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Ulster Defence Association

January 01, 1970

"C Company" redirects here. For the Bollywood movie, see C Kkompany.

The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary[9] group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 as an umbrella group for various loyalist groups[10] and undertook an armed campaign of almost 24 years as one of the participants of the Troubles. Its declared goal was to defend Ulster Protestant loyalist areas[10] and to combat Irish republicanism, particularly the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In the 1970s, uniformed UDA members openly patrolled these areas armed with batons and held large marches and rallies. Within the UDA was a group tasked with launching paramilitary attacks that used the cover name Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) so that the UDA would not be outlawed. The British government proscribed the UFF as a terrorist group in November 1973, but the UDA itself was not proscribed until August 1992.[11][12]

Ulster Defence Association
Emblem of the Ulster Defence Association
Leaders
Dates of operationSeptember 1971 – present (on ceasefire since October 1994; ended armed campaign in November 2007)
Group(s)
HeadquartersBelfast[2]
Active regions
Ideology
Size
  • 40,000 at its peak (1972)
  • Over 5,000 at the end of its armed campaign [5]
  • 5,000 (present)[6]
Allies
Opponents United Kingdom

Republic of Ireland

Battles and warsThe Troubles
Designated as a terrorist group by
Flag

The UDA/UFF were responsible for more than 400 deaths. The vast majority of its victims were Irish Catholic civilians,[13][14][15] killed at random, in what the group called retaliation for IRA actions or attacks on Protestants.[16][17][18][19][20] High-profile attacks carried out by the group include the Top of the Hill bar shooting, the Milltown massacre, the Sean Graham's and James Murray's bookmakers' shootings, the Castlerock killings, killings of Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews and the Greysteel massacre. Most of its attacks were in Northern Ireland, but from 1972 onward it also carried out bombings in the Republic of Ireland. The UDA/UFF declared a ceasefire in 1994 and ended its campaign in 2007, but some of its members have continued to engage in violence.[21] The other main Loyalist paramilitary group during the conflict was the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). All three groups are proscribed organisations in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000.[11]

History edit

The Ulster Defence Association emerged from a series of meetings during the middle of 1971 of loyalist "vigilante" groups called "defence associations".[22] The largest of these were the Shankill and Woodvale Defence Associations,[23] with other groups based in East Belfast, the Hammer and Roden Street.[24]

UDA formation edit

The first meeting, in September 1971, was chaired by Billy Hull, with Alan Moon of the lower Shankill as its vice-chair. Moon was quickly replaced by Jim Anderson.[25][26]: 20  Moon, who had become reluctant to be involved in vigilantism since the group's formation, willingly stepped aside and ended his association with the UDA soon afterwards.[27]: 50  The structure of this new movement soon took shape with a thirteen-man Security Council established in January 1972 as a reaction to a Provisional IRA bomb the previous month at the Balmoral furniture showroom on the Shankill which killed four people including two infants.[26]: 22 

By this point, Charles Harding Smith had become the group's leader, with former Royal Army Ordnance Corps soldier Davy Fogel as his second-in-command, who trained the new recruits in military tactics, the use of guns, and unarmed combat. Its most prominent early spokesperson was Tommy Herron;[22] however, Andy Tyrie would emerge as leader soon after.[28] Its original motto was Cedenta Arma Togae ("Law before violence"[29][30]) and it was a legal organisation until it was banned by the British government on 10 August 1992.[22] Under Smith's command, the UDA was organised along paramilitary lines into battalions, companies, platoons and sections.[31]: 103  The organisation drew more members, becoming the largest loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland. Unlike its principal rival, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the UDA was legal.

