Ulster Volunteer Force Research Articles

Ulster Unionist Political Thought in the Era of the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998

Abstract This article examines Ulster Unionist political thought, in its widest sense, against the backdrop of the Northern Ireland Troubles. During this period, Ulster Unionists sought to resist nationalist and republican arguments for the unification of Ireland and to articulate their position to supporters and wider audiences. As Direct Rule from London followed the suspension of the unionist-dominated Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont in 1972 and its abolition the following year, internal unionist debate intensified over the constitutional future of Northern Ireland. Defining Ulster Unionism broadly, at a time when its organisational forms were proliferating, the article considers the Ulster Unionist Party and its offshoot Vanguard, as well as the Democratic Unionist Party and the paramilitary organisations, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association, and their affiliated political bodies. The article analyses, in turn, the four competing unionist visions of the future: a return to majority-rule devolution; independence; closer integration with Great Britain; and power-sharing devolution. Not attempting a detailed consideration of the policy proposals, the article instead explores the connections forged between Ulster Unionist political ideas, some of them of long pedigree, and wider debates. It shows that, at a time of considerable change for the United Kingdom, Ulster Unionist argument reflected—much more than is currently understood, and sometimes in a pronounced form—a wide range of interconnected contemporary British disputes. These not only concerned the constitution, nationality and sovereignty, but also permissiveness, political parties, decline, the end of empire, Thatcherism and European integration.

Unbiddable Pasts

At the Ulster Museum in Belfast two artefacts connect the momentous events of 1916 with the thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland brought to an end by the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. One piece is the work of republican prisoners interned aboard HMS Maidstone in the Belfast docks in the early 1970s: a plaque, signed by its creators, bearing a portrait of the only socialist among the leaders of the Easter Rising in Dublin, James Connolly. The other is a painting by Gusty Spence, the founder of the modern loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force. It commemorates the Battle of the Somme: two soldiers in silhouette, bugles to their lips, on either side of a standard bearing the words ‘In Immortal Memory’, a reference to the 5,000 troops from the 36th Ulster Division who were killed or injured going over the top on 1 July 1916. These two objects not only bring home the importance of history and memory to the paramilitaries who fought each other during the Troubles but also point to how the story of the modern conflict is already being crafted for current political debates and future generations. As William Blair writes, the greatest challenge for the Ulster Museum in the near future will not be remembrance of the battles of a century ago but ‘dealing with the difficult and divisive legacy of “the Troubles”’.1 This is also an issue which historians have already begun to confront, often through their contributions to the debates surrounding the so-called ‘Decade of Centenaries’, stretching from the Home Rule crisis of 1912 to the end of the Irish revolution in 1923. These five books deal with the politics of memory in Ireland generally, and Northern Ireland in particular, and how memorialisation of traumatic events – official, unofficial and private – has shaped both the public sphere and the hidden recesses of everyday life. Two almost simultaneous events from 1916 – the Easter Rising in Dublin and the Battle of the Somme – have acquired extraordinary resonance in the contemporary politics of memory in Northern Ireland.

Is It Time to De-Proscribe Terrorist Organisations in Northern Ireland?

ABSTRACT In 2017 an application to de-proscribe The Red Hand Commando (RHC) loyalist paramilitary organisation was submitted by an organisation known as the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) which has the backing of other proscribed loyalist groups including the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and RHC. The application was understandably considered negatively by some relatives of RHC victims as well as by Sinn Féin. The application was rejected for failing to comply with the necessary process of de-proscription which reinforces the criticism and difficulty for proscribed organisations that are no longer engaged in terrorism to de-proscribe. If the Northern Ireland Assembly and Commissions set up in Northern Ireland (NI) following the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) with support from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are to dismantle paramilitary groups, then they must take bold decisions and decide whether it is time to support the de-proscription of paramilitary groups that have relinquished political violence. This article recommends that agencies should set out a staged process which can be followed by proscribed organisations in NI interested in applying for de-proscription thereby enabling them to self-evaluate whether or not they are ready for de-proscription.

