Though Judge Higgins released the UVF men charged on the evidence of Budgie AlIen, because of the unreliability of the witness, the RUC remain knowledgeable about the leadership and able to pick them up whenever they want. It is believed they told the police everything they know while in prison. So, what did the UVF leadership say?
First, we have to note that the supergrass trial which targeted the UVF leadership was not that of Budgie Allen, but Joe Bennett, a strange and inexplicable mistake on the part of the author given the prominence of the supergrass phenomenon and its blanket coverage in the press at the time. Allen on the other hand was a trifling figure within the organisation. This placed him in nominal command of a grand total of nine UVF men, all under the age of He liked to hang out with senior people in organisation to make it look like he was.
/video/K8/K8Tp9D/screen/000-9oN.jpg "Whores Saint-Ouen")
I have generously been given access to the Budgie Allen files by the UVF, and so it is possible to show exactly what the leadership did say. Most of those charged did not in fact hold rank but a minority were alleged to be senior or middle-ranking members of the organisation, whom Allen had come into contact with while floating around the Eagle 2 or the Ulster Loyalist Club in Rumford Street. Sayers and Irvine were already in custody, having been convicted in the Bennett case. Irvine, who was alleged to be a very senior member of UVF Brigade Staff, gave the same polite canned response he had used in the Bennett case and thereafter refused to answer questions:.
Harry Stockman Sr was subjected to the most intense grilling. Over the course of a full week, from the 30th July to 5th August, detectives operating in shifts interrogated him about explosives offences, bomb attacks against IRSP headquarters and other republican targets, conspiracy to murder hunger strike protestors, and a raft of other charges.
Their notes make it clear that this was a fruitless and frustrating experience:. We then tried to engage him in general conversation but he still refused to talk to us [β¦] again made no reply, he just sat and picked his teeth with his left index finger [β¦] sat and stared at us and would not reply to any of the questions put to him. These aside, two men attempted to co-operate beyond a simple admission their own guilt, neither of whom were leadership figures by any stretch: Rab Grainger and Willie Cowan.
