18 Facts About Billy McQuiston

Leader of the organisation's A Company, Highfield, West Belfast Brigade, Billy McQuiston spent more than 12 years in HM Prison Maze outside Lisburn for possession of weapons.

Billy McQuiston is a community activist, often working with former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in West Belfast's troubled interface areas where adjoining loyalist and republican communities occasionally clash.

Billy McQuiston was born and raised in west Belfast's staunchly loyalist and Protestant Shankill Road area.

Billy McQuiston joined the junior wing of the UDA immediately after the 1971 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing, with his decision influenced by his father having been UDA commander in the area at the time.

Billy McQuiston was with a friend and they were on their way to the city centre; the boys rushed to the scene and saw the bodies of the infants as they were brought out of the rubble, wrapped in sheets.

Billy McQuiston faced three men seated at a table on which rested a Bible, gun and an Ulster Banner.

Billy McQuiston became the leader of the UDA's A Company, Highfield, West Belfast Brigade.

Billy McQuiston was first sent to prison on the evidence of a supergrass.

Billy McQuiston spent 31 days on hunger strike in 1982.

Billy McQuiston was released in the mid-1980s and it was during this period that he became acquainted with the British agent Brian Nelson, who had infiltrated the UDA.

Billy McQuiston was sent back to the Maze Prison after being caught in Portadown with masks, hoods, and weapons.

Billy McQuiston evaded his attackers by escaping through his loft.

Billy McQuiston had just gone into a pub when an IRA bomb went off in a fish shop below the LPA headquarters where it was believed senior UDA members, including Ulster Freedom Fighters brigadier Johnny Adair, were having a meeting.

Billy McQuiston helped pull the dead and wounded from the devastated building.

Billy McQuiston remained a popular and influential figure in Highfield, a loyalist estate located on the Upper Shankill and near the republican Ballymurphy area.

Billy McQuiston helped to ensure that A and B companies of the West Belfast brigade, covering the Highfield and Woodvale areas, agreed not to oppose McDonald's operations in the lower Shankill whilst Billy McQuiston was put in charge of a scheme at the Shankill's Heather Street Social Club where members of the lower Shankill C Company could attend to break from Adair and return to the mainstream UDA.

Since leaving the UDA, Billy McQuiston has worked as a community activist for the Springfield Intercommunity Development Project.

Billy McQuiston is a member of the UDA's political advisory group, the Ulster Political Research Group.