From Belfast to the Somme (and back again): loyalist paramilitaries, political song, and reverberations of violence

ABSTRACT During the Northern Ireland conflict (1968–1998), paramilitary groups were supported and sustained by a sociocultural apparatus that helped legitimise their position within the community and disseminate their political message. From the use of flags and murals, to loyalist and republican parades, working-class vernacular culture revealed who was in control of various districts within the Province. For many working-class Protestants, loyalist songs were a key component of this culture, connecting the past and the present. Unlike the better-known marching band scene, which is a huge public spectacle, the loyalist song scene is much more private. Performed in a closed setting, within local bars and clubs, loyalist songs are reproduced for internal consumption rather than outward expression. Yet, in addition to celebrating a particular loyalist culture, such songs also serve an important function in authenticating and legitimising paramilitary groups, connecting them to older organisations, whose legacy they draw upon. This paper focuses on one such song, exploring how ‘The Ballad of Billy McFadzean’ is used to connect the Ulster Volunteer Force of the 1960s onwards, with the 1913 organisation of the same name. In so doing, the paper attempts to illustrate the political utility of song and how songs can be used to launder and legitimise conflict, as well as those engaged in political violence.

‘Our Journey, Our Narrative’: narratives of para(militarism) and conflict transformation in the ACT exhibition

The broad scope of contemporary research on paramilitary loyalism has yet to address the visual representations of paramilitarism within conflict transformation models. Addressing this gap, this paper explores representations of the Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitary group within the context of the exhibition produced by Action for Community Transformation (ACT). Though the organisation’s remit is to facilitate former Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) combatants’ transition into normative societal roles utilising conflict transformation practices, the group also houses a socio-historical exhibition titled ‘Our Journey, Our Narrative’ at its permanent West Belfast offices. The exhibition constructs a specific version of loyalist heritage by tracing the UVF’s origin and connection to the British military, narrating a history of the conflict, and exposing visitors to ACT’s ongoing efforts at grassroots conflict transformation. This paper situates the ACT exhibition within contemporary discourses of heritage construction in post-ceasefire contexts, and contends that the exhibition provides a space of education and legitimisation for narratives around paramilitary history and methods of conflict transformation.

“Us” and “Them”: Ulster Loyalist Perspectives on the IRA and Irish Republicanism

This article draws on data from one-to-one interviews with members and former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, Ulster Defence Association, Red Hand Commando, Ulster Political Research Group, and the Progressive Unionist Party to explore the dynamic and fluid perceptions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Féin among Ulster loyalists. The article will explore how attitudes and perceptions are influenced by the shifting political landscape in Northern Ireland as Ulster loyalists come to terms with the new realities created by the peace process, security normalization, decommissioning, and the rise in the threat of dissident republican violence. The article will also demonstrate that these perceptions are not purely antagonistic and based on the creation of negative, stereotypical “enemy images” fuelled by decades of conflict, but pragmatic, bound to societal and local events, and influenced by intragroup attitudes and divisions, in addition to the expected conflictual ingroup vs. outgroup relationships. Finally, the article will explore how loyalists employ republicanism and the transformation of the Provisional IRA in particular, as a mirror or benchmark to reflect on their own progress since 1994.

Leaving Violence Behind: Disengaging from Politically Motivated Violence in Northern Ireland

This article explores the processes involved in leaving social movements or disengaging from terrorist activities by providing an analysis of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando (RHC) transformation away from politically motivated violence towards a civilian nonmilitary role. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was employed to gain an understanding of participant accounts of leaving violence behind and disengaging from terrorism. Analysis of the interview transcripts revealed the interplay of individual‐, organizational‐, and societal‐level processes in incentivizing and obstructing disengagement from politically motivated violence. The findings resonate with other case studies exploring the processes involved in disengagement from political violence among other terror groupings across the globe. The results are discussed in relation to a number of topics, including the implementation of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) in postconflict societies, the dynamic role of collective identity in the engagement in and disengagement from politically motivated violence, and the role of prison in shaping disengagement from politically motivated violence.

