerable about.
Mrs. Thatcher's doing everything possible to prevent that investigation
and no democracy can have these sort of allegations made
and refuse to investigate them openly.
[Travers] The more evidence I saw,
I had to realize that the British government,
through its proxy Army,
they chose us as innocent victims,
to murder us so that they could achieve their political aim.
We were targeted because the British authorities
wanted the Irish government to seal the border with the North...
so that the IRA, having committed some sort of atrocity,
couldn't cross easily into the relative safety of the South.
So they decided, "Let's frame the most innocent and trusted commuters."
People who traveled up and down.
And we would have gone down in history
as terrorists carrying bombs for the IRA.
When a government decides...
to murder its own citizens,
and to murder the citizens of its closest neighbor,
there's no way that you can excuse that. There are no mitigating circumstances.
That you can choose somebody. "Let's murder him for the greater good."
Now, they would argue, these people,
that they're doing this for the good of the country.
And they probably are!
That's the irony. But it's not democracy.
They want it both ways.
They want to out-terror the terrorists,
and equally claim that they're law-abiding.
I objected to that and made my objections known.
I had become an embarrassment.
I'd have to be replaced rapidly and got out the way before I stumble over
any more than I already knew.
As a result of that,
I was removed from Ireland in a particularly unpleasant way.
They took me straight to Netley, which is, um,
a notorious Army psychiatric hospital.
Well, they kept me in the hospital unlawfully,
uh, for a month.
More importantly, and here we link to Colin Wallace's case,
I had to be discredited
so that whatever I said would not be believed, no matter how valid.
[reporter] Both Holroyd and Wallace each left under a shadow.
I was being misused by the authorities, knowingly,
who then basically didn't want to admit
that they were actually authorizing such activity.
My removal from Northern Ireland, my disciplinary hearing,
were both rigged.
That was followed, then, by a murder charge.
Uh, a colleague of mine disappeared
and his body was found floating in a river.
The pathologist said he'd found an injury to the nose
that'd been caused by a martial arts-type blow,
i.e., someone with military training.
Eventually, I was convicted and sentenced to ten years.
[man] The case against Wallace was extremely weak.
The only evidence was circumstantial.
I had absolutely no doubt
that Colin Wallace was innocent of manslaughter.
I actually believe that Wallace was framed.
[man] Framed by whom?
Uh, I think by the intelligence services in this country.
There's no point in shooting the messenger,
you discredit the messenger.
If you shoot the messenger, then that raises eyebrows and questions.
The message in this is
to people who are thinking of blowing a whistle, don't.
The system, to protect itself,
will go to great lengths to destroy anybody
who alleges misuse of power.
To be used as just pawns in their political game,
I felt ashamed.
Because I had such respect for the British people,
I felt in some way almost like betraying things that I loved.
It's just that the weight can become so heavy that you...
you can't function.
There's so many times that I wake up in the morning and I...
I'm really sorry that I'm awake.
I've recently been diagnosed
with a thing called enduring personality change.
Something I had never heard of.
You enter...an event...
and, uh...
you come out the other side of that event, um,
a completely different person.
I was this cocky, confident musician.
I was...
I was very happy with my life.
My wife is very happy with her life.
We're very happy together and...
all of a sudden, this thing happens.
And I remember asking my wife Anne,
"Did I actually change after that?" And she told me, "It was...
like learning to live with another person.
And, by default, learning to love another person."
The only thing I was ever good at in my life, ever,
was playing this instrument.
It was the only thing that I could...
I could do without even worrying, without thinking about it.
I mean, I didn't even have to rehearse. It was one of those things.
And that was gone.
And I felt for a long time afterwards
that there is nothing else in this world that I can contribute.
And I realized that this person was...
left back in a field, uh, on the 31st of... July in 1975.
[phone ringing tone]
In 2006,
I got a phone call from a policeman called James O'Neill.
James O'Neill was the scene-of-crime officer at our event.
He was called out to collect the evidence on the morning.
When I met James afterwards, his notes were immaculate.
He was obviously very professional.
But he also brought along...
the autopsy pictures.
James said, "I've got these pictures that are not easy to look at."
And I said, "Well, I'm prepared to look at them."
And they were horrific.
Uh, there was pictures of the lads... in the morgue.
Very badly injured. I mean... terrible.
After the incident,
I had blocked all of that out of my mind.
And I realized that up until then,
I didn't accept that they were dead.
I thought somehow or other, this was just a bad dream.
It was a mistake.
Even all those years afterwards.
To me, Tony wasn't dead.
Nobody could kill Fran O'Toole, he was too big a star.
Brian McCoy, he's probably off with his family.
In the back of my head, this wasn't rational.
When you have to look at them like that...
I knew they were dead.
And there was a time when I thought...
"Perhaps I'm actually dead...
and that I won't accept my own death."
That's a question that comes up now and again, yeah.
I was relieved that I wasn't in those photographs.
It was an impetus in some way...
to resolve these things, this pain that's inside you.
You can't unless you...
unless you take these steps, and that was a giant step.
It was confirmation that our investigation
was the right thing to do, and to move forward with it
with even more determination.
It was British terrorism in Ireland
that dragged me into this narrative.
