Age sixty, Alex (Oso) Calderwood lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Alex faithfully serves his church and community. He can often be found in the Olive Branch Café. He is part of a large family of four sisters and three brothers. His only daughter, will soon graduate from university. The group opened a second hotel in 2007 in Portland, Oregon, which featured turntables in the rooms and a library of records. Its New York hotel – where guests can choose between budget rooms with bunk beds to exclusive loft-style suites a landmark 1900s building. In Palm Springs the hotel was designed with a bohemian style to reflect the town's Californian heritage. Further hotels are due to open in Panama City and Los Angeles. When asked about sectarian murder, Payne said “I can understand how some people on our side could justify this type of murder. Personally, I would not engage in a sectarian battle." Payne also claimed, probably with good cause, that the Official IRA had him “under sentence of death.” It is unclear if the OIRA, or the PIRA, ever did try to kill him. His “own side” certainly did, as we shall see, in 1978.

Speaking about his venture into the world of hospitality, he said: "We didn't know anything about hotels when we started. We just went on instinct." Three years ago, ‘Ouzo’ Calderwood was jailed for seven years for his part in a snooker hall robbery mastereminded by former UDA paramilitary Billy Grogan. Loyalist hitman Frankie Curry was responsible for the murder. Curry was later killed in 1999 during a loyalist feud.

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We spotted the 50-year-old him yesterday afternoon alighting from a dark coloured Renault Scenic car on the loyalist Shankill Road in west Belfast. By 1980, Payne was running Crumlin Road Opportunities, a cross-community project aimed at training with vocational skills young people who would contemporaneously be described as NEET – Not in Education, Employment, or Training. Trainees included Johnny Adair (who discusses the project in his autobiography) and Skelly McCrory. McCrory was at an event hosted by the Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1982. The Lord Mayor, Tommy Patton, “paid particular tribute” to Payne ( Belfast Telegraph, 18/06/82). You may or may not be acquainted with the name, Alex Calderwood, but you will most certainly have either lived or heard of the Troubles that terrorised the neighbourhoods of Northern Ireland. From their beginning in 1969, until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and beyond, all Northern Irish people have a story to tell - and it's not a pretty one. These are stories of pain and anguish, of lives lost; lives still emphasised by empty chairs in the homes of loved ones. Dessie McCormac joined the RUC in 1971 and served until 2001 when the force was disbanded and replaced with the PSNI. He is among a number of officers who have been interviewed for the BBC One - On the Front Line series which looks at how various professions, from firefighters to nurses and bus drivers carried out their duties during the conflict.

Was I having a nightmare? "Alex Calderwood, you've been sentenced to the Secretary of State's pleasure," the judge said. The mallet fell and made a sound that life was about to change. "Take him down," echoed around the courtroom. Another judge sat down. "Alex Calderwood, you've been sentenced to seven years," he said. The mallet went down again. Sentencing Grogan, Judge Christopher Harvey Clarke QC told him: “I am wholly satisfied you were the organising mastermind behind this armed raid. Brandon Sullivan✒✍ delves into the activities ofJohn White, Davy Payne, Kenny McClinton: C Company in the early 1970s.Ⅱ

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One of the men convicted of killing Carson was named David Milton Dodds, the other was a man named Mullan. Another man named Dodds, “Winkie” became a senior C Company figure in the 80s and 90s, ultimately falling foul of Adair as did his brother, Milton Dodds. A source indicated that David Milton Dodds is Winkie Dodds brother, though I cannot say for sure if he is or not. There are two years between them in age. What effect did this have on the IRA? Well, it didn’t affect their capacity to kill large numbers of RUC members, British Army soldiers, UDR members, and Protestant civilians, and neither did it put them off a wild campaign of bombing “economic targets” that reduced much of Northern Ireland to rubble. Recruitment never seemed to suffer, and in fact some IRA figures openly admitted that loyalist murder kept the volunteers coming: He is in turmoil, he was leading a quiet normal life. He was enjoying things but the greed got too much, he couldn't resist the easy money but now he is raging at the attention that decision has cost him already. Gull Hamilton has less to lose," the source said.

Your record suggests that you have been involved in robbery since your teenage years in Belfast.” He added that Grogan’s last spell in prison had failed to deter him from continuing his life as a “ruthless gangster.” Calderwood’s pal, Billy Grogan, who was described in court as a “ruthless gangster” was caged for 15 years for being the brains behind the terrifying robbery on a Bournemouth snooker club. Described as a hospitality pioneer who created artsy, unusual hotels that catered for image-conscious "scenesters", Calderwood opened his latest in Shoreditch six weeks ago, saying it was "derived and driven by east London". In 1993, with two partners, Calderwood started a Seattle chain of retro barbershops called Rudy's. The successful venture grew to a chain of eight Seattle shops and nine others in Portland, New York and Los Angeles. John White, along with Davy Payne, and Kenny McClinton were founding members of the UDA’s Shankill Road C Company, according to Johnny Adair’s autobiography. When White was asked how he could have stabbed Irene Andrews (murdered along with SDLP Stormont Senator Paddy Wilson in 1973) to death he replied “we thought she was a Catholic.” Like Adair, Kenny McClinton enjoys publicity, and like White, spoke of using a knife in their loyalist terrorism. McClinton described loyalist violence like this:It has been claimed the Calderwood also works with a football team in the area and had rebuilt his good reputation among the players young enough not to know of his crime.

Payne had nipped the fuse of the bomb, and then carried it (the bomb was contained in a satchel) to a piece of waste ground using a bamboo pole. The reported noted that the UVF had denied that they planted the bomb. In 1976, the IRA opened up on the Jolly Roger, killing two politically uninvolved Protestants, and a UDA member, William Archer, was shot dead outside it on another occasion. At some point after 1976, Payne was relieved of his command of the North Belfast UDA over allegations of the misappropriation of funds. Another former officer Anne Graham tells how when she joined the RUC in 1976 she was first stationed at Tennent Street in north Belfast, which was at that time said to be the busiest police station in western Europe.He saw what you could do with material that nobody else wanted," Shah said. "He always had a desire to come up with something new that gave consumers value for their money. He was an entrepreneur and knew how to entertain, but more than that, he was always willing to talk about what the new thing was." the UDA was soon wading in blood and that … when the GEN 47 committee convened in London, the UDA had been responsible for just 4 deaths (including two UDA men killed by their own bomb). And because of a policy never to claim killings, unlike the IRA which invariably admitted its violence, it was never clear when the UDA had murdered people. The following year the UDA killed 72 people – one every five days and the reality that lay behind this particular ‘civil defence’ group was bloodily apparent. While on duty on the Ballygomartin Road she said a well-known loyalist, Alex Calderwood, known as Oso, stopped her patrol car and asked her to take him to Tennent Street station where he confessed to a brutal sectarian murder. Defending former soldier and father-of-five Willis, Nigel Mitchell asked for credit for his client’s early guilty plea, adding: “The robbery started life as a joke but unfortunately it became a reality.” A taxi driver took him into the Shankill and give him to the likes of Oso and said 'Do what you want with him'. Oso was sent to the Maze and he served 16-years for that," recalled Ms Graham.