The Bell and the Blanket : Journals of Irish Republican Dissent

The Bell and the Blanket: Journals of Irish Republican Dissent Niall Carson and Paddy Hoey Two publications that appeared at different points of modern Irish history, and which took radically different editorial approaches—the literary journal, the Bell (1940–1954) and the dissident republican online magazine, the Blanket (2001–2007)—evince some compelling shared preoccupations. The Bell is seldom considered as representing the Irish republican tradition; yet both publications question the rewriting of history by republican reformists, and share a spirit of dissent at odds with the historical periods of republican consolidation in which they operated. More important, perhaps, both journals provided fora for radical Protestant voices that ran contrary to their own political outlooks. The publication of such articles was, by definition, a form of resistance to censorship, whether the censors were the state, the IRA, or the modern Sinn Féin. Carrie Twomey, the founding editor of the Blanket, was not cognizant of the content of the Bell. But remarkably, her vision for the magazine instinctively drew on a culture of dissent that sought to highlight inconsistencies within mainstream republican dogma—as the Bell had done six decades previously. The stance of the Blanket toward republicanism in particular is not without its critics. Its attacks on Sinn Féin’s abandonment of republican principles is tinged with a regret that—had they known where the party was going to end up—many of its writers would not have taken part in violence during the “Troubles.”1 In 2001, Billy Mitchell, a former Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) chief of staff who had been sentenced to two life sentences in the late 1970s, published a series of articles in the Blanket. These articles demonstrate both the journal’s commitment to publishing a progressive voice from loyalist circles, and make explicit the connection between the Blanket and the Bell. Mitchell, who had become a [End Page 75] devout Christian in jail, had developed a sophisticated vision of Northern Irish identity and how it could be refined to accommodate all religious and political traditions. He saw identity politics as a barrier to reconciliation. Mitchell contended that the demarcation of identities, Irish Catholic versus British Protestant, failed to recognize the shared aspects of modern Northern Irish identity. Such identifications, said Mitchell, allowed parties like the DUP and Sinn Féin to dominate the political landscape through isolationist sectarianism.2 Mitchell was unrepentant about his Protestant heritage, but he saw common ground between religious and political traditions. In one of his earliest Blanket articles, he speaks of the four cultural identities in modern Ireland: “indigenous Irish Gaelic culture, Anglo-Irish culture, Ulster-Scots culture, and, the cultures of those ethnic groups who have settled in the Province in more recent times.”3 For Mitchell, the only true path to reconciliation in Northern Irish life lay not in the ossifying enshrinement of cultural difference that had resulted in deeper social divisions in the era that followed the Good Friday Agreement, but in a shared embracing and celebration of all these identities: Each citizen of Northern Ireland has an inalienable right to watch over, promote, protect and enjoy the cultural tradition with which he or she chooses to identify. It is incumbent upon all of us to validate each of these cultures, together with the modes of expression and celebration associated with them.4 Mitchell’s argument had been suggested sixty years previously by Sean O’Faolain, the Bell’s founding editor. In “The Five Strains,” O’Faolain presents a similar description of the racial “strains” which contributed to Irish identity. However, he made no reference to the Scots-Protestant planters of Northern Ireland.5 Although O’Faolain published a codicil in the next issue in the form of “The Scottish Strain” by James J. Auchmutty, this was denigrated to the position of “Public Opinion.”6 O’Faolain likewise showed his resistance to acknowledging the Scottish strain by his decision to omit them again when he wrote his history of Irish identity, The Irish (1947).7 Despite the publication of radical Protestant voices in the Bell, the move reveals O’Faolain’s deeper sympathies with the republican tradition. [End Page 76] In an article published by...

Implications of a strategic analysis: the operational strategy of Loyalist paramilitaries

Drawing upon empirical evidence and applying a strategic theory approach to understanding Loyalist paramilitary activity, this article provides an analysis of the two main Loyalist organizations, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). It explores their tactics and operational strategy in historical context and offers an assessment of why both organizations have remained relatively quiet despite the increased dissident Republican campaign in Northern Ireland.

Geographies of Conflict and Post-Conflict in Northern Ireland

The violent conflict in Northern Ireland that led to some 3700 deaths was tied to opposing ethno-sectarian groups and the state and the disputation between them over that country’s constitutional future. Republicans such as the Irish Republican Army used violence in order to ‘gain’ a united Ireland. Whereas loyalists such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and the British state utilised violence in order to maintain Northern Ireland’s constitutional link with the United Kingdom. Geographers writing on this conflict have, via various forms of spatial analysis studied the consequences of that violence with regard to territoriality, the construction of ideological space and the perpetuation of ethno-sectarian boundaries. In more recent times, the analysis of conflict and post-conflict Northern Ireland has evaluated the governance of a divided society, the role paramilitaries have played in embedding peace and also the paradoxical role of reproducing conflict by other non-violent means. Northern Ireland remains as a divided society but there is a prominent role for geographers who study such a complex place to add to wider international scholarship regarding resistance and domination, revanchism, discourse construction, post-conflict and the impact upon place and also the role of agency in both perpetuating and removing violence.

