Billy McQuiston
| Billy McQuiston | |
|---|---|
| Born |
William McQuiston Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Nationality | British |
| Other names | Twister |
| Occupation | community worker |
| Known for | leader of the A Company, Highfield, West Belfast Brigade, Ulster Defence Association (UDA) |
William "Billy" McQuiston, also known as Twister", is a former loyalist, who was a high-ranking member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Leader of the organisation's A Company, Highfield, West Belfast Brigade, McQuiston spent more than 12 years in the Maze Prison outside Lisburn for possession of weapons. He is now a community activist, often working with former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in West Belfast's troubled interface areas where adjoining loyalist and republican communities occasionally clash.
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 bomb in the Balmoral Showrooms on 11 December 1971 with his decision also influenced by his father having been UDA commander in the area at the time. He recalls: “The area I came from, the family that I came from and the activity that was going on in that area, I don’t think I really had any other choice.” He was almost 15 at the time the bomb exploded on a Saturday afternoon in the heart of the Shankill, which was crowded with shoppers. The bomb killed two adult men and two babies. 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. The following evening he and several friends attended a meeting of the local UDA. One at a time, the teenaged boys were brought into a room by two men wearing hoods. McQuiston faced three men seated at a table on which rested a Bible, gun and an Ulster Banner. After being asked his motive for wishing to join the UDA, he repeated an oath with one hand upon the Bible and the other the gun, and was duly sworn in as a member of the "Ulster Young Militants" (UYM), the junior wing of the UDA.
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