the UVF, who announced that he would be killed if he left his hiding place in England, although Marchant surprisingly announced that he personally forgave Allen. In 1984 Marchant, along with fellow UVF man John Bingham, was part of a group led by Loyalist politician George Seawright that wielded legally-held handguns to physically remove an Irish tricolour that had been erected at Whiterock Leisure Centre. Killing Marchant was shot dead by IRA gunmen from a passing car as he stood outside "The Eagle" chip shop on the crowded Shankill Road on 28 April 1987. The UVF Brigade Staff had their headquarters in the rooms above the shop. The shooting took place close to the offices of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). Marchant's fatal shooting was in retaliation for the UVF's killing of Larry Marley, a close friend of Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams and a senior IRA member from Ardoyne, less than a month before. The IRA claimed that Marchant had been directly involved in the killing of Marley. On 1 May 1987, Marchant was given a full UVF paramilitary funeral. The address given at his funeral service, which denounced all paramilitary organisations and their acts of violence, was afterwards praised by Roman Catholic bishop Cathal Daly. Marchant's widow later gave her permission for their son to go to the USA for an ecumenical student exchange visit. George Seawright, a member of Belfast City Council who also maintained clandestine UVF membership, stated in the aftermath of Marchant's shooting that he had "no hesitation in calling for revenge and retribution". Several months after Marchant's shooting, the UVF sought to avenge his death with an attempt on the life of Anthony "Booster" Hughes, a suspected IRA man from Ardoyne. According to author and journalist Martin Dillon, Marchant's daily movements leading up to his death had been unpredictable and erratic; this indicated the possibility that just before his shooting someone had alerted the IRA by telephone, advising them of Marchant's presence on the Shankill Road. The IRA would normally have kept a hit squad on standby in a neighbourhood close to where their intended target was likely to be. Marchant's killing was the third assassination carried out in the 1980s by the IRA against senior UVF members. The UVF conducted an internal inquiry in an attempt to establish whether someone within the organisation had supplied information to the IRA which had led to