In April 1972, the organisation's leader, Charles Harding Smith and leading UDA member John White were arrested in London for gun-trafficking.[31]: 103  A temporary de facto leadership assumed control and Anderson became the acting chairman of the UDA.[31]: 103 

At the end of May 1972, Fogel, by then the leader of B Company and Harding Smith's second-in-command, erected the first UDA roadblocks and street barricades, making Woodvale, the area under Fogel's command, a no-go area.[32] The operation attracted a great deal of media and press coverage, resulting in much publicity for the UDA.[32] British Army troops under the command of Major-General Robert Ford were sent to the area, where a stand-off with the UDA ensued. Leading UDA figures eventually entered into street negotiations with senior Army officers, where it was eventually agreed that the UDA could erect small temporary barriers in Loyalist neighbourhoods.[26]: 29  That summer, the UDA marched through the streets of central Belfast in a massive demonstration of strength.

In December 1972, Harding Smith and White were acquitted and returned to Belfast. Immediately after their return, a fierce power struggle ensued after Harding Smith declared to his associates: "I'm the boss. I take orders from no one".[26]: 34  Fogel was promptly ousted from the B Company command, while the formidable East Belfast brigadier, Tommy Herron, appeared on the scene to challenge Harding Smith's leadership. Anderson became joint chairman of the UDA with Harding Smith.[31]: 114  The struggle that ensued between Harding Smith and Herron overshadowed the Inner Council and during the height of the feud Anderson often had to call a register at its meetings, so poor were the turnouts.[26]: 33  Herron and Anderson became linked and the East Belfast brigadier took to styling himself as deputy leader to Anderson, whom he treated as sole chairman.[26]: 38 

By spring 1973, however, Fogel had already returned to his native England, and Anderson decided to stand down.[31]: 114  He publicly announced his resignation as joint chairman in March 1973, in part because he was a fairly law-abiding individual who sat uneasily with violently chaotic figures like Harding Smith and Herron. It had been Anderson who had been one of the main thinkers behind the UDA's motto "Law Before Violence" although this was ditched shortly after his resignation in favour of "Quis separabit".[26]: 64  As a compromise candidate between the rival factions of Harding Smith and Herron, Andy Tyrie, commander of West Belfast Brigade's A Company, was chosen as the UDA's chairman. He would soon become the UDA's Supreme Commander, a position he held until an attempted car bombing brought about his retirement in March 1988.[31]: 200 

Early in its history the UDA was closely associated with the Vanguard movement led by William Craig and it was regularly described as the "military wing" of Vanguard.[33] At a rally in Lisburn in February 1972, Craig inspected uniformed ranks of UDA members. Craig issued a warning during a rally at Ormeau Park the next month, where thousands of UDA men were present: "If the politicians fail us, it might become our responsibility to eliminate the enemy." However, by 1979 the UDA had turned on Craig over his increasingly conciliatory approach to Nationalists and condemnation of the 1977 loyalist strike, leading the UDA to instead back Peter Robinson in that year's general election.[34]

Membership edit

 
UDA members marching through Belfast city centre, mid-1972

At its peak of strength it held around forty thousand members, mostly part-time.[35][36] During this period of legality, the UDA committed a large number of attacks using the name Ulster Freedom Fighters,[37][38] including the murder of Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician Paddy Wilson and his companion Irene Andrews in 1973.[39] The UDA was involved in the successful Ulster Workers Council Strike in 1974, which brought down the Sunningdale Agreement: a power-sharing agreement for Northern Ireland, which some unionists thought conceded too much to nationalist demands. The UDA enforced this general strike through widespread intimidation across Northern Ireland. The strike was led by VUPP Assemblyman and UDA member, Glenn Barr.[40]

The UDA were often referred to by the nickname "Wombles" by their rivals, mainly the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The nickname is derived from the furry fictional children's TV creatures The Wombles, and was given to the UDA because many of its members wore fur-trimmed parkas.[41] Its headquarters is in Gawn Street, off the Newtownards Road in east Belfast,[42] and its current motto is Quis Separabit, which is Latin for "Who will separate [us]?"

