James Watt (loyalist)

In April 1977 he was recruited by members of the Shankill Butchers gang who beginning in late 1975 had carried out a series of cut-throat killings against Catholic civilians operating out of the Brown Bear pub on the Shankill Road. Although their leader Lenny Murphy was imprisoned by this time, the group continued to perpetrate killings acting under Murphy's instructions which he issued during prison visits by his close associates known as Messrs "A" and "B". The Butchers gang were part of the UVF Brown Bear platoon, however their murderous activities were not authorised by the UVF Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership). Departing from their usual modus operandi Messrs "A" and "B" wished to attack a large number of Republicans directly in their Falls Road stronghold by planting a bomb during the traditional Republican Easter Rising commemoration parade. For this they needed the sanction of the Brigade Staff who gave it only on the condition that the bomb would only take out members of the IRA.[5] The Butchers also required the services of Watt to assemble the bomb.[6] Before his arrest and imprisonment, Murphy had refused to use Watt preferring to act independent of the Brigade Staff.[7]

After a reconnaissance of the Falls Road area with Norman Waugh, Benjamin Edwards and two other Butchers' gang members specifically chosen to plant the device, Watt decided that a security barrier composed of cement-filled beer kegs outside a bakery on Beechmount Avenue in the Lower Falls area would be the ideal spot for hiding the bomb.[8] He constructed the five-pound bomb with sticks of gelignite inside a beer keg which was then transported by the gang to Beechmount Avenue at 3.00 am on Easter Sunday 10 April.[9] The bomb was placed with the other beer kegs that made up the security barrier.[10]

The bomb primed by Watt beforehand and planted by the Shankill Butchers exploded shortly the following afternoon at 2.47 pm just as the Official Sinn Féin Commemoration parade began. The explosion killed one boy, Kevin McMenamin (10) and injured five people, one of whom had a leg blown off.[9]

Ten days later another UVF bomb assembled by Watt was planted to go off beside the funeral cortege of IRA man Trevor McKibbin in Etna Drive, Ardoyne.[3] Two teenaged Catholic boys Sean Campbell (19) and Sean McBride (18) were killed in the no-warning explosion. They were both civilians. The blast was so powerful that its force left one of the victims decapitated. It later emerged that before the Troubles broke out in 1969, Watt had played football with Campbell's older brothers at the Bone Hill playing fields.[3]

The following month the UVF again used Watt's expertise to make a bomb which detonated in Crumlin Road outside Mountainview petrol station. The attack was to punish the station's owner, who had defied a joint UVF and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) order to close during the 1977 Ulster Workers Strike. John Geddis, an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) Corporal was killed as he drove past.[11]