There are various credible[citation needed] allegations that elements of the British security forces colluded with the UVF in the bombings. Anderson, Malcolm & Bort, Eberhard (1999). The UVF struck back on Monday morning, shooting dead two Adair associates, Jackie Coulter and Bobby Mahood, as they sat in a Range Rover on the Crumlin Road. "There can be no naivety around that," he said. An article published by the newspaper fingered Wright as a drug lord and sectarian murderer. Two UVF members, Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville, were accidentally killed by their own bomb while carrying out this attack. Suite 30. The UDA's leadership were persuaded to call off their plan by a Protestant clergyman, who convinced them that the IRA were not involved. The group had been proscribed in July 1966, but this ban was lifted on 4 April 1974 by Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in an effort to bring the UVF into the democratic process. [39], Soon after the latter attack former North Belfast brigadier William Borland, who had become associated with the pro-Molyneaux wing, was attacked with a breeze block and shot in the leg close to his home in Carr's Glen. Leader of the, 414 (~85%) were civilians, 11 of whom were civilian political activists, 21 (~4%) were members or former members of republican paramilitary groups, 44 (~9%) were members or former members of loyalist paramilitary groups, 6 (~1%) were members of the British security forces. During this time he restructured the organisation into brigades, battalions, companies, platoons and sections. The Mid-Ulster Brigade was also responsible for the 1975 Miami Showband killings, in which three members of the popular Irish cabaret band were shot dead at a bogus military checkpoint by gunmen in British Army uniforms. The UVF responded by blowing up the UDP headquarters on the Middle Shankill. Although the two organisations had worked together under the umbrella of the Combined Loyalist Military Command, the body crumbled in 1997 and tensions simmered between West Belfast UDA Brigadier[10] Johnny Adair, who had grown weary of the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement, and the UVF leadership. [26] The group called itself the "Ulster Volunteer Force" (UVF), after the Ulster Volunteers of the early 20th century, although in the words of a member of the previous organisation "the present para-military organisation has no connection with the U.V.F. In November 2007, the UDA issued a statement saying "the war is over". Fifteen Catholic civilians were killed and seventeen wounded. [3] A joint statement described it as a tragic accident, although a subsequent UVF inquiry put the blame on Stephen Goatley and John Fulton, both UDA men. The assessment says there are about 7,500 people in the UVF and 5,000 in the UDA. [139] Like the IRA, the UVF also operated black taxi services,[140][141][142] a scheme believed to have generated 100,000 annually for the organisation. Uniquely among loyalist paramilitaries it uses an Irish language motto. [8] The feud rumbled on for several months in 1976 with a number of people, mostly UDA members, being killed before eventually the two groups came to an uneasy truce.[9]. [73], According to journalist and author Ed Moloney, the UVF campaign in Mid-Ulster in this period "indisputably shattered Republican morale", and put the leadership of the republican movement under intense pressure to "do something",[74] although this has been disputed by others.[who?]. A feud in the winter of 1974-75 broke out between the UDA and the UVF, the two main loyalist paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland. [60] Two UVF men were accidentally blown up in this attack. The organisation was later involved in various atrocities including the bombing of McGurk's Bar in Belfast, the sectarian killings of the Shankill Butchers and the Loughinisland massacre. Is climate change killing Australian wine? From its beginnings the UDA was wracked by internal problems and in 1972, the movement's first full year of existence, three members, Ingram Beckett, John Brown and Ernest Elliott were killed by other UDA members. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. [36], The UVF had launched its first attack in the Republic of Ireland on 5 August 1969, when it bombed the RT Television Centre in Dublin. [94][95] A dissident Republican was arrested for "the attempted murder of police officers in east Belfast" after shots were fired upon the police. The men were tried, and in March 1977 were sentenced to an average of twenty-five years each.[56][57]. [51] This resulted in a sharp increase in sectarian killings and internecine feuding, both with the UDA and within the UVF itself. [77], On 12 February 2006, The Observer reported that the UVF was to disband by the end of 2006. The weapons were Palestine Liberation Organisation arms captured by the Israelis and sold to Armscor, the South African state-owned company which, in defiance of a 1977 United Nations arms embargo, set about making South Africa self-sufficient in military hardware. [1] The bad blood originated from an incident in the Ulster Workers' Council strike of May 1974 when the two groups were co-operating in support of the Ulster Workers' Council. The UDA's Johnny Adair supported the LVF and used the feud to stoke up the troubles that eventually flared in his feud with the UVF later that year. [17] The UVF retaliated by murdering two Protestant teenagers