John McKeague

A native of Bushmills, County Antrim, McKeague, who long had a reputation for anti-Catholicism, became a member of Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church in 1966.

According to Tim Pat Coogan McKeague was a founder-member of Tara in 1966, although he does not elaborate on the details.

Chris Moore, in his investigation into the Kincora scandal, insists that McKeague was never a member of Tara but that he and McGrath had met to discuss trading weapons between their two groups, and that following these meetings McKeague became a regular visitor to Kincora where he was involved in several rapes of underage boys living at the home.

Although making no comment on his membership or otherwise of the group, Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald insist that McKeague shared the far-right conspiratorial views advanced by McGrath and UPV leader Noel Doherty.

Martin Dillon also makes no comment on McKeague and Tara but insists that he was one of a number of shadowy figures, along with McGrath, who played a leading role in the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in 1966 and in helping to direct its strategy for the rest of the 1960s.

McKeague and his mother moved to east Belfast in 1968, where he became a regular at Paisley's own Martyrs' Memorial Church on the Ravenhill Road and joined the Willowfield branch of the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV).

Before moving to Belfast he had already been questioned in relation to a sexual assault on two young boys.

The charges were dropped after the intervention of some friends who held prominent positions in Northern Irish society.

In 1968 McKeague became a regular figure amongst groups of locals who every night congregated in large groups in the Woodvale area close to Ardoyne after a series of incidents between loyalists and republicans during which flags from both sides had been forcibly removed.

McKeague split from Paisley in late 1969 under uncertain circumstances.

Rumours that a young man with whom McKeague was living was his boyfriend had been rife but McKeague did not discuss the details.

He stated only that he had been summoned to a meeting by Paisley where he was told he was an "embarrassment" and would have to leave the Free Presbyterian Church.

Whilst giving evidence to Lord Justice Scarman as part of his tribunal investigating the 1969 Northern Ireland riots, Paisley stated that he and other Ulster Constitution Defence Committee leaders had agreed to expel McKeague from the UPV in April 1969 after he breached Rule 15 of the group's code, which banned members from supporting "subversive or lawless activities".

Whatever the circumstances, the two became bitter enemies, with McKeague frequently criticising Paisley in print.

McKeague's relationship with William McGrath's Tara, a partially clandestine organisation that sought to drive Roman Catholicism out of all of Ireland and re-establish an earlier Celtic Christianity which it claimed had existed on the island centuries earlier, has been the subject of some disagreement.

In late 1969 Thomas McDowell, a member of the Free Presbyterian Church who held dual membership of the UPV and UVF, was killed after a bungled attempt to blow up the power station at Ballyshannon led to him being electrocuted, suffering severe burns.

Investigations by the Garda Síochána, who found UVF insignia on McDowell's coat, led them to question his associate Samuel Stevenson who named McKeague as a central figure in a series of UVF explosions that had been carried out at the time, many involving UPV members.

Having split from the UPV due to its perceived inaction in May 1969, McKeague addressed a meeting of loyalists in Tennent Street Hall at which he called for organisation against Catholic rioters.

From this meeting he founded the Shankill Defence Association (SDA), with the proclaimed intention to defend the Shankill Road from Catholic rioters.

However, in contrast to similar Protestant vigilante groups such as the Woodvale Defence Association which were for the most part reactive, the SDA played a leading role in fomenting trouble during the Northern Ireland riots of August 1969, leading attacks on Catholic homes in the Falls Road and Crumlin Road.

He became a notorious figure locally, usually prominent in the rioting, carrying a stick and wearing a helmet.

The violence of the SDA was accompanied by equally violent rhetoric from McKeague as he boasted that the group possessed "hundreds of guns" and vowed that "we will see the battle through to the end".

His militant stance won him the public support of Ronald Bunting, who like McKeague had earlier been associated with Paisley but had since broken from him.

In November 1969, McKeague was cleared of a charge of conspiracy to cause explosions.

He was, however, sentenced to three months' imprisonment for unlawful assembly.

McKeague's absence on remand for the initial charges saw his stock fall on the Shankill, where he was already mistrusted due to being from east Belfast and where his reputation had been further blackened by supporters of his former friend Ian Paisley.

Leaving the Shankill he attempted to set up a group similar to the SDA on the Donegall Road but was declared persona non grata by the head of an existing local Defence Committee, who was a loyal Paisleyite.

This, combined with a rumour that McKeague was a "fruit", saw him abandon all initiatives in the west and south of the city and concentrate on east Belfast.

McKeague was a candidate for the Protestant Unionist Party, the forerunner of the Democratic Unionist Party, in a Belfast Corporation by-election for the Victoria ward in the east of the city in 1969, but was not elected.

The case went north, where the previous explosions had taken place, and on 16 February 1970 the trial opened.

McKeague, along with William Owens (McKeague's 19-year-old flatmate), Derek Elwood, Trevor Gracey and Francis Mallon, were charged with causing an earlier explosion at Templepatrick.

The case collapsed after serious doubt was cast on the character of Stevenson, whose evidence was the main basis of the prosecution's case.

He then stood as an Independent Unionist in Belfast North in the 1970 general election, but polled only 0.75% of the vote.

He also began producing a magazine, Loyalist News.

Much of its content was of a lowbrow nature, containing jokes and cartoons in which Catholics were portrayed as lazy, dirty, stupid and alcoholic or, in the case of women, highly promiscuous.

The SDA continued in his absence until 1971, when it merged with other like-minded vigilante groups to form the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).

In 1971 he was tried for incitement to hatred after publishing the controversial Loyalist Song Book.

John Dunlop McKeague (1930 – 29 January 1982) was a Northern Irish loyalist and one of the founding members of the paramilitary group the Red Hand Commando in 1970.

A number of authors on the Troubles in Northern Ireland have accused McKeague, a homosexual paederast, of involvement in the Kincora Boys' Home scandal but he was never convicted.

He was shot dead by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) in Belfast in January 1982.