Women's units edit

The UDA had several women's units, which were independent of each other.[43][44] Although they occasionally helped staff roadblocks, the women's units were typically involved in local community work and responsible for the assembly and delivery of food parcels to UDA prisoners. This was a source of pride for the UDA.[45] The first women's unit was founded on the Shankill Road by Wendy "Bucket" Millar, whose sons Herbie and James "Sham" Millar would later become prominent UDA members.[46] The UDA women's department was headed by Jean Moore, who also came from the Shankill Road. She had also served as the president of the women's auxiliary of the Loyalist Association of Workers. Her brother Ingram "Jock" Beckett, one of the UDA's founding members, had been killed in March 1972 by a rival UDA faction in an internal dispute.[47] Moore was succeeded by Hester Dunn of east Belfast, who also ran the public relations and administration section at the UDA headquarters.[48] Wendy Millar's Shankill Road group was a particularly active women's unit, and another was based in Sandy Row, south Belfast, a traditional UDA stronghold. The latter was commanded by Elizabeth "Lily" Douglas.[49] Her teenaged daughter, Elizabeth was one of the members.[50]

The Sandy Row women's UDA unit was disbanded after it carried out a vicious "romper room" punishment beating on 24 July 1974 which left 32-year-old Ann Ogilby dead. The body of Ogilby, a Protestant single mother who had an affair with the husband of one of the unit's members, was found in a ditch five days later.[51] The day of the fatal beating Ogilby was abducted and forced upstairs to the first floor of a disused bakery in Sandy Row that had been converted into a UDA club. Two teenage girls, Henrietta Cowan and Christine Smith,[52] acting under Elizabeth Douglas' orders to give Ogilby a "good rompering",[53] punched, kicked, then battered her to death with bricks and sticks; the autopsy later revealed that Ogilby had suffered 24 blows to the head and body. The killing, which was carried out within earshot of Ogilby's six-year-old daughter, caused widespread revulsion throughout Northern Ireland and was condemned by the UDA prisoners serving inside the Maze Prison. None of the other UDA women's units had consented to or been aware of the fatal punishment beating until it was reported in the news.[44] Douglas, Cowan, and Smith were convicted of the murder and sentenced to imprisonment at Armagh Women's Jail. Seven other members of the women's unit and a UDA man were also convicted for their part in the murder.[50][53] The UDA "romper rooms", named after the children's television programme, were places where victims were beaten and tortured prior to being killed. This was known as a "rompering". The "romper rooms" were normally located in disused buildings, lock-up garages, warehouses, and rooms above pubs and drinking clubs.[54] The use of the "romper rooms" was a more common practice among male members of the UDA than their female counterparts.[44]

Paramilitary campaign edit

See also: Timeline of Ulster Defence Association actions
 
The flag of the "Ulster Freedom Fighters" with a clenched fist representing the Red Hand of Ulster and the Latin motto Feriens tego, meaning "striking I defend"

Starting in 1972 the UDA along with the other main Loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force, undertook an armed campaign against the Catholic population of Northern Ireland that would last until the end of the troubles. In May 1972, the UDA's pressured leader Tommy Herron decided that responsibility for acts of violence committed by the UDA would be claimed by the "UFF". Its first public statements came one month later.[55]

The UDA's official position during the Troubles was that if the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA) called off its campaign of violence, then it would do the same. However, if the British government announced that it was withdrawing from Northern Ireland, then the UDA would act as "the IRA in reverse."[56]

Active throughout the Troubles, its armed campaign gained prominence in the early 1990s through Johnny Adair's ruthless leadership of the Lower Shankill 2nd Battalion, C. Company, which resulted in a greater degree of tactical independence for individual brigades.[57] C. Company's hit squad, led by Stephen McKeag, became notorious for a campaign of random murders of Catholic civilians in the first half of the 1990s.[58]

They benefited, along with the Ulster Volunteer Force, and a group called Ulster Resistance (set up by the Democratic Unionist Party), from a shipment of arms imported from Lebanon in 1988.[59] The weapons landed included rocket launchers, 200 rifles, 90 pistols and over 400 grenades.[59] Although almost two–thirds of these weapons were later recovered by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), they enabled the UDA to launch an assassination campaign against their perceived enemies.

