Miami Showband massacre 50 years on: ‘The trauma lasts for ever'

Irish Times

2 days ago

The
Miami Showband's
days were numbered. The band had formed in 1962, playing its first gig in
Portmarnock
, at the Palm Beach Hotel, which inspired the group's original name, the Miami Showband. Thirteen years, seven Irish chart-topping singles and several line-up changes later, lead singer Fran O'Toole and guitarist Tony Geraghty had both asked bass player Stephen Travers, who had only joined the band two months earlier, if he would like to play in their separate musical projects.
In the meantime it was business as usual. After big gigs in Salthill,
Co Galway
, on Monday and Tuesday, the band met up at what is now the
Regency Hotel
near
Dublin Airport
and travelled north, over the Border, to play the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge on Wednesday, July 30th, 1975.
A midweek gig in a midsized town was bread and butter for the Miami but a lifeline for locals who wanted to lose themselves in music and dancing and forget the Troubles.
When the band reached Banbridge, Stephen and Fran, who had a sweet tooth, went to buy sweets. Stephen was unnerved when he saw skinheads running towards them, but one just wanted Fran's autograph on his plaster cast.
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The band members never drank before a gig so they probably wouldn't even have noticed the pub next door to the ballroom, much less been aware of its tragic Troubles story. The Signpost Inn had been owned by Jack McCabe, a past pupil of Dublin's prestigious Blackrock College, who had abandoned a law career to take over the family business on the death of his father. On July 12th, 1972, he was shot dead in his other pub in Portadown.
The gig didn't start till after 11pm, so it was 2am by the time the band set off home. Stephen sat up front with his bandmate Brian McCoy, who was driving, while Fran, Des Lee and Tony Geraghty played cards in the back.
At about 2.30am, halfway between Banbridge and Newry, the minibus was flagged down by an army patrol. The musicians were lined up outside and asked for their names and addresses. The roadblock was fake, however, although at least five of the soldiers there were serving or former UDR members. They were also loyalist paramilitaries.
As two of them, Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville, planted a bomb on the bus, it exploded prematurely, killing them instantly. The explosion blew the musicians into a field, where four were hunted down. Fran was shot 22 times, mostly in the face, Brian nine times and Tony four times. Stephen was hit; Des hid in the long grass, playing dead, and was not hurt.
Stephen counted his fingers. As a musician, that was important. Next, he clicked his platform heels. He still had his legs. He was disorientated, however.
British soldiers on the A1 Dublin-Belfast road at Buskhill, Co Down, on July 31st, 1975 in the aftermath of the attack on the Miami Showband. Photograph: Independent News'I didn't know I was shot. I couldn't figure out why my stomach was so distended. There was this terrible silence. The ditch was still on fire. I was crawling among the bodies, talking to them. I wouldn't accept that they were dead.
'I couldn't stand up. I'd get up and fall down. For the hour or so I was there I was crawling around on my stomach. I found it difficult to breathe. I didn't know that after the dumdum exploded inside me, part of it had travelled up after entering just above my right hip and went through my left lung which had collapsed. You often see someone after running a marathon sort of bending down and trying to get their breathing right. I tried that. I crawled over to the ditch and there was a low branch and I tried to lean over it, but no matter what I did I couldn't get it right. I put it down to one of the soldiers having punched me in the kidneys.'
James Blundell, the surgeon at Newry's Daisy Hill Hospital who saved Stephen's life, told him the anaesthetist had to compress his aorta to keep him alive until he received a blood transfusion.
The Rev
William McCrea
, a Free Presbyterian minister and later a Democratic Unionist Party MP, conducted a UVF paramilitary funeral for Boyle and Somerville. (Decades later, he would also officiate at the funeral of Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright.)
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UDR sergeant James Roderick Shane McDowell and lance corporal Thomas Raymond Crozier were convicted in 1976 of the murders. Imposing the longest life sentences in Northern Ireland history, the judge said he would have imposed the death penalty, had it not been recently abolished. Former UDR soldier John James Somerville, Wesley's brother, was also convicted of the murders, in 1981.
Stephen spent months recovering. The Miami reformed, having replaced Fran, Tony and Brian, but it felt macabre. 'We became photo ops.' He left the following summer.
As part of a criminal injuries case, Stephen had to see a psychiatrist.
