Who really threatened to kill Neil Lennon? (by Neil Mackay Sunday Herald, Aug 25, 2002)

 TO the LVF boys in Lurgan, Neil Lennon is just another "taig from the other side of town". Among ordinary loyalists in the bitterly divided Co Armagh town there is a grudging, unspoken respect for Lennon as a local lad done good. But the tattooed LVF trigger-men who drink in bars like Ralph's, set in a grim housing scheme just off the town's Avenue Road, rate his life, happiness and welfare about as highly as they did Rosemary Nelson's or Martin O'Hagan's.

O'Hagan was a prominent investigative journalist for the Belfast edition of the Sunday World who had repeatedly exposed the drug deals and protection rackets of the LVF. He was also a Catholic. O'Hagan was gunned down in Lurgan by the LVF on his way home from a night out with his wife by his side. Nelson, as most of Britain knows, was a Catholic and one of Ulster's most respected human rights lawyers, and again a thorn in the side of the LVF. She was blown to bits outside her Lurgan home by loyalist terrorists. A number of LVF men took part in the operation.

Aa the Nelson and O'Hagan murders show, the LVF aren't afraid of "plugging" a high-profile target. Lawyers, journalists - even policemen (a highly unusual target for loyalists) - are all fair game in the eyes of the LVF. So they wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over killing one footballer.

So, it seemed a sure bet on Wednesday that a threat apparently from the LVF, saying they'd kill Lennon if the Celtic player from Lurgan didn't step down from the Northern Ireland squad, was the real deal. It later turned out to be not quite so clear cut.

The midfielder was due to captain the team against Cyprus in Belfast on Wednesday night until a phone call that afternoon to the BBC claiming to be from the LVF said he'd be killed if he so much as set foot on the pitch. Lennon pulled out and later quit international football for good. It seemed another pathetic example of Northern Ireland's self-defeating sectarianism. A brilliant young soccer star had been denied one of the greatest moments of his career - captaining his country - because some small-minded bigot with a gun couldn't stomach a Catholic leading Northern Ireland on the football pitch.

But was it that simple? One of the key rules in the Northern Ireland Troubles is to never accept a threat as the words of a genuine terrorist organisation unless it's accompanied by a codeword. Each paramilitary organisation has a number of recognised codewords that rotate on an ad hoc basis. When an organisation claims a murder or a bombing, or issues a statement or a threat, then a codeword should - in fact, will always - be given. This bizarre routine exists to stop hoaxers - "eejits off the street" as the RUC would say - ringing up their local police station from a call box and letting merry hell reign on the streets of Ulster by issuing threats to kill against anyone who just happens to take their fancy.

But the threat against Lennon didn't come with a codeword. The LVF, not the most image-conscious organisation in the UK, angrily denied it, or any of its members, had made the threat. So why would the security forces rush - with little evidence - to blame the LVF?

There is a political subtext to this whole sorry story. What some loyalist extremists believe is that the security forces and the government have taken this as an opportunity to keep the LVF in its place. As one said: "They know this was the work of a nutter - some kid who hates Catholics and wanted to put the frighteners on Lennon. But they've allowed that eejit's words to do their work for them. He claimed he was from the LVF, and the police and the government have accepted that and now they will use it as a stick to beat the LVF with."

The Lennon threat makes it easy for the government to maintain the ruling from the Secretary of State, John Reid, that the LVF broke their ceasefire in October 2001 following the murder of Martin O'Hagan. Not only does that mean the handful of LVF prisoners who remain in prison for terrorist offences won't be released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and the prisoner release programme, it also isolates the LVF from the political process. While the IRA and the UVF can have their voices heard, nobody in the corridors of power will pay heed to what the LVF think, hope or say.

One can hardly feel sorry for the LVF. They are one of the most brutal terrorist organisations in the world. A meeting with members of its army council is likely to age most reporters a good 10 years. This isn't like a sit-down and political chat with the tweed- jacketed gunmen of the IRA in Belfast. Meeting the LVF is like coming into contact with the kind of guys who hang around outside run-down pubs and low-rent clubs on a Friday night waiting to get their kicks from stabbing someone who looks at them the wrong way or beating a guy senseless just for the hell of it. Plus these men have weapons - lots of them - and a penchant for overkill and ultra-violence.