 
A UFF mural in the Kilcooley estate in Bangor
 
A UFF mural in the Sandy Row area of South Belfast

North Belfast UDA brigadier Davy Payne was arrested after his "scout" car had been stopped at a RUC checkpoint and large caches of the weaponry were discovered in the boots of his associates' cars. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison.

In 1992, Brian Nelson, a prominent UDA member who served as the organisation's intelligence chief, was arrested by the Stevens Inquiry Team. It was subsequently uncovered that he was also an agent of the Force Research Unit (FRU), an undercover Intelligence Corps unit. Over a period of two months, Nelson dictated a police statement covering 650 pages. He claimed that he had been tasked by his FRU handlers with transforming the UDA into a more effective force, particularly at carrying out killings. Using information supplied by his handlers, Nelson produced dossiers on proposed targets, which were passed on to UDA hitmen. Nelson was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison.[60][61]

One of the most high-profile UDA attacks came in October 1993, when three masked men attacked a restaurant called the Rising Sun in the predominantly Catholic village of Greysteel, County Londonderry, where two hundred people were celebrating Halloween. The two men entered and opened fire. Eight people, including six Catholics and two Protestants were killed and nineteen wounded in what became known as the Greysteel massacre. The "UFF" claimed the attack was in retaliation to the IRA's Shankill Road bombing, which killed nine people seven days earlier.

According to the Sutton database of deaths at the University of Ulster's CAIN project,[62] the UDA was responsible for 259 killings during the Troubles. 220 of its victims were civilians (predominantly Catholics), 37 were other loyalist paramilitaries (including 30 of its own members), three were members of the security forces and 11 were republican paramilitaries. According to the Stevens Enquiry, a number of these attacks were carried out with the assistance or complicity of elements of the British security forces.[63][64] The preferred modus operandi of the UDA was individual killings of civilian targets in nationalist areas, rather than large-scale bomb or mortar attacks.

The UDA employed various codewords whenever they claimed their attacks. These included: "The Crucible", "Titanic", "Ulster Troubles" and "Captain Black".[citation needed]

Post-ceasefire activities edit

Its ceasefire was welcomed by the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Paul Murphy, and the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Hugh Orde.

 
A UDA/UFF mural in Belfast
 
A UFF flag in Finvoy, a rural area of County Antrim

Since the ceasefire, the UDA has been accused of taking vigilante action against alleged rival drug dealers,[65] including tarring and feathering a man on the Taughmonagh estate in south Belfast.[66][67] It has also been involved in several feuds with the UVF, which led to many killings. The UDA has also been riddled by its own internecine warfare, with self-styled "brigadiers" and former figures of power and influence, such as Johnny Adair and Jim Gray (themselves bitter rivals), falling rapidly in and out of favour with the rest of the leadership. Gray and John Gregg are amongst those to have been killed during the internal strife. On 22 February 2003, the UDA announced a "12-month period of military inactivity".[68] It said it would review its ceasefire every three months. The UPRG's Frankie Gallagher has since taken a leading role in ending the association between the UDA and drug dealing.[69]

Following an August 2005 Sunday World article that poked fun at the gambling losses of one of its leaders, the UDA banned the sale of the newspaper from shops in areas it controls. Shops that defy the ban have suffered arson attacks, and at least one newsagent was threatened with death.[70] The Police Service of Northern Ireland began accompanying the paper's delivery vans.[71][72] The UDA was also considered to have played an instrumental role in loyalist riots in Belfast in September 2005.[73]

On 13 November 2005 the UDA announced that it would "consider its future", in the wake of the standing down of the Provisional IRA and Loyalist Volunteer Force.[74]