Stephen Travers (bass player), Brian Maguire (road manager), Des Lee (saxophone player) and Ray Miller (drummer) of the original Miami Showband at a wreath-laying ceremony organised by Justice for the Forgotten at Parnell Square, Dublin, in 2015. Photograph: Eric Luke
'He said, 'I don't like the way you're handling this.' I said, 'Here's the bottom line: I went to a gig, on the way home the lads were killed, I was shot, I survived, I'm fine.' There was no such thing as counselling back then. Only sissies complained about their feelings.'
The psychiatrist told him his response wasn't normal. 'He said, 'I must warn you, in six months or 10 years the wall might fall on you.''
Stephen reflects with the benefit of hindsight and education. 'I stepped back for 30 years, said I'm not going to talk or think about it, but that did awful damage.'
He felt that as a musician in Ireland he could never escape his past, so he and his wife moved to London in 1983. One night he was having a drink in an Irish pub when the owner asked everyone for a business idea. Stephen saw a copy of The Irish Post and said that it needed competition. Within months, the Irish Advertiser was launched, with him as editor. The paper became The Irish in Britain News. Stephen cofounded another newspaper, The Irish World, in 1987.
Three years later, I got my first job on The Irish World, moving to
The Irish in Britain News, the two papers Stephen had helped to found, before spending nine years with The Irish Post, where Stephen wrote for me about music.
I was in Harry's Bar in Banbridge in the mid-1990s when a former Banbridge Academy classmate said loudly, 'I hear you're working for a Provo paper.' There is a certain type of unionist for whom anything Irish – be it the language, traditional music, the GAA or even a newspaper – is a republican front and a personal affront.
Stephen and his family moved home in 1998. In 2000, he testified at Justice Henry Barron's official inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Margaret Urwin, secretary of Justice for the Forgotten, a campaign group for its victims and survivors, told him that the Miami Showband massacre was not an isolated attack but one of many perpetrated by the Glenanne gang.
In December 2011, the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) report on the Miami killings raised 'disturbing questions about collusive and corrupt behaviour'. It confirmed Mid-Ulster UVF leader Robin Jackson's involvement and linked him to RUC special branch.
The report also revealed that on June 11th, 1975, more than a month prior to the killings, Jackson, his brother-in-law Samuel Fulton Neill and Thomas Crozier had been arrested for possessing four shotguns near Banbridge, but no charges were brought. Neill's car was reportedly used in the Miami ambush, which took place just over a mile from Donaghmore, where Jackson grew up. Neill was shot dead in Portadown on January 25th, 1976, allegedly by Jackson for informing.
Stephen said at the time, 'We believe the only conclusion possible arising from the HET report is that one of the most prolific loyalist murderers of the conflict was an RUC special branch agent and was involved in the Miami Showband attack.' As he explained to me, 'People said you now have the smoking gun of the culpability of the British State.'
An independent international inquiry, chaired by Douglass Cassel of the Law School of the University of Notre Dame, concluded that there was 'credible evidence that the principal perpetrator [of the Miami attack] was alleged RUC special branch agent Robin Jackson'.
Stephen Travers in 2011 after the Historical Enquiries Team report on the Miami killings raised 'disturbing questions about collusive and corrupt behaviour'. Photograph: Eric Luke
On May 19th, 1976, two of Jackson's fingerprints were discovered on a silencer home-made for a Luger pistol. The silencer and Luger were found in a police raid on former B Special Ted Sinclair's farm. The exhibit was mistakenly labelled, indicating that Jackson's prints had been found on insulating tape wrapped around the silencer.
Jackson, arrested on May 31st, denied having been at Sinclair's farm but admitted knowing him through the Portadown Loyalist Club. When shown the Luger, silencer and magazine (but not the tape), Jackson denied having handled them. Asked to explain why his fingerprints might be on either pistol or silencer, Jackson said he had given Sinclair adhesive tape in the club.
Although ballistic testing had linked the Luger (for which the silencer had been made) to the Miami attack, Jackson was never questioned about the killings, and the Miami inquiry team was never informed.
Jackson claimed that one week before his arrest, two high-ranking RUC officers had told him his fingerprints had been found on the tape and that 'I should clear as there was a wee job up the country that I would be done for and there was no way out of it for me.' Despite a detective inspector's recommendation, the officers faced no disciplinary action.
