Gusty Spence was one of the first persons to be convicted of sectarian murder in the current phase of the Northern Ireland Troubles. In October 1966, he was found guilty of shooting dead a young Catholic barman, Peter Ward, at the Malvern Arms public house in June of the same year. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve at least 20 years.
It is difficult, after the deaths of more than 3,000 people, to recall the shock and outrage that engulfed Northern society as a result of Peter Ward's murder. It was the first recognised sectarian killing since the 1930s (the earlier murder of John Scullion in May 1966 had gone undetected). It considerably exacerbated community tensions already heightened by the 50th anniversary commemorations of the Easter Rising. And it brought the name of the Ulster Volunteer Force to public attention for the first time in 50 years.
Gusty Spence was reviled among the Catholic community. I remember as a teenager in Ardoyne, seeing slogans denouncing him painted on the wall of Flax Street mill. Members of his own community disowned him and he was expelled from the Orange Order.
Yet, almost 30 years later, in October 1994, at Fernhill House in Belfast, Spence was chosen by the loyalist paramilitaries to draft and read their statement announcing a military ceasefire.
The statement called on all those involved in the Northern conflict to respect their differences but never again to permit political circumstances to deteriorate into bloody warfare. It offered "abject and true remorse" to the loved ones of all innocent victims of the 25 years of violence.
Roy Garland's book attempts to chart Gusty Spence's personal journey from Malvern Street to Fernhill House. From the beginning start, Spence protested his innocence of Peter Ward's murder and his supporters argued that there had been a miscarriage of justice by the authorities, anxious to get a quick conviction. But Garland produces no convincing evidence and the events of Malvern Street remain mysterious, as do the circumstances surrounding the re-formation of the UVF in the mid-1960s.
What is certain is that Gusty Spence was up to his neck in UVF activities. According to Garland, he was the organisation's first leader on the Shankill Road and there are also dark hints that the UVF was set up by senior figures in the Ulster Unionist Party with the aim of embarrassing Terence O'Neill. If this is true, the organisation quickly became a Frankenstein monster.
Once in gaol, Spence rapidly assumed the role of "officer commanding" of the UVF prisoners, a position he held for most of the 19 years he was incarcerated. It was also in prison that Spence began to read widely and develop his political thinking. He says he was greatly influenced by a Catholic prison officer he calls "The Minister". This man liaised with Spence's family and got him books, particularly on Irish history.
Later, in Long Kesh, Spence introduced education classes and arranged for lecturers to come into the prison to teach the inmates. Ironically, two of these lecturers from Queen's University, Miriam and Jim Daly of the IRSP, were later to be murdered by the UDA.
It is the prison chapters which are the most interesting part of this book, along with Spence's account of growing up in the Hammer district of the Shankill Road in the 1930s and the section dealing with the early development of the peace process. There are fascinating accounts of the dialogue that took place between the paramilitary factions in Long Kesh and the start of the political debate which was later to bear fruit in the emergence of the Progressive Unionist Party.
Roy Garland has done a masterly job. This book is eminently readable and gives a fascinating insight into Ulster loyalism. It should be essential reading for any student of Northern Ireland politics. Gusty Spence was driven from his home on the Shankill Road at the height of the UVF/UDA feud in August 2000. His reaction was to say that those responsible would one day come to think as he does and would feel deeply ashamed of their action.
Eugene McEldowney is a writer and Irish Times journalist