Michael Stone

Michael Anthony Stone (born 2 April 1955) is a British ex-member of the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland.

The Greggs moved to the Braniel estate on the outskirts of Belfast in 1959 due to John Gregg securing employment with Harland and Wolff shipyard.

Stone attended Braniel Primary School and Lisnasharragh Secondary School, where fellow pupils included George Best, who was in the same class as Stone's sister.

Stone enrolled in the Army Cadet Force as a fourteen-year-old where he received basic training in firearm use.

Stone was expelled from school at fifteen and a half after a series of playground fights and left Lisnasharragh with no formal qualifications.

He found work as a "hammer boy" in the shipyard a few weeks later.

However he got into a fight with another worker and, following a suspension, resigned his position.

In 1970 Stone helped establish a Braniel street gang, which called itself the Hole in the Wall Gang, and which Stone claims included Catholic and Protestant members.

Gang members, who adopted a form of uniform consisting of blue jeans and oxblood Dr. Martens and who carried knives, clashed regularly with members of other Braniel gangs as well as those from neighbouring estates in east Belfast.

In 1971 Stone joined a "Tartan Gang" that had started up on the Braniel estate and he was soon recognised as "general" of this loyalist group.

The gangs were responsible for sectarian violence, which usually took the form of spending Saturday afternoons in Belfast city centre attacking Catholic youths, and vandalising the Catholic repository in Chapel Lane.

Stone met Tommy Herron, commander of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA)'s East Belfast Brigade, when Herron moved into the Braniel estate in 1972.

According to Stone, Herron took him and three friends to the neighbouring Castlereagh Hills one day and brought a German shepherd dog with them.

After the four had played with the dog for around half-an-hour, Herron produced a gun and told them to kill the dog.

After his three friends refused, Stone shot the animal and was praised by Herron for being ruthless.

He was sworn in as a member of the UDA at a ceremony the following week.

Stone was trained in weapon use by Herron himself for several months.

According to Stone, at one point in the training Herron shot him with a blank round from a shotgun.

Stone's early UDA activity was mostly confined to stealing.

In 1972 he was sent to prison for six months for stealing guns and ammunition from a Comber sports shop.

He returned to jail soon after his release, for stealing a car.

Tommy Herron was murdered, probably by colleagues, soon afterwards and the Braniel UDA went into abeyance.

Following Herron's death, Stone withdrew from the UDA and in January 1974 attached himself to the Red Hand Commando (RHC), a loyalist group that also operated a Braniel unit under Sammy Cinnamond.

According to Stone, one of his earliest duties was acting as a bodyguard to Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party leader Bill Craig.

In 1978 the UDA encouraged Stone to join the Royal Irish Rangers at Ballymena, in order that he could receive training with anti-tank weaponry, although he did not receive this training and left after six months.

According to Martin Dillon, Stone also held membership of Tara, an anti-Catholic and anti-communist organisation led by William McGrath, a close associate of RHC leader John McKeague.

Dillon also argues that Stone had actually joined the RHC at an earlier date and held simultaneous membership of the other groups, Tara and the UDA.

Cross-membership of more than one loyalist group was not unheard of in the early days of the Troubles.

Stone became close to John Bingham, the commander of the Ballysillan Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF, which the RHC was very close to), and the two worked closely on a fund-raising drive for their groups.

According to Stone, this included a meeting with two members of Mossad, who wished to provide funding to the UVF.

Stone however was eager to become more closely involved in killing.

He was convicted of three counts of murder committed at an IRA funeral in 1988.

In 2000 he was released from prison on licence under the Good Friday Agreement.

In November 2006, Stone was charged with attempted murder of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, having been arrested attempting to enter the parliament buildings at Stormont while armed.

He was convicted and sentenced in 2008 to a further 16 years' imprisonment, before being released on parole in 2021.

Stone was born in Harborne, Birmingham, to English parents Cyril Alfred Stone and his wife Mary Bridget (née O'Sullivan).

Mary Bridget walked out on the marriage soon after Stone's birth and Cyril Alfred enlisted in the Merchant Navy, leaving the infant Michael in the care of John Gregg and his wife Margaret (Cyril's sister) who lived in Ballyhalbert.

Stone has claimed that he suspects his biological mother may have been a Catholic because of her name but added that he was baptised in the Church of Ireland by the Greggs and as such he has always self-identified as Protestant.

Cyril Stone subsequently remarried and had a boy and a girl, Michael Stone's half-siblings, by his second wife.

The Greggs had five biological children with whom Stone was raised and whom he identifies as siblings, a son and four daughters.