Jackson was only prosecuted for possession of the silencer. The trial judge, Mr Justice Murray, acquitted him, saying, 'I find that the accused somehow touched the silencer, but the Crown evidence has left me completely in the dark as to whether he did that wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly.'
Former RUC officer and convicted loyalist paramilitary John Weir told the Barron Inquiry that Jackson had co-ordinated the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Justice Barron concluded that Weir's 'evidence overall is credible'.
Weir claimed Jackson had shot dead Catholic chemist William Strathearn in Ahoghill, Co Antrim, in 1977. Weir and RUC colleague Billy McCaughey were convicted of the murder but both named Jackson and another loyalist, RJ Kerr, as the killers. Jackson was never questioned for 'reasons of operational strategy', according to an RUC detective. Weir suggested that 'Jackson was untouchable because he was an RUC special branch agent'.
Members of Justice for the Forgotten at a press conference in Dublin in 2011 respond to the HET report on the Miami Showband massacre. Photograph: Eric Luke
Weir had offered to testify against Jackson and Kerr if the murder charge against him was withdrawn. The prosecutor rejected this offer, saying that 'Kerr and Jackson have not been interviewed by the police because the police state [that] they are
virtually immune to interrogation
and the common police consensus is that to arrest and interview either man is a waste of time. Both men are known to police to be very active and notorious UVF murderers.'
Jackson was not unbreakable; he was untouchable.
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From the archive: Claim that hundreds of deaths in North happened due to collusion
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Mr Justice Barron was highly critical of the RUC. In 2006, a Dáil committee concluded that some loyalists, notably Robin Jackson, 'were reliably said to have had relationships with British intelligence and/or RUC special branch and exchanges of information took place'.
The Irish News
reported in January 2020 that British ministry of defence documents linked SAS-trained undercover officer Captain Robert Nairac to the atrocity. Nairac was abducted and killed by the IRA in 1977 and his body has never been found. The papers were disclosed to solicitor Michael Flanigan, who represented Fran O'Toole's widow, Valerie Andersen, in her legal action against the MoD and PSNI chief constable. It is understood the redacted documents contained suggestions that Nairac obtained equipment and uniforms for the killers. The file also claimed that he was responsible for planning and executing the attack.
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Who was Robert Nairac and what happened to him?
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A UVF handkerchief decorated with handstitched paramilitary figures and mottos was found among Nairac's possessions. It is displayed in his regiment's museum in London.
The Miami victims' families and survivors took a civil action against the police and the British ministry of defence. A settlement was only reached in December 2021, exactly 10 years after the HET report's damning findings. They received £1.5 million to settle claims of collusion without any admission of liability. Stephen received the largest settlement, £425,000.
'It's all very well to say they settled without admission of liability, but they don't pay you for annoying them. At the beginning they laughed at us, said we didn't have a case. The PSNI and MoD put up every barrier, the three Ds: delay, deny and, ultimately, death.'
That at least five UDR men were involved is only the tip of the iceberg for him. He dismisses the notion of rogue elements in the security forces and believes collusion was systemic.
'Far more sinister people were involved. So-called experts concentrate on individuals but that is just very clever deflection. It was policy from the very top. Some of the bravest men I met were in the RUC. There was a point in the chain of command at which good reports just disappeared.'
The scene of the Miami Showband massacre on the A1 between Banbridge and Newry on July 31st, 1975. Photograph: Independent NewsAlmost 50 years have passed since the atrocity. How much of his life has he spent managing its repercussions? Should he prioritise his mental health over his feeling of responsibility to pursue justice?
In 2005, Stephen's friend Michael Gallagher, who lost his son Aiden in the 1998 Real IRA Omagh bombing, asked him to take part in an anti-radicalisation project at Warrington Peace Centre, set up in memory of two children, Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball, murdered by the IRA. He was asked to bring an object that related to his trauma. He brought Tony Geraghty's guitar strings.
He listened to a British soldier who had been abused as a child and suffered from alcoholism. 'I felt I could help this man by telling him how I had coped, but I was in denial. When it came to my turn, I introduced myself, but when I went to take out the guitar strings, 30 years after the psychiatrist predicted it, the wall fell on me. I wasn't in Warrington, I was in the field, I could hear all the screaming, the obscenities, the gunfire, the terror all around.