In February 2006, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) reported UDA involvement in organised crime, drug trafficking, counterfeiting, extortion, money laundering and robbery.[65]

 
A UDA/UFF mural in Bangor

On 20 June 2006, the UDA expelled Andre Shoukri and his brother Ihab, two of its senior members who were heavily involved in organised crime. Some saw this as a sign that the UDA was slowly coming away from crime.[75] The move did see the southeast Antrim brigade of the UDA, which had been at loggerheads with the leadership for some time, support Shoukri and break away under former UPRG spokesman Tommy Kirkham.[76] Other senior members met with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for talks on 13 July in the same year.[77]

On 11 November 2007 the UDA announced that the Ulster Freedom Fighters would be stood down from midnight of the same day,[78] with its weapons "being put beyond use" although it stressed that these would not be decommissioned.[79]

Although the group expressed a willingness to move from criminal activity to "community development," the IMC said it saw little evidence of this move because of the views of its members and the lack of coherence in the group's leadership as a result of its decentralised structure. While the report indicated the leadership intends to move towards its stated goals, factionalism hindered this change and was the strongest hindrance to progress. Although most loyalist actions were curtailed since the IMC's previous report, most of loyalist paramilitary activity was coming from the UDA.

The IMC report concluded that the leadership's willingness to change has resulted in community tension and the group would continue to be monitored, although "the mainstream UDA still has some way to go." Furthermore, the IMC warned the group to "recognise that the organisation's time as a paramilitary group has passed and that decommissioning is inevitable." Decommissioning was said to be the "biggest outstanding issue for loyalist leaders, although not the only one."[80]

 
A UDA/UFF South-East Antrim Brigade mural in Newtownabbey

On 6 January 2010, the UDA announced that it had put its weapons "verifiably beyond use".[81] 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.[81] The decommissioning was confirmed by Canadian General John de Chastelain, chairman of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, as well as Lord Eames, former Archbishop of Armagh and Sir George Quigley, former top civil servant.[82]

Chastelain stated that the decommissioning included arms, ammunition, explosives and explosive devices and the UDA stated that the arms "constitute the totality of those under their control".[81] Following the decommissioning the Ulster Political Research Group, the UDA's political representatives, stated that the "Ulster Defence Association was formed to defend our communities; we state quite clearly and categorically that this responsibility now rests with the Government and its institutions where legitimacy resides".[82] UDA representative Frankie Gallagher also stated that the group now regretted being responsible for the killing of more than 400 people.[83]

Shaun Woodward, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, stated that this "is a major act of leadership by the UDA and further comprehensive evidence of the success of politics over violence in Northern Ireland" and the act was also welcomed by Sinn Féin and DUP politicians.[84] The President of the Republic of Ireland, Mary McAleese, described the decommissioning as "a very positive milestone on the journey of peace".[85] US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also welcomed the move as a step towards lasting peace in Northern Ireland.[86]

South East Antrim group edit

Main article: UDA South East Antrim Brigade

This area also continues to use the "UDA" title in its name, although it too expressed willingness to move towards "community development." Although serious crime is not prevalent among its members, some who were arrested for illegal drug sales and "extortion" were exiled by the Brigade. A clear distinction between the factions was not available in the 20th IMC report, as this was the first report to differentiate between the two.[80]

Politics edit

 
Some UDA leaders supported an independent Northern Ireland in the mid–late 1970s

In the 1970s the group favoured Northern Ireland independence, but they have retreated from this position.[87]

The New Ulster Political Research Group (NUPRG) was initially the political wing of the UDA, founded in 1978, which then evolved into the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party in 1981 under the leadership of John McMichael, a prominent UDA member killed by the IRA in 1987, amid suspicion that he was set up to be killed by some of his UDA colleagues.

