Willie Frazer

William Frederick Frazer (8 July 1960 – 28 June 2019) was a Northern Irish Ulster loyalist activist and advocate for those affected by Irish republican violence in Northern Ireland.

He was the founder and leader of the pressure group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR).

He was also a leader of the Love Ulster campaign and then, the Belfast City Hall flag protests.

His father, who was a part-time member of the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and a council worker, was killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 30 August 1975.

The family home had previously been attacked with petrol bombs and gunfire which Frazer claimed were IRA men, due to Bertie's UDR membership.

Frazer has stated that his family was well respected in the area including by "old-school IRA men" and received Mass cards from Catholic neighbours expressing their sorrow over his father's killing.

Frazer believes an IRA member helped carry the coffin at his father's funeral.

Over the next ten years four members of Frazer's family who were members or ex-members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary or British Army were killed by the IRA.

An uncle of Frazer's who was a member of the UDR was also wounded in a gun attack.

Soon after his father's death, the IRA began targeting Frazer's older brother who was also a UDR member.

Like many South Armagh unionists, the family moved north to the village of Markethill.

After leaving school, Frazer worked as a plasterer for a period before serving in the British Army for nine years.

Following this he worked for a local haulage company, then set up his own haulage company, which he later sold.

During the Drumcree conflict, Frazer was a supporter of the Portadown Orange Order who were demanding the right to march down the Garvaghy Road against the wishes of local residents.

Frazer was president of his local Apprentice Boys club at the time.

During the Smithwick Tribunal (set up to investigate allegations of collusion in the 1989 Jonesborough ambush) it was alleged by a member of Garda Síochána that Frazer was a part of a loyalist paramilitary group called the Red Hand Commando.

Frazer denied the allegations, saying they put his life in danger.

Frazer applied for a licence to hold a firearm for his personal protection and was turned down, a chief inspector said, in part because he was known to associate with loyalist paramilitaries.

A police report on the activities of the former UDA boss Johnny Adair states he was receiving weapons from Ulster Resistance in the early 1990s and his contact in Ulster Resistance was Frazer.

FAIR, founded by Frazer in 1998, claims to represent the victims of IRA violence in South Armagh.

It has been criticised by some for not doing the same for victims of loyalist paramilitary organisations or for those killed by security forces.

In the past, Frazer had said of loyalist paramilitary prisoners that "they should never have been locked up in the first place", and that he had "a lot of time for Billy Wright" a loyalist who rejected the Good Friday Agreement.

He had also defended security force collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, stating in an interview with Susan McKay: "If you were in the UDR and your brother was shot, are you telling me you wouldn't [pass information on to loyalists]? ... See if a Paki comes from India and kills a Provo? I'm going to shake his hand."

For a brief period after selling his haulage firm Frazer ran "The Spot", a nightclub in Tandragee, County Armagh, which closed down after two Ulster Protestant civilians who had been in the club, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, were stabbed to death in February 2000 by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), after one of them had allegedly made derogatory remarks about dead UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Richard Jameson.

Frazer was confronted in an interview on BBC Radio Ulster about the murders by the father of one of the victims, Paul McIlwaine.

In February 2006, Frazer was an organiser of the Love Ulster parade in Dublin that had to be cancelled due to rioting.

In January 2007, Frazer protested outside the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Dublin that voted to join policing structures in Northern Ireland.

He "expressed outrage at the idea that the 'law-abiding population' would negotiate with terrorists to get them to support democracy, law and order."

In January 2007, Frazer dismissed Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan's report into security force collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.

In March 2010, he claimed to have served a civil writ on deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, of Sinn Féin, seeking damages arising from the killing of Frazer's father by the Provisional IRA.

Both Sinn Féin and the courts denied that any such writ had been served, but in June 2010 Frazer announced that he would seek to progress his claim in the High Court.

In 2019, from evidence gained in a police report, journalist Mandy McAuley asserted that the Ulster Defence Association had been supplied weapons, in the late 1980s, by the Ulster Resistance and that Frazer was the point of contact for those supplies.

She asserted that multiple sources also confirmed this to be true.

Those weapons were linked to at least 70 paramilitary murders.

William Frazer grew up in the village of Whitecross, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, as one of nine children, with his parents Bertie and Margaret.

He was an ex-member of the Territorial Army, and a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster.

He attended a local Catholic school and played Gaelic football up to U14 level.

Frazer described his early years as a “truly cross-community lifestyle”.

Growing up, he was a fan of the American actor John Wayne and wrestling.

In 2019, the BBC investigative journalism programme Spotlight reported that Frazer distributed assault rifles and rocket launchers from Ulster Resistance to loyalist terror groups who used them in more than 70 murders.