Sunday Life
The bible and the bullet

IN the early 1980s Billy Wright walked away from violence - to preach the gospel.

By then, Wright had spent years in jail and was established as a leading UVF man.

But for three years, from 1983 to 1985, he studied and preached the Christian message in towns across Ireland - including the staunchly nationalist town of Castlewellan, Co Down.

He even travelled as far south as Cork, where he spread the message to passers-by in the city centre.

It was while serving a jail term for paramilitary offences during 1982 that Billy Wright's interest in Christianity began to develop, and he began reading the Bible regularly.

However, he did not become a committed Christian until after his release from custody.

Since his death in 1997, a number of people have claimed they brought Billy Wright to an acceptance of Christianity through their own personal faith.

That is not the case as Wright himself said: "I found Christ alone."

Some four months following his release from custody, Wright had been sitting alone in his home in Portadown.

He described how his mind at that time was bombarded with problems.

He had a Bible by his side and decided to open it. The first verse he read was: 'I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me'.

At that point Billy Wright said he took that verse as a personal promise to him from God.

However, in 1985, the year he was married, Billy Wright was driven back into the world of the paramilitaries, following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald signed the Agreement at Hillsborough Castle on 15 November 1985, provoking a backlash from the loyalist community who believed British betrayal of the province was imminent.

The anger and violence, spluttered on for months as loyalists staged a series of protests across Northern Ireland.

On March 31, 1986, violence erupted on the streets of Portadown, following the banning of an Apprentice Boys parade in the town.

Several people were injured in the rioting as police fired a number of plastic baton rounds, in an attempt to restore order.

The violence continued in Portadown the following day and 39 police officers and 38 civilians were injured in the disturbances. The security forces fired a total of 147 plastic baton rounds.

Twenty-year-old Keith White died on 14 April 1986, two weeks after a RUC plastic baton round struck him. He was the first Protestant to be killed by a plastic baton round.

His death was instrumental in propelling Billy Wright back into the UVF.

Later, Wright was to say he had let Christ down.

"I made a conscious decision.

"I fell on my knees and apologised to God. But I felt contempt for the British government, hatred for the IRA and longing for justice for Northern Ireland Protestants."

He went to the Shankill Road in Belfast where he met a very senior member of the UVF, who shook hands with him and told him it was great to see him back within the structures of the organisation.

Wright left behind preaching the gospel to begin the re-organisation of the mid-Ulster UVF, which he was quickly to turn into the most ruthless in the province.

Years later Wright was to ponder the contradictions in his life.

He said: "What's in war for me? If peace breaks down I'm a dead man.

"I've done things in my life that I regret. My life's full of contradictions...As for what it has cost me, only eternity will tell..."