Here's a taster of what the LVF are capable of: David Keys was an LVF man awaiting trial in the Maze prison in 1998. He and three others were arrested for machine gunning a crowded bar in Poyntzpass in which two friends - a Catholic and Protestant - were shot dead. Keys was killed in his cell a few weeks later by his own "comrades". The LVF thought he'd been passing information to the RUC. The details of his murder - which included elements of sexual torture - are so disturbing that no newspaper has ever revealed the full details. 

Add to that the "any taig will do" philosophy that's the hallmark of their sectarian killings, major drug dealing and allegations of racketeering and rape and you have an organisation which Ulster people understandably equate more with the mafia than with political terrorism. No politician of any standing would want to sit down with the LVF, and the Lennon threat is a convenient excuse to keep this band of violent killers at arms length.

Regardless of whether the LVF made the threat or not, the damage has been done to Lennon's career. This isn't the first time he's had to face the wrath of loyalists for committing the cardinal sin of not just being Catholic but playing for a club that is to them the apotheosis of republican culture - Celtic FC. To complete his trinity of sins, he's even said in the past that he would be willing to play for a hypothetical all-Ireland team.

The last time he had a brush with the bigots came in February 2001 when he was booed every time he touched the ball at Windsor Park. That match ended in a 4-0 humiliating defeat at the hands of Norway. Days before this game, Lennon received another threat - this time the words "Neil Lennon RIP" were spraypainted, along with the silhouette of a hanged man, on a gable wall near his family home in Lurgan.

It all makes a bit of a mockery of the Irish Football Association's Kick Sectarianism Out Of Football campaign. When Neil Lennon learned of the threat, he was sitting in his suite in the Templeton Hotel near Antrim on Wednesday afternoon thinking about becoming the first Celtic player to captain Northern Ireland. Shortly before 5pm, Jim Boyce, president of the IFA, was contacted by police who'd driven to the hotel to tell him the threat had been made.

Sammy McIlroy, the team manager, told Lennon that he and his family were under a loyalist death threat if he played. Lennon initially said he'd play on, but after talks with his family, who still live in a nationalist area of Lurgan, he changed his mind. Not only was he to pull out of the game, but he was to walk away from international football forever.

It was one threat too many. He left the hotel with a police escort after making this simple statement to his teammates: "I'm sorry it has to end this way." The game ended in a 0-0 draw while Lennon stayed with his family in Lurgan.

The next day he was taken under police escort to catch a private plane to Edinburgh. From there he drove to his home in Glasgow's west end where his security will be stepped up.

On Thursday, Lennon went on Ulster Television to say this to sports editor Adrian Logan: "My parents were pretty distraught really. I've got a 10-year-old daughter who knows nothing about this at the minute and we're going to try and keep her away from it as much as we can. Obviously, I can't put them through this every time, you know, so, I've thought long and hard about it and I've decided that I probably won't be going back to play for Northern Ireland.

"It's not only my parents and family that I have to think about. I've got to think about the team and the focus that is taken away from the team when things like this happen. And it's not the first time it's happened, obviously, so I don't want to keep being the focus of media attention for the wrong reasons. 

"It's a decision that I've thought long and hard about previously, and this time I've come to the conclusion that it's probably for the best for everyone. The game will go on, it will continue. There was, I think, 6000 at the game last night. The lads are a terrific bunch of lads and they did really well last night and I've enjoyed my career at an international level but it's time to say enough's enough. I don't blame the IFA one bit for this and Sammy McIlroy was magnificent with me throughout it.

"He said if it was his son in the same position he'd do exactly the same thing and he backed me on that and I can't thank him enough for that, because obviously it was difficult for him, a difficult position for him to be in again, and he had to restructure the whole team around it. This can't go on and, obviously, the buck will stop with me eventually and I don't want it to drag on any more - and that's why I want to nip this in the bud as quickly as I can."

It was a brave statement, but as the headlines the next day said, the score line was simple: Soccer 0-Bigots 1. Perhaps that mood was best summed up by Boyce: "Sectarianism and bigotry are a plague on our society, a plague on our country. What has happened to Neil Lennon is a reflection of what we are seeing every night on our streets."

