Tommy Lyttle

Tommy "Tucker" Lyttle (c. 1939 – 18 October 1995), was a high-ranking Ulster loyalist during the period of religious-political conflict in Northern Ireland known as "the Troubles". A member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) – the largest loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland – he first held the rank of lieutenant colonel and later was made a brigadier. He served as the UDA's spokesman as well as the leader of the organisation's West Belfast Brigade from 1975 until his arrest and imprisonment in 1990. According to journalists Henry McDonald and Brian Rowan, and the Pat Finucane Centre, he became a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch informer.

Ulster Defence Association

Lyttle was born in Belfast and grew up in the loyalist Shankill Road area in a Protestant family as one of five children. In the late 1960s, he worked as a machinist in Mackie's Foundry in the Springfield Road. He later became a bookmaker.

In 1969, the religious-political conflict known as "The Troubles" broke out; two years later in 1971, he became a founding member of the legal loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Defence Association. According to his daughter, Linda, he joined the UDA after a Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) bomb exploded at the Balmoral furniture showroom in the Shankill Road in December 1971, killing four people, including two babies. Lyttle's wife and two daughters had been close to the scene of the explosion but were unhurt. He was a member of the UDA's Inner Council and served as the UDA's spokesman. His youngest son, Thomas "Tosh" Lyttle also joined the UDA. on 21 July 1972, the day the IRA had exploded 22 bombs in various areas of Belfast resulting in the deaths of nine people including UDA member William Irvine and two Protestant teenagers, William Crothers and Stephen Parker.

He was an Independent Unionist candidate for North Belfast in the 1973 Northern Ireland Assembly elections. He was not elected, however, having only polled a total of 560 votes. He took his loss in stride with the statement: "It's not such a bad result for someone whose day job is a bookie".

Together with Tyrie, Vanguard Assemblyman Glenn Barr, his ally Andy Robinson and Newtownabbey-based Harry Chicken, Lyttle travelled to Libya where he met Colonel Muammar Gaddafi about obtaining weapons and money for the loyalist cause. Harding Smith survived another shooting later that year before leaving Northern Ireland for good. Lyttle was then appointed West Belfast Brigadier in his stead.

With the feud ended and firmly established as a loyal supporter of Tyrie, Lyttle was sent by Tyrie to the United States to solicit support and funding from interested groups. In 1977 he helped form a think tank with UDA Commander Andy Tyrie and South Belfast brigadier John McMichael; this was called the New Ulster Political Research Group.

Stevens Enquiry

In January 1990, Lyttle, along with his son, "Tosh", was arrested by the John Stevens Enquiry team after his fingerprints were found on a stolen classified document which was a security forces list of suspected republicans, likely to be used by loyalist paramilitaries for targeting people to be assassinated by hit squads. He was brought before Belfast's Crumlin Road Court where he was convicted of receiving and passing on classified security force intelligence files and intimidating potential witnesses. Although sentenced to seven years imprisonment,

Journalists Henry McDonald and Brian Rowan, in company with the Pat Finucane Centre, later revealed that Lyttle was an informer working for the RUC's Special Branch with the codename "Rodney Stewart".

Stobie was later arrested and charged with Finucane's killing, although he was not convicted. UDA member Ken Barrett, who was also a Special Branch informer, eventually pleaded guilty to the killing in September 2004. Shortly before Lyttle's death in October 1995, BBC journalist John Ware interviewed him. Lyttle maintained that two RUC officers had originally proposed the idea of killing Finucane.

Two years prior to Finucane's assassination, Lyttle reportedly had asked Nelson to obtain details on top IRA figures. When the name Frederick Scappaticci came up, Nelson's FRU handlers became alarmed as Scappaticci—allegedly known as "Stakeknife"—was one of their most important agents, having infiltrated the Provisional IRA's Internal Security Unit or "Nutting Squad" as it was commonly referred to. A substitute was eventually found in the person of Francisco Notarantonio, a retired IRA man of Italian parentage who had been interned previously. On 9 October 1987, Lyttle sent out a UDA hit squad, headed by Sam McCrory using the cover name "Ulster Freedom Fighters" to Notarantonio's home where they shot him to death in his bedroom. Allegedly a party was held afterwards in Lyttle's Sydney Street West home to celebrate the killing. Lyttle threw a similar party following the assassination of Finucane.

The possibility of conspiracy became public through Lyttle himself, following the shooting of Loughlin Maginn on 25 August 1989. Media coverage showed Maginn as the innocent victim of a sectarian attack but Lyttle personally contacted members of the press to inform them that the UDA had good reasons for killing Maginn, whose name was on the list. To back up his claims, he sent a copy of the list he received to a journalist. The uproar that followed the revelation that a senior UDA member was in possession of government documents led to Royal Ulster Constabulary Chief Constable Hugh Annesley appointing Stevens, an officer in Cambridgeshire Constabulary, to investigate the claims. There was considerable animosity between the two UDA men, as Craig had allegedly impregnated one of Lyttle's daughters.

Removal from leadership Following the televised Milltown Cemetery attack by loyalist Michael Stone in March 1988, Lyttle released a statement claiming that Stone had operated alone without sanction from the UDA's Inner Council as he felt that such commando-style attacks would inevitably bring retaliation from republican paramilitaries, making open warfare between the two communities a real possibility. However, Stone's actions—in which three republicans were shot dead and more than 60 wounded—impressed many young loyalists who rushed to join the UDA. This change in membership profile was to have a profound effect on the make-up of the UDA leadership. By 1989–90, information regarding UDA operations was being deliberately withheld from Lyttle "because he was thought to be not reliable".

Held in Crumlin Road Gaol from July 1991, word was sent into the prison by a new group of "Young Turks"—emerging leaders from the Shankill—that Lyttle was to be ostracised by the other UDA inmates. As a result of this edict Lyttle was moved into secure isolation on a wing of the prison usually reserved for prisoners under high risk of attack from other inmates, such as sex offenders; an area described by one of the new leaders, Jim Spence, as "the wing with the ball-roots [a local slang term of abuse]". As the 1990s progressed, Lyttle had little involvement in the UDA leadership on the Shankill Road, which had passed to Johnny Adair and other young, ambitious militants such as Stephen McKeag who wanted a freer hand in dealing with Catholics than that afforded by Lyttle with the latter's alleged links to the security forces". Kevin Myers, who was personally acquainted with Lyttle in Belfast, called him "a violent man" but admitted to having liked him.