And I'll see it to the finish.
I want this superpower to know that they've been in a fight,
because I won't back down.
They murdered my friends. They left me for dead.
They tried to frame me and my entire family as terrorists.
I have woken up. I will beat them for this.
We've, uh, got a court case against the MOD,
the British Ministry of Defense.
I want Britain to acknowledge its crime.
I want it to say that this will never happen again.
Stephen and I work together a lot
with the court case in Belfast at the moment,
in the High Court.
It's just appalling
that the authorities involved have left us waiting over 42 years...
to get justice.
They've tried every dirty trick in the book.
They delayed and prevaricated.
We had what they call "general discovery."
They swamped us with documents.
All sorts of skulduggery that they come up with.
But that, in a way, makes us even more determined.
[Pat Kenny] Steve Travers, one of the survivors
of the Miami Showband massacre, is with me in studio.
-Welcome to the program. -[Travers] Thank you, Pat.
We've been fighting and fighting for what they call "discovery."
In August, I think it was the 30th,
the judge granted us 82 of 84 documents.
[Pat Kenny] Meantime, you get information from the Irish government,
which is quite extraordinary.
[Travers] I've just received this letter. It's from the Ulster Volunteer Force.
There is a letter that has been in possession of the Irish government
for the past 30 years,
from the UVF, telling the Irish government
that MI5 had asked the UVF
if they would assassinate Charlie Haughey.
They were telling our government about this
because they wanted to let them know
that they didn't want any hand, act or part in it.
It's on headed paper. I didn't know they used headed paper,
but apparently they did.
It's dated the fifth of the eighth, '87.
And it says, "Colin Wallace, Fred Holroyd were telling the truth when they revealed
that British intelligence were behind killings, kidnappings..."
This was a letter complaining about the treatment of the UVF by MI5,
who they admit in the letter that they were working with.
They had been given faulty detonators,
faulty bombs, by MI5.
And they say, "as in the case of the Miami Showband."
Something as fundamental as this could have given us closure 30 years ago.
-Good to see you, Winston. -How you doing, Stephen?
-Very well, thank you. And you? -I'm good, thanks.
[Winston sighs]
There was a context to what happened,
um, with the Miami Showband attack.
Um, it is my understanding,
as someone close to the thinking of the Ulster Volunteer Force,
uh, that...
there was absolutely no intention, on behalf of that UVF operation,
to kill members of the Miami Showband.
You know, Winston, that I wouldn't accept that.
The facts just completely go against that.
But I don't think it's, uh,
it's helpful for us to argue...
-No, indeed. -...over the semantics of these things.
Um...
The entire thing was a disaster.
One of those impediments to healing and to reconciliation
is the fact that, uh, responsibility is not accepted
by either the loyalist paramilitaries, republican paramilitaries, or the state.
So, it's good that we can sit down here together,
and you can put forward your point of view and that I can tell you
that I completely disagree with it.
And, yes, we don't stand up and storm out of the room
and say that we can't make something good of this.
Yeah, I think that's important, and we need to ensure that events of the past
doesn't become part of the politics of the future.
And I think this simple message that needs to go out,
uh, that there should be never again any more victims.
That's very encouraging to hear that.
Uh, I would hope that this would be
the beginning of a process rather than simply an event.
Yes, absolutely.
And one that has a much wider participation.
[Travers] It is significant
that the people who were responsible for that awful atrocity
have sat here with us
and pledged to try to rectify things.
And the fact that he's gone on record on camera
on behalf of the organization, that's huge.
With regard to what type of justice we actually...
I would like to see truth.
And if there is an amnesty, I'd personally agree with, uh,
a conditional amnesty, if people stood up and told the truth.
The real leaders that you need here
are the ones who will hold both atrocities up and say, "There is nobody here
that has a monopoly on suffering or loss,
and there is nobody here that has a monopoly on the skulduggery
that went on over the last 40 years."
[applause]
I don't think I have a purpose to live for, other than this.
I wouldn't, if I had admitted that a couple of years ago. It's defined me.
Perhaps in some way, we can make a difference.
Anything like that gives me a sense of worth.
[exhales]
Uh, might get me out of the field.
[clears throat]
♪ Of all the money ♪
♪ That e'er I had ♪
♪ I spent it in good company ♪
♪ And all I've done for want of wit ♪
♪ To memory now, I can't recall ♪
♪ So fill to me the parting glass ♪
♪ Good night and joy be with you all ♪
[man] Stephen...
[playing bass solo]
[Travers] I never, ever wanted to be anything other than a bass player.
That's it.
When I play music today, I can be the person that I was.
Because, um...
it's the one thing that I had then that I still have.
♪ Well, of all the comrades That e'er I've had ♪
Music is the common language. It's something appreciated and loved.
by everybody, regardless of what their....
political, religious views are. Whatever.
[cheering]
We were bringing communities together.
When we played, sectarianism was left outside the door.
That's the power of music.
The people who do these type of things, they're afraid of beauty.
They're afraid of all the goodness that's in society.
The sound of the music will far outlast
the sound of their guns and their bombs.
[all] ♪ Then fill to me the parting glass ♪
♪ Good night and joy ♪
♪ Be with you all! ♪
[crowd cheering]