in Tandragee, who were both suspected of LVF membership and involvement in Jameson's death. [163] Loyalists in Portadown such as Bobby Jameson have stated that the LVF (the Mid-Ulster Brigade that broke away from the main UVF - and led by Billy Wright) was not a 'loyalist organisation but a drugs organisation causing misery in Portadown. It was formed in September 1971 and undertook a campaign of almost twenty-four years during The Troubles. [5], The following month, UDA Colonel Hugh McVeigh and his aide David Douglas were the next to die, kidnapped by the UVF on the Shankill Road and taken to Carrickfergus where they were beaten before being killed near Islandmagee. The UVF were more recalcitrant about expelling Wright, which almost caused a rift until the UVF accepted the UDA's point of view and expelled him. [60] The decommissioning was completed five weeks before a government amnesty deadline beyond which any weapons found could have been used as evidence for a prosecution. Overview. [43] This came to a climax on 4 December, when the UVF bombed McGurk's Bar, a Catholic-owned pub in Belfast. It would continue these tactics for the rest of its campaign. [41] Subsequent reports indicated this brigadier had lasted only two weeks before McDonald replaced him with an unidentified former member of the Loyalist Volunteer Force. [14] But, aside from these exceptions, Adair's attempt to ignite a full-scale war between the two organisations failed, as both the UVF and UDA leaderships moved decisively to contain the trouble within the Shankill area, where hundreds of families had been displaced, and focused on dealing with its source as well as its containment. Six of the victims were abducted at random, then beaten and tortured before having their throats slashed. Oct 28 // football. Although Wright had been expelled from the UVF, threatened with execution and an order to leave Northern Ireland, which he defied, the feud was largely contained during his life and the two major eruptions came after his death. With a few exceptions, such as Mid-Ulster brigadier Billy Hanna (a native of Lurgan), the Brigade Staff members have been from the Shankill Road or the neighbouring Woodvale area to the west. The Ulster Defence Association, formed in 1971, had tens of thousands of members at its peak. [162] It was around this time that Sunday World journalists Martin O'Hagan and Jim Campbell coined the term "rat pack" for the UVF's murderous mid-Ulster unit and, unable to identify Wright by name for legal reasons, they christened him "King Rat." It is understood a mob of up to 40 of Simpson's supporters attempted to oust the current leadership. [98] Much of the UVF's orchestration was carried out by its senior members in East Belfast, where many attacks on the PSNI and on residents of the Short Strand enclave took place. He had been a prominent UVF member and was thought to have ordered or participated in about 20 killings. [92][93], On the night of 20 June 2011, riots involving 500 people erupted in the Short Strand area of East Belfast. It was involved in a feud with the UVF in the early 2000s. In 2017, it applied to the Home Office asking to be taken off the list of proscribed organisations. On 23 October 1972, the UVF carried out an armed raid against King's Park camp, a UDR/Territorial Army depot in Lurgan. [34] Unionist support for O'Neill waned, and on 28 April he resigned as Prime Minister. The UVF's declared goals were to combat Irish republicanism particularly the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and to maintain Northern Ireland's status as part of the United Kingdom. [26] Spence later wrote "At the time, the attitude was that if you couldn't get an IRA man you should shoot a Taig, he's your last resort". The East Belfast UVF is one of the major crime-dealing loyalist paramilitary organisations currently in operation and is among four loyalist factions being targeted by the Paramilitary Crime Task Force - the others being the South East Antrim UDA, the West Belfast UDA and North Antrim UDA. [33], By 1969, the Catholic civil rights movement had escalated its protest campaign, and O'Neill had promised them some concessions. Sep 30 // football. However, whilst the statement was signed by McDonald and Birch, no representative of the West Belfast Brigade had added their signature. It has also been embroiled in feuds with other paramilitary organisations including the LVF and the UDA. The damage from security service informers started in 1983 with "supergrass" Joseph Bennett's information, which led to the arrest of fourteen senior figures. Although many are not active, sources say they are still "card carrying" members. [134] Another estimates that over a 30-year period women accounted for, at most, just 2% of UVF membership. In January 2000 UVF Mid-Ulster brigadier Richard Jameson was shot dead by a LVF gunman which led to an escalation of the UVF/LVF feud. This was a large, three-day riot between Irish nationalists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). "[159], According to Alan McQuillan, the assistant director of the Assets Recovery Agency in 2005, "In the loyalist community, drug dealing is run by the paramilitaries and it is generally run for personal gain by a large number of people." Veteran anti-UVF campaigner Raymond McCord, whose son, Raymond Jr., a Protestant, was beaten to death by UVF men in 1997, estimates the UVF has killed more than thirty people since its 1994 ceasefire, most of them Protestants. Only last year, a former leader of the Progressive Unionist Party Dawn Purvis said the UVF had not gone anywhere despite decommissioning its weapons in 2009. There was to be much overlap in membership between the UCDC/UPV and the UVF.