Ulster Volunteer Force
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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.
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The original Ulster Volunteer Force
See Ulster Volunteer Force (1912).
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 British Army. In the violence arising out the Anglo-Irish War 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. The murder of a Belfast barman (because of his religion) in June 1966 led to the first leader of the group, Augustus 'Gusty' Spence, being arrested and sentenced to 20 years. The UVF was also responsible for a series of attacks on utilities installations in 1969, in the expectation that the IRA would be blamed and unionists would become even more strongly opposed to the tentative reforms of Terence O'Neill's government. As the Troubles intensified, the UVF began a campaign of murdering Catholic civilians -it claimed in reaction to the Provisional IRA campaign against the state of Northern Ireland. These attacks were carried out in conjunction with the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, another paramilitary organisation. Many men were members of both groups. The McGurk's Bar bombing in Belfast that killed fifteen Catholic people in December 1971 was attributed to the UVF.
The 1970s
The group was proscribed in July 1966, but this was lifted in April 1975 in an effort to bring the UVF into the democratic process. The UVF spurned the government efforts and 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. It was certainly to blame for the October 2, 1974 deaths of twelve civilians as well as a number of other attacks. 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 these murders. 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 organisation 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. In the 1980s the UVF was greatly reduced by a series of informers, starting in 1983 with 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.
Campaign in the 1980s and '90s and the 1994 ceasefire
In the late 1980s, the UVF again stepped up their campaign of assassination against the Catholic/nationalist community. While this era saw a more widespread targeting on the UVF's part of IRA and Sinn Fein members, most oftheir victims continued to be innocent Catholics.
The UVF joined the Combined Loyalist Military Command in 1990 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 ceasfire, saw some ofthe 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. Th gunmen shot dead six people and injured five. The UVF agreed to a ceasefire in October 1994.
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. [1]
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.
The Red Hand Commandos 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 UVF has committed more killings than any other loyalist paramilitary organisation. According to the University of Ulster's Sutton database [2], 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 just 21 were republican paramilitaries.
The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) is the political group most closely reflecting the views of the UVF. They have one member in the Northern Ireland Assembly. 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.
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.
See also
External links
Sources
- Peter Taylor, Loyalists
- Martin Dillon, The Dirty War
- Brendan O'Brien, The Long War - the IRA and Sinn Feinde:Ulster Volunteer Force
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