In 1987, the UDA's deputy commander John McMichael (who was then the leader of the UFF) promoted a document entitled Common Sense, which promoted a consensual end to the conflict in Northern Ireland, while maintaining the Union. The document advocated a power-sharing assembly involving both nationalists and unionists, an agreed constitution and new Bill of Rights. It is not clear, however, whether this programme was adopted by the UDA as their official policy.[56] However, the killing of McMichael that same year and the subsequent removal of Tyrie from the leadership and his replacement with an Inner Council saw the UDA concentrate on stockpiling weapons rather than political ideas.[88]

In 1989, the ULDP changed its name to the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP). It finally dissolved itself in 2001 following very limited electoral success and internal difficulties. Gary McMichael, son of John McMichael, was the last leader of the UDP, which supported the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. The Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) was subsequently formed to give political analysis to the UDA and act as community workers in loyalist areas. It is currently represented on the Belfast City Council.

In early January 1994, the UDA released a document calling for ethnic cleansing and repartition, with the goal of making a new Northern Ireland which would have been wholly Protestant.[89] The plan was to be implemented should the British Army withdraw from Northern Ireland. Areas in the south and west with strong Catholic/nationalist majorities would be handed over to the Republic, and those Catholics left stranded in the "Protestant state" would be "expelled, nullified, or interned".[89] The story was printed in The Sunday Independent newspaper on 16 January.[90] The "doomsday plan" was based on the work of Dr Liam Kennedy, a lecturer at Queen's University Belfast[89] who in 1986 had published a book called Two Ulsters: A Case for Repartition, although it did not call for ethnic cleansing. The UDP's Raymond Smallwoods said "I wasn't consulted but the scenario set out is a perfectly plausible one".[89] The DUP's Sammy Wilson stated that the plan "shows that some loyalist paramilitaries are looking ahead and contemplating what needs to be done to maintain our separate Ulster identity"[89]

Support from other groups edit

See also: Paramilitary finances in the Troubles

The UDA had links with Neo-Nazi groups in Britain—specifically Combat 18[91] (formed in 1992) and the British National Socialist Movement[92] (formed in 1985). Members of these groups helped to smuggle weapons for the UDA. The UDA has received backing from Combat 18, the National Front and the British National Party.[93][94] The links may not have been politically motivated, but for mutually beneficial arms deals. On one occasion the UDA sent Louis Scott, one of a few black members of the UDA, to make the transaction.[95] Johnny Adair, who had been in Combat 18 before the UDA, established stronger links once he became a brigadier.[96][97]

The Red Hand Defenders is a cover name used by breakaway factions of the UDA and the LVF.[1] The term was coined in 1997 when members of the LVF carried out attacks on behalf of Johnny Adair's "UFF 2nd Battalion, 'C' Company (Shankill Road)" and vice versa.[1] The relationship between the UDA (specifically Adair's West Belfast Brigade, not the wider leadership of the UDA) was initially formed after the death of Billy Wright, the previous leader of the LVF, and grew from Adair's personal friendship with Mark 'Swinger' Fulton, the organisation's new chief.

The necessity for a cover name resulted from the need to avoid tensions between the UDA and the UVF, the organisation from which the LVF had broken away. It was perceived that any open co-operation between the UDA and the LVF would anger the UVF, something which proved to be the case in following years and resulted in a loyalist feud.[1] There has been debate as to whether or not the Red Hand Defenders have become an entity in their own right[98] made up of dissident factions from both the UDA and the LVF (both of which have now declared ceasefires whilst the RHD has not), although much intelligence has been based on the claims of responsibility which, as has been suggested,[1] are frequently misleading.