The Northern Ireland security minister Jane Kennedy spoke out too, saying: "Once again a handful of sectarian bigots have disgraced Northern Ireland in the eyes of the world by ensuring that the captain of the Northern Ireland football team cannot play in an international game."

Boyce and Kennedy are right. Civil society in Northern Ireland is a mess. As Acting Chief Constable Colin Cramphorn said last week, the police are at "breaking point". The pressure of controlling mass rioting in Belfast and the loss of hundreds of officers following the reorganisation of the RUC means it is almost impossible to police Ulster. Maybe, then, there just weren't the resources to check if the Lennon threat really did come from the LVF, or maybe the police thought they could use the publicity surrounding the whole affair to keep the LVF "in their box".

Pastor Kenny McClinton, a former terrorist turned preacher who now acts as the unofficial spokesman of the LVF, said the threat was a "mischievous hoax", adding: "The ruling army council of the LVF told us emphatically that the threat was not from the LVF.

"It was probably some clown with a mischievous motive. The LVF told us that they have no interest in who plays sport for whatever country, and that they absolutely condemn any threat against a sporting figure."

Last night, the army council of the LVF went even further in a statement to the Sunday Herald. It said: "The LVF army council is making it quite clear that it was not responsible for the death threat issued against Neil Lennon. It is quite easy to apportion blame when there is no definitive proof of who was in fact responsible.

"The LVF do not issue statements or any other information without the use of a recognised codeword. The threat against Neil Lennon contained no codeword. It is irresponsible for the security forces to apportion blame without definitive proof. It is up to Neil Lennon to decide whether or not he wants to play for Northern Ireland - the LVF does not select the soccer team." 

The LVF army council spokesman also made great play of the fact that on the same day the Lennon threat was issued, the Real IRA issued a coded statement admitting it killed David Caldwell, a 51- year-old construction worker who died after a booby-trapped lunchbox exploded in a territorial army base in Derry. "The Northern Ireland Office and the Police Service of Northern Ireland chose to bury this fact by blaming the LVF for threatening footballers," the LVF said, adding that "it was clear the NIO are prepared to turn a blind eye to republican murder in order to preserve the doomed political process in Northern Ireland".

The lack of a codeword and the denial by the LVF are fuelling heated pub rows in Northern Ireland over Lennon's decision to quit. Some - mostly Protestants - say he over-reacted and want to know why the RUC didn't explain to Lennon this was likely to be hoax. They blame the police for - yet again - painting the loyalist community as thick-headed thugs. Catholics, on the other hand, tend to agree with Lennon. Why bother with crap like that, one drinker said. If they don't want you, turn your back on them, they believe. And anyway, Neil's too good for the likes of them, angry Catholics say, referring to the army of Northern Ireland fans - who are overwhelmingly Protestant.

In Northern Ireland, the bitterness leads to blindness and the blindness means there is never a way out of the bigotry. The Northern Ireland v Cyprus match was - with the best of Irish irony - sponsored by the Community Relations Council. Sport's unifying message has been shown to be bereft of any significance in Northern Ireland. The country's football team can now, after the events of last week, only call on the support of roughly 60% of the nation - the Protestant majority. What Catholic, after all, in their right mind, would willingly support a team that has supporters who would threaten to kill their co-religionists. Once again, another chance of beating bigotry either on or off the terraces is blown to smithereens.

Lennon's Northern Ireland teammate, Aaron Hughes, a Protestant, perhaps gave the most succinct take on that, now pointless, match against Cyprus. "My best mate was at the game and he said they were chanting Lenny's name," Hughes said. "It's a minority and it not only reflects badly on football, it reflects badly on the whole country. When you see the things that go on in the world, for someone to get a death threat because they play for a certain football club is just a disgrace."

On Wednesday, the BBC in Belfast took a phone call from a man claiming he was from the LVF. The caller said the outlawed loyalist paramilitary group would kill Neil Lennon, the Celtic midfielder, if he captained Northern Ireland that night against Cyprus. The warning came without any of the usual recognised code-words used by paramilitary groups to authenticate their claims. The death-threat led to Lennon, a Catholic, walking away from international game forever.

 

 

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