Ulster Volunteer Force

The Ulster Volunteer Force (more commonly referred to as the UVF) is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. The current incarnation was formed in May 1966 and named after the UVF of 1912, although there is no direct connection between the two.

The original Ulster Volunteer Force

The original Ulster Volunteer Force was a Unionist militia formed to block Irish Home Rule in 1912. Many of its members subsequently fought in the First World War in the British Army. In the violence arising out of the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-1921, many UVF men carried out attacks on the Catholic nationalist and republican community in northern Ireland. Subsequently, many of them were absorbed within the auxiliary police, the B Specials.

Current organisation

Origins

The current UVF formed to fight the IRA in the mid 1960s. The group was concentrated around East Antrim, County Armagh and the Shankill district of Belfast. In their announcement of 21 May 1966, the UVF declared war on the IRA, and made note of the fact that they were "heavily armed Protestants dedicated to this cause".See Nelson, Sarah. "Ulster's Uncertain Defenders: Protestant Political Paramilitary and Community Groups and the Northern Ireland Conflict" Belfast: Appletree Press, 1984 Page.61. They followed this announcement with the sectarian assassination of a Roman Catholic barman in June 1966. This attack led to the first leader of the group, Augustus 'Gusty' Spence, being arrested and sentenced to 20 years. The declaration of war was made despite the fact that the IRA had exhausted itself during their failed Border Campaign of attacks on British Army and RUC members in Northern Ireland that ended in 1962.

The UVF was also responsible for a series of attacks on utilities installations in Northern Ireland during 1969. It was hoped that this campaign would be blamed on the IRA forcing moderate unionists to increase their opposition to the tentative reforms of Terence O'Neill's government. As civil disorder, rioting and violence known locally as "the Troubles" intensified, the UVF began a campaign of sectarian assassination against Catholic civilians. The UVF, in its announcements to the media, claimed its violence was a reaction to the violence of the newly formed Provisional IRA (PIRA). This circle of attack by the PIRA against the institutions of Northern Ireland, RUC, and British Army would be followed by counter-attack on the people the UVF saw as "hosting" the PIRA: Roman Catholic civilians.This analysis of the conflict being a series of "tit-for-tat" killings with the UVF and other loyalists "reacting to the violence of the PIRA" is rejected by Republicans and some nationalists for a number of reasons. Some are discussed by Jeffrey Sluka in a chapter of his book Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror available here. Some of the UVF's attacks were carried out in cooperation with the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, another loyalist paramilitary organisation. Membership of these groups overlapped in some cases.

The 1970s

As the violence in Northern Ireland began to escalate in the early 1970s the UVF's attacks became more random and lethal. One example of this is the McGurk's Bar bombing, New Lodge, Belfast on 4 December 1971 which killed fifteen Catholic civilians. The attack was initially blamed on republican paramilitaries by the authorities and media but the UVF later admitted responsibility.See Sutton database here. A subset of the UVF dubbed the Shankill Butchers (a group of UVF men based on the Shankill Road in Belfast) carried out a grisly series of sectarian murders of Catholic civilians. The victims were beaten and tortured before being killed. Another UVF group was responsible, allegedly with help from former and serving members of the Ulster Defence Regiment and MI5, for the bombs in Dublin and Monaghan of May 17, 1974 when 33 people were killed. The UVF was also to blame for the deaths of twelve civilians in an attack on October 2, 1974. The organisation carried out further attacks throughout the 1970s. These included the "Miami Showband massacre" of 31st of July 1975 - when three members of this southern Irish pop group were killed having been stopped at a fake British Army checkpoint on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Two members of the popgroup survived the attack and later testified against those responsible. Two UVF members were accidentally killed by their own bomb while carrying out this attack.Allegations were also made after the attack by a serving MI6 agent Captain Fred Holroyd who alleged that British Army officer and member of 14 Intelligence Company Robert Nairac had organised the attack in cooperation with the UVF. Two of those later convicted (James McDowell and Thomas Crozier) were also Ulster Defence Regiment members. It is widely suspected that UDR personnel were covertly involved in many UVF operations. The UDR was a part-time unit of the regular British Army and the involvement of its members in loyalist killings made it highly unpopular with the nationalist community.

The group had been proscribed in July 1966, but this ban was lifted in April 1975 in an effort to bring the UVF into the democratic process. The UVF spurned the government efforts however and continued killing. The UVF was banned again on October 3 1975 and two days later 26 suspected UVF members were arrested in a series of raids. The men were tried and in March 1977, and they were sentenced to an average of 25 years each.