[27]. [118] At other times, attacks on Catholic civilians were claimed as "retaliation" for IRA actions, since the IRA drew almost all of its support from the Catholic community. It sometimes claimed killings using the cover name the Protestant Action Force. [130], The UVF has killed more people than any other loyalist paramilitary group. He was shot dead by the IRA in November 1982, four months after his release from the Maze Prison. [51] On 29 May 2017 the South East Antrim UDA murdered an ex member and friend of George Gilmore. This era also saw a more widespread targeting on the UVF's part of IRA and Sinn Fin members, beginning with the killing of senior IRA member Larry Marley[67] and a failed attempt on the life of a leading republican which left three Catholic civilians dead. In the brawl that developed Shaw was fatally wounded. The newspaper also claimed the South-East Antrim UVF had moved their weaponry to avoid decommissioning. News. The Sunday World's offices were also firebombed. Explosives for the north were mostly shipped in small boats which set out at night from the Scottish coast and made contact at sea with vessels from Ulster ports." [133] Information regarding the role of women in the UVF is limited. This move came as the organisation held high-level discussions about its future. [59] The UVF was behind the deaths of seven civilians in a series of attacks on 2 October. Thirty-three people were killed and almost 300 injured. The UDA had remained a legal organisation until it was banned in August 1992. But it also says the organisation still has access to weapons. Is UVFs Beast in the East behind new wave of riots? The largest death toll in a single attack was in the 3 March 1991 Cappagh killings, when the UVF killed IRA members John Quinn, Dwayne O'Donnell and Malcolm Nugent, and civilian Thomas Armstrong in the small village of Cappagh. [47], In October 2016 it was reported that South Belfast brigadier Jackie McDonald had installed Sam "Bib" Blair, a White City-based veteran who had been kneecapped by supporters of the Shoukris in 2003 after attempting to oust them from the leadership, as the new brigadier. [160], Billy Wright, the commander of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade, is believed to have started dealing drugs in 1991[161] as a lucrative sideline to paramilitary murder. Loyalist Volunteer Force [ edit] An hour later Adair's unit burned down the PUP's offices close to Agnes Street, the de facto border between the UVF-dominated Middle and Upper Shankill and the UDA-dominated Lower Shankill. Wright was apparently enraged by the nickname and made numerous threats to O'Hagan and Campbell. Spotlight is repeated on BBC Two NI on Wednesday and will be available on the BBC iPlayer. This development came soon after the UVF's Brigade Staff in Belfast had stood down Wright and the Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade, on 2 August 1996, for the killing of a Catholic taxi driver near Lurgan during Drumcree disturbances. "[145], Protestants in Canada also supported the loyalist paramilitaries in the conflict. Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. In 1972, the UVF's imprisoned leader Gusty Spence was at liberty for four months following a staged kidnapping by UVF volunteers. Adair, however, convinced the LVF that the latter killing was the work of one of his rivals in the UDA, Jim Gray, who the LVF then unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate.[20]. [156][157] Between 1979 and 1986, Canadian supporters supplied the UVF/UDA with 100 machine guns and thousands of rifles, grenade launchers, magnum revolvers, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. The trip had been roundly criticised by the Unionist establishment and raised cries that the UDA was adopting socialism, and so Harding Smith used it re-ignite his attempts to take charge. Democratic Unionist Party MP Gavin Robinson said his party were mindful of the situation. [80] This was to take effect from midnight. [citation needed] There were also reports that UVF members fired shots at police lines during a protest. [103], On 23 March 2019, eleven alleged UVF members were arrested during a total of 14 searches conducted in Belfast, Newtownards and Comber and the suspects, aged between 22 and 48, were taken into police custody for questioning. The Red Hand Commando, along with the UDA and UVF, is represented on the Loyalist Communities Council, which was formed in 2015. Less extreme measures will be taken against anyone sheltering or helping them, but if they persist in giving them aid, then more extreme methods will be adopted. . [41] Catholic churches were also attacked. The gunmen shot dead six people and injured five. The South East Antrim UDA jealously guards its supremacy by forcing non-affiliated drug dealers to kneel through coercion and direct violence, which is a pattern seen throughout the six counties as the different UDA and UVF groupings use their muscle to maintain their dominance. [58] This killing, however, was not part of a feud but instead carried out as a form of internal discipline from within the Mid-Ulster Brigade. It declared a ceasefire in 1994 and officially ended its campaign in 2007, although