Stormont Castle

The British Cabinet was meeting and the main issue they were discussing at that very moment was that the British government were being assured of the course it was taking and the extent of troop numbers involved.

According to Faulkner, John Hugh himself went to see Stan Orme in Stormont Castle at 6.30pm to deliver their ultimatum.

Send the British army in, he told Orme, or they would all resign.

By then, Rees had been summoned to London and was already in attendance at a meeting of the British cabinet.

And, you know, you used to pitch up on a Thursday thinking an executive meeting was going to happen.

We'd have a chat in the soft seats in Stormont Castle and everybody would go home and no executive meeting would happen.

And you'd send them

home, yeah.

But I think that decision he took in 2005 when he was given an ultimatum, essentially based on a risk assessment, but the prison authorities or people who came to see him before he was released in 2005 basically said, you're going to die if you think you're going to seize power and control.

And I think that also what I said in the book, based on access to declassified files, is that when prominent UDA members or alleged leaders are meeting with the Northern Ireland office of Stormont Castle and the UDA want rid of him and he's not coming back, that's the current situation.

So he knows he can't come back because there's a danger to him.

So I think that he's living in exile in a coastal town, very windswept, but as I say in the book, on the occasions that I went to visit him, absolutely freezing cold and very isolating in that way.

before he was released in 2005, basically said you're going to die if you think you're going to seize power and control.

And I think that also what I said in the book, based on access to declassified files, that when prominent UDA members or alleged leaders are meeting with the Northern Ireland office, the Stormont Castle, and the UDA want rid of him and he's not coming back, that's the current situation.

So he knows he can't come back because there's a danger to him.

So I think that he's living in exile in a coastal town, very windswept, but as I say in the book, on the occasions that I went to visit him, absolutely freezing cold and very isolating in that way.