Blood, Thunder and Rosettes: The Multiple Personalities of Paramilitary Loyalism between 1971 and 1988

During the modern conflict in Northern Ireland, the paramilitaries played an important role in shaping communal identities. The loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) enjoyed significant support in the Protestant community and should be understood as one expression of Protestant insecurity. This article considers the nature of this manifestation of Protestant fear during the formative years after the formation of the UDA in 1971 and up to the end of Andy Tyrie’s leadership of the organisation in 1988. It argues that the evidence uncovered by an examination of paramilitary literature, as well as that of the loyalist political parties which were affiliated with the UVF and UDA, reveals a complex persona that cannot be understood as entirely violent and exclusive. Instead, after outlining evidence for moderation, it explores what this evidence can reveal about the emergence of political thinking within parts of the UVF and UDA, and concludes that the literature demonstrates how politics was restricted by the primacy of a historical consciousness and the prevalence of sectarianism in the loyalist community, the hardening effect of republican violence, and the lack of a political niche.

So Why Did the Guns Fall Silent? How Interplay, not Stalemate, Explains the Northern Ireland Peace Process

The precise rationale for, and timing of, the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s and beyond, which developed after more than two decades of conflict, has yet to be fully explained. It has been a common assumption that it arose from a stalemate involving the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the ‘regular’ pro‐state forces of the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary and the ‘irregular/ultra’ pro‐state loyalist paramilitary groups of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Under this interpretation, military/paramilitary deadlock led to ripeness for peace, amid reappraisals by all parties to the conflict of the utility of violence accompanied by reinterpretations of earlier political orthodoxies. The IRA could not remove the British sovereign claim to Northern Ireland; British forces could not militarily defeat the IRA and loyalists and republicans were engaged in a futile inter‐communal sectarian war. This stalemate thesis has obvious attraction in explaining why a seemingly intractable war finally subsided, but is less convincing when subject to empirical testing among republican and loyalist participants in the conflict. This article moves away from ‘top‐down’ generalist narratives of the onset of peace, which tend to argue the stalemate thesis, to assess ‘bottom‐up’ interpretations from the actual combatants as to why they ceased fighting. It suggests an asymmetry, rather than mutuality, of perception that there was ‘military’ cessation by the armed non‐state groups, with neither republican nor loyalist interpretations grounded in notions of stalemate. The article concludes by urging a wider consideration of the important and persistent interplay of the military and political in conflicts such as Northern Ireland.

Conflict, Transformation, and Former Loyalist Paramilitary Prisoners in Northern Ireland

Following the 1998 Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, levels of paramilitary violence have declined substantially. Among loyalists, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and associated Red Hand Commando (RHC) have formally renounced violence, and dissolved their ‘military structures’, and perhaps the most reticent of all of the major paramilitary groupings, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), has taken on board the central tenets of conflict transformation, and ‘stood down’ all of its ‘active service units’ in the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). Thus, paramilitary violence now is mainly confined to the activities of ‘dissident’ republican groups, notably the Real and Continuity IRAs, although low-level sectarian violence remains a problem. Such dramatic societal and political change has resulted in a focus on the roles of formal party political leadership as agents of social change. This gaze, however, tends to obscure other important events such as the efforts, structures and approaches taken at the grassroots level to uphold and sustain conflict transformation and to maintain a reduction in violence. This article provides analysis of the role played by former loyalist paramilitary combatants in conflict transformation, and draws on material obtained through significant access to those former paramilitaries engaged in processes of societal shifts. In both personal and structural terms there is evidence of former combatants working to diminish the political tensions that remain as a result of the long-term inter-communal hostility developed across decades of violence and conflict.

Officering Kitchener's Armies: A Case Study of the 36th (Ulster) Division

This article reassesses the original composition of the officer corps of the Kitchener armies formed in late 1914 using the recently released officers' personal files at the National Archives, Kew. It challenges the existing historiography by showing that many Kitchener units did not draw their officers from pre-war Officer Training Corps products and relied on men with very limited or no previous military experience. It demonstrates that the officer composition of the 36th (Ulster) Division was similar to that of its counterparts in Great Britain, and that the Ulster Volunteer Force influence on officer appointments was much more limited than has been assumed.