some of its members have continued to engage in violence and criminal activities. page 1. [35] Bunting's opponents criticised his alleged heavy-handed approach, particularly towards Tiger's Bay residents, whilst his supporters claimed that Bunting's attempts to tackle the drugs trade in the area were the real reason behind the attempts to remove him. Referring to its activity in the early and mid-1970s, journalist Ed Moloney described no-warning pub bombings as the UVF's "forte". Loyalist paramilitary groups 'have 12,500 members', Russia launches pre-dawn missile attack on Ukraine, Chaos at port as thousands rush to leave Sudan. US. In October 1994, alongside the UDA and UVF, the group was part of the combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire. we solemnly warn the authorities to make no more speeches of appeasement. [37] In August 2014 as Bunting drove along Duncairn Gardens, a street separating Tiger's Bay from the republican New Lodge area his car was damaged by a pipe bomb thrown at it. Scores of houses and businesses were burnt out, most of them owned by Catholics. [29] On 21 May, the group issued a statement: From this day, we declare war against the Irish Republican Army and its splinter groups. [90][91], On 2526 October 2010, the UVF was involved in rioting and disturbances in the Rathcoole area of Newtownabbey with UVF gunmen seen on the streets at the time. [89] The Progressive Unionist Party's condemnation, and Dawn Purvis and other leaders' resignations as a response to the Moffett shooting, were also noted. Later that year, the then PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton said groups like them should "simply go away". [23], However, with Tyrie confirmed in overall control of the UDA, Harding Smith initially remained silent until, in 1974, he declared that the West Belfast brigade of the movement was splitting from the mainstream UDA on the pretext of a visit to Libya organised by Tyrie in a failed attempt to procure arms from Colonel Qadaffi. Provo, UT 84604. [108], On 25 March 2022, the UVF was blamed[by whom?] This was in retaliation for attacks on Loyalist homes the previous weekend and after a young girl was hit in the face with a brick by Republicans. [53] Two men were subsequently charged with the murder. Its first leader was Gusty Spence, a former British Army soldier from Northern Ireland. The community centre hosting the event and 25 nearby homes were evacuated and a funeral was disrupted. The chip shop has since been closed down. Hanna and Jackson have both been implicated by journalist Joe Tiernan and RUC Special Patrol Group (SPG) officer John Weir as having led one of the units that bombed Dublin. [51] Some of the new Brigade Staff members bore nicknames such as "Big Dog" and "Smudger". It issued a statement vowing to "remove republican elements from loyalist areas" and stop them "reaping financial benefit therefrom". [19] The LVF then linked up with Johnny Adair's C Company for a time as their feud with the UVF took centre stage. [111][112] This uniform, based on those of the original UVF, was introduced in the early 1970s. In response to events in Derry, nationalists held protests throughout Northern Ireland, some of which became violent. [1] Contents 1 Early life 2 Ulster Defence Association 3 Assassination attempt on Gerry Adams 4 Brigadier [79], On 3 May 2007, following recent negotiations between the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and with Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde, the UVF made a statement that they would transform to a "non-military, civilianised" organisation. "The Dublin and Monaghan bombings: Cover-up and incompetence". [60] The hawks had been ousted by those in the UVF who were unhappy with their political and military strategy. 2017date: South East Antrim Brigade feud, The UDA divides its membership into six vaguely geographic areas which it labels "brigades" with the six commanders styled "Brigadiers". This page is not available in other languages. The group also carried out attacks in the Republic of Ireland from 1969 onward. [43] This followed the rejection of earlier overtures to West Belfast brigadier Matt Kincaid as he opted to back Spence and Courtney. Shaw refused, and the UDA men left, but they returned a short while later with a shotgun, determined to close the pub down. The feuds have frequently involved problems between and within the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) as well as, later, the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). It was alleged that Colin Armstrong had links to both drugs and loyalist terrorists. [28], Tyrie was forced to resign in March 1988 and the new men, most of whom had been trained up by McMichael, turned on some of the veterans whom Tyrie had protected. The leaked threat assessment says the Provisional IRA still exists; there are now a dozen paramilitary groups - more than during the Troubles - and seven of these groups are dissident republican. Western Illinois University. [50], In 1974, hardliners staged a coup and took over the Brigade Staff. The following March they were sentenced to a total of 700 years . Prior to this the atmosphere at the Rex had been jovial, with the UVF spectators even joining in to sing UDA songs along to the tunes of the UDA-aligned flute bands which accompanied the approximately ten thousand UDA men on their parade up the Shankill Road.
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