I had opened a new taxi depot “Ace Taxis” on the Antrim road, just below Lynch’s Bar on the corner of the New Lodge Road in the autumn of 1972, this at a time when the stretch off road up to the Waterworks was known as ‘Murder Mile’. The depot provided a vital service to the area, being the only one between the New Lodge, Ardoyne, Ligoniel, Newington and the Bone. The service was hailed as a safe way to travel between the districts without being waylaid and murdered which happened often to Catholic people making their way home, mostly late at night. Before long the depot came under the observation of the British army who openly labelled it as “Staff Cars for the I.R.A”. Many felt that this labelling noticed of course by the Loyalist murder gangs could endanger the lives of the drivers, the idea being planted should there be an attack on the depot or its personnel then it would come from Loyalist gunmen. At Ardoyne, during a hand to hand fighting with the British Army an Intelligence Officers notebook fell from his pocket and was picked up by a civilian, In that book, which I was shown at a house in Jamaica street, it showed photographs of many North Belfast men and details, and although living on the Falls Road, there was my photo with the caption Joe Graham I.R.A Transport Officer, it went on to mention Ace Taxis. The information was, to put it mildly, inaccurate, but more worrying, was it malicious? I shrugged it off and got on with earning a living driving people through the then very dangerous streets of Belfast or manning the desk in a depot that was consistently being fingered as a ‘motor pool for the I.R.A’.

One spring evening in 1973 as I sat alone manning the phones in the depot the door opened and in stepped a seven man foot patrol of the Parachute Regiment. The Sergeant, a guy with ginger hair and a moustache. approached the desk and cockily inquired, “Is this the office for the staff cars for the I.R.A”. We passed a few heated words and luckily two other drivers came into the depot at this point, one a New Lodge Road man, well known for his ‘take no nonsense attitude’ and another a Whiterock man , an ex professional boxer, whom I will call Dennis and Jimmy.(no point in using real names in this article ) Dennis immediately offered a challenge, ‘put your guns down and us three will take the lot of you on here and now’, the ‘sleggin’ heated up and words flew hot and heavy with the soldiers totally on the loosing side. It then turned to a very dangerous point, Jimmy locked the door and stood in front and offered any one at a time to step forward. Suddenly the soldiers levelled their rifles; to me they looked like cornered rats. Dennis must have been as aware as I was how dangerous cornered rats could be, particularly if they were holding automatic rifles., He walked to the door unlocked it and flung it open. Said to Jimmy, “They would shoot you before giving a fair fight”.

A bit more verbalism took place before they started to leave and the parting words of the sergeant, “You’re dead Graham... And not in the too far distance future” were later to prove interesting. Myself, Dennis and jimmy had a laugh about the whole incident and got back to work, later as I was about to lock up the depot for the night a young lad, Terry, whom I knew to be homeless came along. He asked if he could sleep in the depot as he had no where to go, I told him no problem but keep the phones off the hook and turn off the lights. It was not uncommon for a homeless man to bed down in the depot, two or three often availed of it, at that I left and set off for home, it was about midnight.

Apparently, after I left, Malachy , a country fellow who lived in the flat above the depot noticed Terry in the depot and joined him there for a yarn, they left the door unlocked and the lights on. What followed was later related to me by Terry and Malachy in the Mater Hospital were they both lay with multiple gunshot wounds.

As they sat in the little ‘office’ cubicle corner of the depot two men in civilian clothes entered, one a ginger haired guy with a moustache, called out with an English accent, “Joe Graham”, at that Terry popped his head up to the hatch and before he got finished saying, “Joe’s gone home”, a shot rang out and he fell to the floor. Malachy froze where he was seated and the other gunman approached him through the door of the cubicle and shot him, meanwhile “Ginger” shot Terry twice more through the hatch, both gunmen walked out off the depot.

Although Terry and Malachy had been shot three times each, once close to the heart, they managed to struggle out of the depot onto the Antrim Road where a passing taxi driver from a City Centre depot stopped and dragged them into his car and made off down the Antrim Road to the Mater Hospital. Malachy later told me from his hospital bed, as he lay slumped in the back of the car, he seen the two men who had done the shooting walking up Kinniard Street toward Girdwood Military Barracks..

The taxi driver, a friend of mine, having got the men to hospital drove to my house and told me of the happenings, I immediately made my way to the hospital, it was now round about 2.am. I was in a corridor as Terry was wheeled into an intensive car unit and as he passed he weakly said, “Joe, they were Brits who shot us”. No doubt this was prompted by the already gathering momentum that ‘an apparent Loyalist shooting had taken place at Ace Taxis’.