Abandoning Armed Resistance? The Ulster Volunteer Force as a Case Study of Strategic Terrorism in Northern Ireland

This article explores the Ulster Volunteer Force's (UVF) decision in May 2007 to abandon its campaign of “armed resistance” and pursue “a non-military, civilianized, role” in Northern Ireland. It does so by analyzing the UVF's actions in light of the academic literature on strategic terrorism. The central argument advanced in the article is that the UVF's decision to put its weapons “beyond reach” and re-structure its organization along civilian lines is (a) internally consistent with its stated policy of countering “violent nationalism,” (b) symptomatic of the transformation in the sociopolitical context since the 1994 paramilitary cease-fires, and (c) the logical outworking of the group's lack of popular legitimacy among its core Protestant working-class support-base. The article concludes with an assessment of the risks and possible dividends that the end of UVF terrorism holds for the Northern Ireland peace process.

Carson's Army: The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910-22- By Timothy Bowman

<i>Carson's Army: The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910-22</i>- By Timothy Bowman

The Northern Ireland Government, the ‘Paisleyite Movement’ and Ulster Unionism in 1966

This article presents original documentary material discovered at the Public Records Office, Northern Ireland, relating to the RUC’s position in June 1966 on what was referred to as the ‘Paisleyite Movement’. According to the documents that were sent by the RUC Inspector‐General to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the ‘Paisleyite Movement’ was an organisation made up of the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee, the Ulster Protestant Volunteer Division, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Corps, the Ulster Protestant Action Defence Committee and the militant Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). We know that these documents were seen by the Prime Minister, Terence O’Neill, and the Minister of Home Affairs, Brian McConnell. These documents appear to have partly informed the cabinet decision to ban the UVF at the end of June 1966. The documents confirm the scale and significance of the threat presented by extremist Protestantism to the stability of the state in the eyes of the RUC and the government at that time and suggest that the starting date of ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland should be back‐dated to 1966.

Neglected Intelligence: How the British Government Failed to Quell the Ulster Volunteer Force, 1912–1914

(2006). Neglected Intelligence: How the British Government Failed to Quell the Ulster Volunteer Force, 1912–1914. Journal of Intelligence History: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1-23.

‘JUST FIGHTING TO SURVIVE’: LOYALIST PARAMILITARY POLITICS AND THE PROGRESSIVE UNIONIST PARTY

Throughout the contemporary period, Unionists and Loyalists in Northern Ireland have reacted in contradictory ways to the peace process. This article highlights some of the key political and social dynamics within loyalism. In particular, it considers the positioning of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and their linked political representatives in the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). The response of the PUP to the peace process has revealed several important tensions within unionism. These include the notions that Loyalists can no longer be assured that the UK government will maintain the Union; expressions of class and gendered identities; a lack of trust of mainstream unionism; and, sectarianism, which although it remains a key element within Loyalist identity, is by no means its only dimension. Finally, the article outlines the broader construction of Loyalist and Unionist ideologies, and positions the PUP within broader politics of contemporary unionism.

The Ulster Volunteer Force and the formation of the 36th (Ulster) Division

Traditional accounts of the establishment of the 36th (Ulster) Division in October 1914 suggest that this unit was formed purely from the pre-war U.V.F. Writing in 1922, Cyril Falls (himself an officer in both the U.V.F. and the 36th Division) declared: The Ulster Division was not created in a day. The roots from which it sprang went back into the troubled period before the war. Its life was a continuance of the life of an earlier legion, a legion of civilians banded together to protect themselves from the consequences of legislation which they believed would affect adversely their rights and privileges as citizens of the United Kingdom.Modern historians have echoed this view. Tom Johnstone, for example, has noted that ‘the battalions of the (36th) Division, based on the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.) order of battle, had been in existence since before the war’. Meanwhile Philip Orr has even suggested that the 36th Division was a ‘covenanting army’, all its members supposedly having signed the Ulster Covenant opposing home rule. In this article the validity of these claims will be considered, particularly with regard to the continuity in personnel and equipment between the U.V.F. and the 36th Division and the military efficiency that the formation had achieved by the time it arrived on the Western Front.