Campaign in the 1980s and 1990s and the 1994 ceasefire

In the 1980s the UVF was greatly reduced by a series of informers, starting in 1983 with supergrass Joseph Bennett's information which led to the arrest of fourteen senior figures. In 1984, they attempted to kill the northern editor of the Sunday World, Jim Campbell. By the mid 1980s a Loyalist paramilitary-style organisation called Ulster Resistance was formed on 10 November 1986 by Ian Paisley, then leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Peter Robinson of the DUP, and Ivan Foster. The initial aim of Ulster Resistance was to bring an end to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Ulster Resistance was successful in importing arms into Northern Ireland. The weapons imported from South Africa were divided between the UDA, the UVF and Ulster Resistance. The arms are thought to have consisted of:

200 AK47 assault rifles,
90 Browning pistols,
500 fragmentation grenades,
30,000 rounds of ammunition and
12 RPG-7 rocket launchers.

The UVF used this new infusion of arms to escalate their campaign of sectarian assassinations. While this era saw a more widespread targeting on the UVF's part of IRA and Sinn Fein members, most of their victims continued to be Catholic civilians uninvolved in paramilitary activity.

In 1990 the UVF joined the Combined Loyalist Military Command and indicated its acceptance of moves towards peace. However, the year leading up to the loyalist ceasefire, which took place shortly after the Provisional IRA ceasefire, saw some of the worst sectarian killings carried out by loyalists during the Troubles. On the 16th of June 1994, UVF members machine-gunned a pub in Loughlinisland, county Down on the basis that its customers were watching the Republic of Ireland national football team playing in the World Cup on television and were therefore assumed to be Catholics. The gunmen shot dead six people and injured five.

The UVF agreed to a ceasefire in October 1994.The UVF and other loyalist groups still feel largely vindicated by their campaign of violence, particularly the intensifcation of its assassinations against PIRA volunteers, Sinn Féin members, and innocent Roman Catholics beginning in the late 1980s and continuing to the 1990s. To most Loyalists, this tactic of "terrorizing the terrorists" involving notorious figures such as Billy Wright and Johnny "MadDog" Adair is cited as being entirely responsible for the PIRA's move towards ceasefire and disarmament.

Recent developments

More militant members of the UVF, led by Billy Wright who disagreed with the ceasfire, broke away in 1996 to form the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). The UVF has been fighting with the LVF since then and in mid 2000 they also clashed with the largest loyalist group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). The clash with the UDA ended in December following seven deaths. Veteran anti-UVF campaigner, Protestant Raymond McCord (whose son was beaten to death by UVF men in 1997) estimates the UVF has killed more than 30 people since its 1994 ceasefire, most of them Protestants. The feud between the UVF and the LVF erupted again in the summer of 2005, and is ongoing.

On 14 September 2005, following serious loyalist rioting during which dozens of shots were fired at riot police, the Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain announced that the British government no longer recognized the UVF ceasefire. ^*

Strength and Support

The strength of the UVF is uncertain. It peaked in the early 1970s at possibly over 1,000 but its current strength is around 150 activists - those members prepared to carry out its attacks. The UVF weaponry is limited to small arms, with its sporadic bombing efforts being made using stolen quarrying explosives.

Affiliated Organisations

The Red Hand Commandos (RHC) is an organisation that was established in 1972, but it is so closely linked with the UVF that it is generally regarded as simply a cover name.

The Young Citizen Volunteers (YCV) is the youth section of the UVF. It was initially a youth group akin to the scouts but became the youth wing of the UVF during the Home Rule crisis.

The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) is the political group most closely reflecting the views of the UVF.At the moment they have one member in the Northern Ireland Assembly.However this looks likely to change because that member, David Ervine, looks likely to join the Ulster Unionist Party in the assembly to give them an extra seat although he will stay on as leader of the PUP.

Deaths as a result of activity

The UVF has committed more killings than any other loyalist paramilitary organisation. According to the University of Ulster's Sutton database, the UVF was responsible for 426 killings during the Troubles.

358 of its victims were civilians,

41 were loyalist paramilitaries (including 29 members of the UVF itself),

6 were British army or police and

21 were republican paramilitaries.

Ceasefire & decomissioning of weaponry

On 12 February 2006, The Observer reported that the UVF was to disband itself by the end of 2006. The newspaper also reported that the group refused to decommission its weapons.

Footnotes

Sources

Peter Taylor, Loyalists
Martin Dillon, The Dirty War
Brendan O'Brien, The Long War - the IRA and Sinn Fein

External links

Ulster Volunteer Force | Proscribed paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland

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