Tommy Lyttle

Tommy Lyttle
Tommy Lyttle in 1984
Born	c. 1939 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Died	18 October 1995 (aged 56) Donaghadee, County Down, Northern Ireland
Cause of death	Heart attack
Nationality	British
Other names	"Tucker"
Occupation	Machinist bookmaker
Known for	Brigadier of the West Belfast Ulster Defence Association (UDA) (1975-1990)
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Baird
Children	3 sons, 2 daughters

Tommy "Tucker" Lyttle (c. 1939 – 18 October 1995), was a high-ranking Ulster loyalist during the period of religious-political conflict in Northern Ireland known as "the Troubles". A member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) - the largest loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland - he first held the rank of lieutenant colonel and later was made a brigadier. He served as the UDA's spokesman as well as the leader of the organisation's West Belfast Brigade from 1975 until his arrest and imprisonment in 1990. According to journalists Henry McDonald and Brian Rowan, and the Pat Finucane Centre, he became a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch informer.

Lyttle was born in Belfast and grew up in the loyalist Shankill Road area in a Protestant family as one of five children. In the late 1960s, he worked as a machinist in Mackie's Foundry in the Springfield Road. He later became a bookmaker. At the age of 18, he married Elizabeth Baird, by whom he had three sons and two daughters.

In 1969, the religious-political conflict known as "The Troubles" broke out; two years later in 1971, he became a founding member of the legal loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Defence Association. According to his daughter, Linda, he joined the UDA after a Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) bomb exploded at the Balmoral furniture showroom in the Shankill Road in December 1971, killing four people, including two babies. Lyttle's wife and two daughters had been close to the scene of the explosion but were unhurt.