50 years ago today, in the small hours of 31 July 1975, one of the most notorious incidents of 'The Troubles' in Ireland unfolded. Three musicians from one of the country's foremost pop groups were murdered. The last official photo of the Miami Showband. Source: stephentravers.org Youth uniting On Wednesday July 30 1975, the Miami Showband, amongst the foremost exponents of the mid-70s Irish ‘showband scene,’ performing popular pop/rock covers and original material, entertained an enthusiastic audience of around 450 fans at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland. Although the building is long gone – youngsters from the area now frequent the Roller Dome built in its place – during its 1960s and 1970s heyday, the Ballroom regularly attracted sizeable crowds. Like music venues across this part of Ireland, this location was regarded as a sanctuary for young revellers from either side of what had long been a society partitioned by religion. On entrance, punters strolled up a grandiose marble staircase against an evocative background aroma of cigarettes, burger meals, and cleaning chemicals, while reaching the summit provided access to a labyrinth of rooms – immediately on the left, the click-click of the pool table; to the right, the ballroom, equating to good times, dancing, and the perennial hormonal rushes of youthful romance. By the early 1980s, teenagers would also be hunched over Donkey Kong or Crazy Climber in other rooms, but as before, pupils from Banbridge High and St Patrick’s (the local Roman Catholic school), would integrate, partitioned into sub-cultures primarily dictated by whether they preferred listening to punk, disco, soul, heavy metal, folk, or whatever. Teenagers socialising over arcade games, crashing cigarettes, forming relationships -sometimes as fleeting as the time it took to pot the next black - is such a familiar picture I can practically hear the electronic squeaks of the Galaxian and Space Invaders we developed repetitive strain injuries from mastering in Rollo’s café in Shandon: in our case, pupils or ex-pupils of Tynecastle High, Foresters, and St Augustine's. The difference between the two scenarios, two words imbued with the weight of centuries: The Troubles.  Site of the atrocity, near Buskhill. Credit: Dean Molyneaux Bogus roadblock The Miami Showband packed away their gear after another successful night. After all, this was a band at the top of their game. Formed in 1962 by Dublin's answer to Brian Epstein, Tom Doherty, they never rocketed to the heady height of The Beatles (few of the Fab Four’s contemporaries did). 'The Miamis,' with their revolving line-up of talented members and ever evolving musical styles, achieved seven number one singles in the Irish charts. But after that rousing performance in Banbridge, the band unwittingly found themselves sucked into The Troubles' remorselessly indiscriminate black hole. By the summer of 1975, their only original member, guitarist Clem Quinn, had departed. The lineup now consisted of Tony Geraghty (guitar), Des Lee (saxophone), Brian McCoy (trumpet), Ray Millar (drums), Fran O’Toole (vocalist), and Stephen Travers (bass). Only two of the musicians now hailed from the Republic; four were Northern Irish – for the record, two were Protestants, two Roman Catholics. After packing up, they wolfed down a welcome supper of Irish stew. These lads were nothing if not professionals – there were no demands for cocaine or groupies on their rider. They then clambered into their VW minibus to head back to Dublin. Ray, from Antrim, who’d opted to visit his parents, waved his bandmates off, while their manager, Brian Maguire, drove ahead. The van had been coasting down the A1 when, approaching Buskhill in County Down at around 2.30 in the morning of 31st July, their headlights bathed a British Army patrol gesturing for them to pull inn. This checkpoint would no doubt have been viewed as an inconvenience, nothing more. All in the band, especially the Northern Irishmen, would’ve been used to army or RUC checkpoints, particularly on roads approaching the border with the Republic. Still wearing their stage attire, the musicians heaved themselves out into the balmy July night to find the soldiers were wearing Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) uniforms. (Britain’s then largest infantry regiment, the UDR were locally recruited with a Protestant to Catholic demographic of 84% to 16% upon its initiation, dipping to around 97% to 3% by 1972 as the violence wore on.) The UDR men ordered them to line up, hands on their heads. The five complied, and since these soldiers were speaking with Ulster accents there was even some banter about the gig. What none of the band could possibly have known was that their khaki uniforms were merely a cover. To carry that hatred around for 50 years, I wouldn’t be strong enough to do that. The atrocity These UDR soldiers were also members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist terrorist group who had spent years wreaking murderous havoc amongst the Nationalist community, not to mention infighting their equally lethal paramilitary rivals, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). The real objective of this operation was to place a 10-pound bomb under the van, timed to detonate when the vehicle was travelling through Newry. The anticipated outcome for this latest in Ireland’s lengthy litany of atrocities was for it to be blamed on the Provisional IRA, prompting the Irish government to tighten border security to stem the south-to-north flow of weapons. However, dodgy soldering led to the timebomb exploding prematurely. The two UVF men inside the van were killed instantly. (An arm was later discovered in the adjoining field, tattooed with ‘Portadown UVF’). Des was thrown into a ditch. As the sound of the explosion rang out, the remaining terrorists opened fire. Struck by nine 9mm rounds, Brian, son of the Orange Lodge’s County Tyrone Grand Master, died instantly. Fran and Tony took to their heels but were also gunned down. Stephen, hit by a bullet which broke into 16 pieces, played dead. Cowering in the darkness, waiting for the voices to recede, Des eventually summoned the courage to crawl up the embankment. Thumbing a lift, he alerted the RUC. When the security forces arrived at the charnel house, personal possessions, clothing and a photo of the band scattered amongst bodies, body parts and spent cartridges, the van a smouldering shell, Stephen was discovered seriously wounded. Aftermath and legacy The Miami Showband massacre entered The Troubles' already bloodstained catalogue as one of its most notorious incidents. However, Ray and the two survivors, Lee and Stephen, decided the show had to go on. Three months later, having recruited guest musicians, they played at Galway’s Seapoint Ballroom to over 2,000 people, with hundreds turned away, to rapturous response. Although the Miami Showband called it a day after Des moved to South Africa in 1978, they have performed intermittently ever since. By the late 1970s, the showbands had had their time in the spotlight. The baton of bridging the sectarian divide, bringing young people together to enjoy music regardless of their cultural background, had passed to Northern Ireland’s more raucous punk bands: The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, The Outcasts, Rudi et al.
Miami Showband website Stephen Travers website, with links to his work.  The Bass Player: Surviving the Miami Showband Massacre by Stephen Travers  A plaque commemorating the victims, Parnell Square, Dublin. Credit: Gordon Munro. |
MARK FLEMING EDINBURGH | SCOTLAND
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