'The soldier that I had been feeling sorry for had his arm around me and was telling me this is okay, it happens. This was the first time that I had shed a tear over the incident. I was ashamed that I had shown my feelings.'
Stephen describes his post-traumatic stress thus: 'It's like when a TV producer is telling people which monitor to look at. For me it's like there are two monitors. One is normality, which I'm focused on most of the time, but there is another big monitor and I'm drawn to that sometimes, and that is what happened on July 31st. When we went back on the road, sometimes I heard the fans screaming and thought it was something else.'
When Stephen's father served in the British army, he contracted malaria. It resurfaced from time to time over the years, just like Stephen's trauma.
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Why I wrote Dirty Linen: recording the toll the Troubles took on my parish, the long tail of trauma
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'My father is the man I wish I could be,' Stephen says. 'I once asked him what is the greatest achievement a person could have, and he said peace of mind. I didn't understand then, but I understand now.
'It helps you to manage it better, but it doesn't ease it. No one back then ever mentioned PTSD. I'd never heard of enduring personality change. It was first used for people who had been in concentration camps. Having had that explained, I now know how difficult it was for me to fit into my old world but also how difficult it was for my wife to deal with me.
'I have been in the incident for 47 years. It doesn't happen that they take out the bullets and sew you up, and it is gone. The trauma lasts for ever.'
Stephen helped set up a victims' support group, the Truth and Reconciliation Platform.
'I think the best way to speak up is to talk about your own experience. We wanted to get people from both communities to tell their stories. It has been a great education, but it came with a price.'
Is it good for him, though? I am conscious of the irony. I am interviewing him about his trauma.
'It's essential,' he replies. 'I certainly don't have peace of mind but I would have less if I didn't process the trauma by using it to help others. I think I'm stuck with that for the rest of my life and all I ever wanted to be was a bass player.'
The last official photograph of the Miami Showband before the 1975 massacre in which three members were killed
What good does it do?
'An immense amount. I heard a woman on a radio show, coming back on the day after she spoke about her husband's murder: 'Yesterday I was nobody and my husband was nobody but today I am somebody and my husband is somebody.''
In 2005, to mark the 30th anniversary, Dana and Dickie Rock sang at an interdenominational service in Dublin's Pro Cathedral. Brendan Bowyer headlined a memorial concert in Vicar Street. Another service was held in Portadown, with 15 marching bands, to commemorate two of the killers.
In 2015, The Miami played their final gig at the Linenfields Festival in Lenaderg. The month before, 200 people had gathered at the ambush site to lay a wreath on the 40th anniversary. In Dublin, Stephen attended a ceremony at the memorial in Parnell Square.
In 2019, Netflix released the Emmy-nominated documentary
ReMastered: The Miami Showband Massacre. Yet in Banbridge, where Fran O'Toole, Brian McCoy and Tony Geraghty played just before they were murdered, there is nothing to acknowledge what happened. The Castle Ballroom is now a bingo hall.
I am struck by the parallels between two of the UK's most notorious serial killers in the 1970s.
Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, born in 1948, murdered 13 women and attempted to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980. Most of his victims were sex workers, whose low standing in the eyes of the public and particularly the police was believed to be a factor in the failure to apprehend the killer sooner. He was given 20 life sentences, converted in 2010 to a whole life order. He died in prison in 2020.
Robin Jackson, the Jackal, was born two years before Sutcliffe, and his first murder was two years before Sutcliffe's too. They were both HGV drivers, exploiting this to prey over a wide area. The low standing of Catholics in the North, particularly in the eyes of many in the British security forces, who perceived them as pawns in the war against the IRA, is the likeliest reason why he was never convicted of any of the 50 or so murders attributed to him. He died at his home in Donaghcloney in 1998.
This is an extract from
Dirty Linen: The Troubles in My Home Place
by Martin Doyle, published by Merrion Press in 2023 and in paperback in 2024.
The Bass Player: Surviving the Miami Showband Massacre
by Stephen Travers will be published in September by New Island Books.
The Miami Showband
50th Anniversary Memorial Concert
takes place on Monday, September 29th, in Vicar Street, Dublin.