I then drove round to the depot where a crowd had gathered, inside the depot about ten soldiers of the parachute regiment were milling around. Among the crowd as to be expected a fair splattering of media people, all with pens and notebooks ready to record the latest ‘ loyalist’ shooting , but I was going to put the record straight. Before I got opening my mouth, some soldiers on seeing me surged forward as if to arrest me, I backed into the crowd, and a free for all broke out, people battling with the soldiers to get me free from them, “Run, run”, they said as they got between me and the soldiers. I took off down the New Lodge Road and into the first house that had its door open, closing it behind me. Having explained the background to the residents they suggested I stay until the streets cleared of soldiers. Someone approached P.J. McCrory, a solicitor well known for his championing of issues such as this. Later that morning I met him at his Upper Cavehill Road house, mean while the Television and radio were reporting ‘another sectarian shooting having taken place at a taxi depot on the Antrim Road’, there was no mention of the attempted arrest of the depot owner by soldiers or the fact that they raided my home and homes of some of my friends in search of me during the early hours.

P.J. McClory agreed that the reason for my attempted arrest was that they didn’t want me talking to the media; they preferred the loyalist involvement story going out to the public. “The thing to do” he said, “is to get your story to the media and after it has appeared on television I will meet you at 7pm and we will go to Glenravel R.U.C Barracks and see if the R.U.C is still wanting to arrest you... I have a funny feeling they won’t” A meeting was made with the local television and I went on to describe exactly what happened and to fairly and squarely put the blame on the British Army and not the loyalists. After watching the report on the local six o’clock news I met up with P.J and went with him to Glenravel street Barracks, where we were told, as P.J. forecast, “No, we have no arrest warrant for Mr. Graham”.

The media still went on reporting it as an apparent sectarian shooting, but I still ploughed on trying to get the truth told, and to be fair to the media the loyalist murder gangs were particularly busy that year so they couldn’t be blamed for their mistake.

Meanwhile Terry and Malachy had miraculously recovered; few people survive three bullets from a Browning automatic. Released from hospital, Malachy went back to his family in Tyrone and Terry was given local lodgings. Despite many attempts to get media to look at the case we got no where, I openly accused the British Army and R.U.C of a cover up, but it fell on deaf ears.

Suddenly, a few weeks later, the media announced that two Shankill Road men were arrested for the shooting of Terry and Malachy in the Antrim Road premises of Ace Taxis, it seemed unbelievable. Meanwhile Dennis the New Lodge fellow who was in the depot earlier when we had the run in with the paratroopers was in Crumlin Road Prison. Dennis sent out a message with his wife, to tell me the guy they had in Crumlin Road was no Shankill Road man but the English soldier who he recognised as the sergeant who made the threat in the depot. I went immediately to the press and gave them these facts and said both I and Dennis would come forward to identify the gunman if an identification parade was arranged.

Nothing I reported appeared, instead they chose to publish information that they got from some quarter, saying the men were members of the army but not actually serving members they had been seconded to help train the then newly formed Ulster Defence regiment, (U.D.R), yes they were English but were in lodgings on the Shankill Road. Obviously the press had contacted the military authorities with what I had said and were fobbed off with the amazing story which they published. It was noticed however Terry was no where to be seen in the days immediately before the court case, but turned up in the court on the day.

If you think all this unbelievable you should have seen the goings when “Ginger” and his mate appeared in court. They stood in the dock and Ginger’s defence went something like this.....”Well sir, on the night we entered the premises (Ace Taxis) seeking a taxi Terry on hearing my English accent shouted something like, “English Bastard”, and he produced a hand gun, I quickly took out my service pistol and fired at him and at another figure which appeared close to Terry, I now know that to have been Malachy, I fired again at that figure as well “.

The judge on summing up, ‘understood’ the shooting of Terry but reprimanded Ginger’s carelessness in shooting of Malachy, an unarmed man. Then, bearing in mind he has been on remand some months he gave him a short prison sentence.

I am not going to play barrack room lawyer here, suffice to say that Terry was never charged with processing a gun or attempted murder as one would have expected had he really tried to shoot the soldiers. He disappeared that day in the court and from that day to this he has never, to my knowledge, been seen in Belfast. Out of the blue about a year after the court case a package was delivered to me and inside it was a book about printing, and wrote in it a note saying, “Sorry about everything Joe, Terry”, the package had a Spanish postmark so at least he was alive and well. Four years later Malachy contacted me from Birmingham where he married and went to live. He explained that he needed to get in touch with Terry to come forward as a witness as the time limit for lodging a compensation claim was running out. Together we tried to locate Terry but to no avail.