page_title: Donegall Road
section_title: The Troubles
hierarchical_section_title: Donegall Road / History / The Troubles
caption_attribution_description: English: Mural commemorating Red Hand Commando member John Hanna, Broadway, Belfast
context_page_description: The Donegall Road is a residential area and road traffic thoroughfare that runs from Shaftesbury Square on what was once called the "Golden Mile" to the Falls Road in west Belfast. The road is bisected by the Westlink – M1 motorway. The largest section of the road, east of the Broadway junction with the Westlink, has a community which self-identifies as predominantly Protestant while the community on the other side of the Westlink – M1 motorway self-identifies as predominantly Catholic.
context_section_description: During the Troubles the Donegall Road was the scene of a number of attacks by paramilitaries. In April 1972 Joseph Gold, a British Army soldier, was killed on the road after stopping a PIRA vehicle at a check point.
  On 29 January 1973 Peter Watterson, a 15-year-old Catholic civilian, was shot dead as he stood outside a shop at the corner of the Donegall and Falls Roads whilst two days later the body of another Catholic teenager, Gabriel Savage, was found on a grass verge on the Donegall Road. Both killings are recorded as the work of unspecified loyalists. Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack however say that both killings were the work of a UDA team based in the Village area. Francis Smith was killed by the IRA in retaliation for the killings just a few days later in Rodney Drive.  On 13 May of the same year, two more soldiers, Thomas Taylor and John Gaskell, were killed by a PIRA explosive left in an abandoned factory on the nationalist part of the road, whilst on 5 July, Catholic Robert Clarke was killed at his place of work by the UDA. On 29 September 1974 Gerard McWilliams, a Catholic, was found stabbed to death in another UDA attack. The following year on 28 April, the UDA attempted to kill another Catholic working on railway lines close to the Donegall Road, but they mistakenly shot and killed his colleague Samuel Grierson, a Protestant.
  During the 1980s, Loyalist paramilitaries from the Donegall Road also killed civilian taxi driver Paddy McAllister in Rodney Drive, while IRA 'volunteer' James 'Skipper' Burns was shot and killed in his house in the same street by the UVF.  Previously, in 1979, Sadie Larmour, an innocent, middle-aged woman was shot dead in her home.  In 1984, Loyalist paramilitary figure Michael Stone murdered milkman Paddy Brady, who served the area, leaving a nearby dairy. Roy Butler, an off-duty member of the Ulster Defence Regiment was killed by the PIRA, whilst he shopped at Park Centre on 2 August 1988.  In late 1991, the road was the scene of four murders in quick succession. On 10 August Catholic civilian James Carson was shot and killed in his shop on the corner of the Donegall and Falls Roads, in an attack claimed by the "Loyalist Retaliation and Defence Group", actually a code name used by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). On 10 September John Hanna, a 19-year-old member of the UVF, was killed by the PIRA at his home in the Village. The republican group struck again on 13 November, when they entered a house on Lecale Street in the Village and killed William Kingsberry and his stepson Samuel Mehaffey. Kingsberry was a member of the Ulster Defence Association and Mehaffey was with the Red Hand Commando (RHC).
  On 7 September 1993 Stephen McKeag, and two other volunteers in C-Company of the UDA West Belfast Brigade, entered a hairdresser's shop on the upper Donegall Road and shot the proprietor Sean Hughes dead. Although brought to trial, McKeag – known as "Top Gun" – was not convicted after eyewitness testimony did not stand up to scrutiny. The following year, the RHC killed 31-year-old Margaret Wright at a social club on Meridi Street, and dumped her body in an empty house in the Village. Wright was taken for a Catholic although in fact she was Protestant. The most recent sectarian murder to occur on the road took place on 21 January 1998 when the UDA shot and killed Catholic Benedict Hughes, outside his place of work on Utility Street near Sandy Row.
  In terms of paramilitary organization, the Donegall Road has also seen much activity. In late 1970 John McKeague, who had earlier founded the Shankill Defence Association, attempted to establish a similar "defence association" in the area amongst loyalist residents, but the plan floundered when leaders of the local branch of the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee warned their members and supporters not to associate with McKeague, whilst also spreading the rumour that he was a "fruit". The UDA would soon take root on the Donegall Road however, forming part of the movement's South Belfast Brigade. Variously commanded by John McMichael, Jackie McDo
caption: John Hanna commemorated on a Broadway mural
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