A 1985 MI5 assessment reported that 85% of the UDA's "targeting material" came from security force records.[99]

Scotland was a source of fundraising and other types of aid. Former MI5 agent Willie Carlin said: “There were safe houses in Glasgow and Stirling. The ferry [between Scotland and Northern Ireland] was pivotal in getting arms into the north – and anything like checkpoints, or armed police and Army in Scotland would have b******d that all up.”[100] An Irish government memo written by David Donoghue stated: "The commonest contribution of Scots UDA and UVF is to send gelignite. 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." Donoghue noted the links between Orange Lodges in Scotland and loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and that membership of the Orange Order in Scotland at the time was 80,000, and was concentrated in Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Inverness.[101] The Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee noted in its report that "in 1992 it was estimated that Scottish support for the UDA and UVF might amount to £100,000 a year."[102]

Protestants in Canada also supported the loyalist paramilitaries in the conflict. Sociologist Steven Bruce described the support networks in Canada as "the main source of support for loyalism outside the United Kingdom . . . Ontario is to Ulster Protestants what Boston is to Irish Catholics." After the Troubles began, an Orange-Canadian loyalist organization known as the Canadian Ulster Loyalist Association (CULA) provided the 'besieged' Protestants with the resources to arm themselves.[103] A Canadian branch of the UDA also existed and sent $30,000 to the UDA's headquarters in Belfast by 1975. In 1972, five Toronto businessmen shipped weapons in grain container ships out of Halifax, bound for ports in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland which were destined for loyalist militants.[103][104]

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.[103][104] These shipments were considered enough for the UVF/UDA to wage its campaign, most of which were used to kill its victims.[103] On 10 February 1976, following the sudden uptick of violence against Catholic civilians by loyalist militants, Irish cardinal William Conway and nine other Catholic bishops met with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his cabinet, asking them as to where the loyalist militants had acquired guns, to which Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees replied "Canada".[105]

Structure and leadership edit

The UDA is made up of:

  • the Inner Council
  • the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF)—whose role was to carry out attacks on republican and nationalist targets. However, many regard the UFF as merely a covername used when the UDA wished to claim responsibility for attacks.[106]
  • the Ulster Defence Force (UDF)—whose role was to give "specialist military training" to a select group of UDA members. The UDF was initiated by John McMichael[107] (the then UDA/UFF commander) in 1985 as a response to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The UDF operated training camps in rural parts of Northern Ireland that young loyalists such as Johnny Adair claim to have attended.[107] One reported 'survival' training technique was to leave trainees stranded in Dublin with only £1.[107] The training, which was described by UDA members as forming "the nucleus of a new loyalist army at the ready", was made possible thanks to "a sophisticated network of legal businesses" which allowed for the implementation of ambitious training programmes.[108]
  • the Ulster Young Militants (UYM)—the "youth wing" of the group. Formed in 1973.[109]
  • the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG)—the UDA's "political advisory body". Formed in 1978.[110]

The UDA operated a devolved structure of leadership, each with a brigadier representing one of its six "brigade areas".[107] It is not clear whether this brigade structure has been maintained in the UDA's post cease-fire state. The UDA's six "brigade areas" were:

  • North Belfast
  • East Belfast
  • South Belfast, the UDA's largest brigade area, covering all of South Belfast down to Lisburn and operating as far away as South County Down, Lurgan, Portadown and Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh.[111]
  • West Belfast
  • Southeast [County] Antrim
  • North County Antrim & County Londonderry
 
A wall sign in Dervock showing support for the North Antrim and Londonderry brigade.

In addition to these six core brigades two others may have existed. A seventh Mid-Ulster Brigade is mentioned by Steve Bruce as having existed for part of the UDA's history[112] although Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack characterise this as a "battalion" rather than a brigade and suggest that its rural location prevented it from fully developing.[113] In the late 1970s a Scottish Brigade was established under the command of Roddy McDonald but this proved short-lived. The security forces infiltrated this brigade almost immediately and in 1979 arrested almost its entire membership, ninety people in all. Six members received particularly lengthy prison sentences for their involvement in UDA activities in Perth and the Scottish Brigade quietly disappeared.[114]

Some of the notable brigadiers include:

Jackie McDonald—South Belfast (~1980s-present)[115] Resident of the Taughmonagh estate in South Belfast.[115] McDonald was a cautious supporter of the UDA's ceasefire and a harsh critic of Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair during his final years of membership of the organisation.[115] McDonald remains the only brigadier who did not have a commonly used nickname.

Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair—West Belfast (1990–2002)[107] An active figure in the UDA/UFF, Adair rose to notoriety in the early 1990s when he led the 2nd Battalion, C Company unit in West Belfast which was responsible for one of the bloodiest killing sprees of the Troubles.[107]

Jim 'Doris Day' Gray—East Belfast (1992–2005)[107][116] An unlikely figure in Northern Ireland loyalism, the openly bisexual[107] Gray was a controversial figure in the organisation until his death on 4 October 2005. Always flamboyantly dressed, Gray was a key figure in the UDA's negotiations with Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid. It is widely believed that Gray received his nickname from the RUC Special Branch.[107]

Jimbo 'Bacardi Brigadier' Simpson—North Belfast (Unknown–2002)[107] Simpson is believed to have been an alcoholic, hence his nickname. He was leader of the UDA in the volatile North Belfast area, an interface between Catholics and Protestants in the New Lodge and Tiger's Bay neighbourhoods.[107]

Billy 'The Mexican' McFarland—North Antrim and Londonderry (Unknown–2013)[107] He earned his nickname because of his moustache and swarthy appearance, and had overall command of the UDA's North Antrim and Londonderry brigade at the time of the Good Friday Agreement. He supported the leadership against Johnny Adair and has been associated with the magazine 'Warrior', which makes the case for Ulster Independence.

Andre 'The Egyptian' Shoukri[107]—North Belfast (2002–2005)[107] Initially a close ally of Johnny Adair, Shoukri and his brother Ihab became involved with the UDA in his native North Belfast. The son of an Egyptian father and a Northern Irish mother, he was expelled from the UDA in 2005 following allegations of criminality.

John 'Grug' Gregg—South East Antrim (c.1993[117]–2003) John 'Grug' Gregg was a man with a fearsome reputation within the loyalist movement, known as a "Hawk" in loyalist circles, and controlled the streets of south east Antrim. On 14 March 1984, he severely wounded Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in an assassination attempt for which he was jailed. When asked by the BBC in prison if he regretted anything about the shooting, his reply was "only that I didn't succeed." He was killed on Belfast's Nelson Street, along with another UDA member (Rab Carson), while travelling in a taxi from the docks in 2003, and the murder was blamed on supporters of Johnny Adair, who had recently been expelled from the UDA in 2002.

Deaths as a result of activity edit

 
UDA South Belfast Brigade memorial plaque in Sandy Row

Malcolm Sutton's Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland, part of the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), states that the UDA/UFF was responsible for at least 260 killings, and lists a further 256 loyalist killings that have not yet been attributed to a particular group.[118] According to the book Lost Lives (2006 edition), it was responsible for 431 killings.[119]

Of those killed by the UDA/UFF:[13]

  • 209 (~80%) were civilians, 12 of whom were civilian political activists
  • 11 (~4%) were members or former members of republican paramilitary groups
  • 37 (~14%) were members or former members of loyalist paramilitary groups
  • 3 (~1%) were members of the British security forces

The CAIN database says there were 91 UDA members and four former members killed in the conflict.[120]

See also edit

References edit

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  2. ^ "How the RUC protected the UDA". Irish Times. from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 9 October 2019. On May 26th, 1981, the RUC searched UDA headquarters in Belfast ...
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  9. ^ Mulholland, Marc. Northern Ireland: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press, 2002. p.80
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  13. ^ a b "Sutton Index of Deaths: Crosstabulations". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2011. – choose "organisation" as First Variable and "status summary" as Second Variable
  14. ^ Wright-Neville, David (2010). Dictionary of Terrorism. Polity. p. 194. Between the late 1960s and 2007, the UDA carried out more than 250 killings, the victims of which were mainly Catholic civilians.
  15. ^ "Sutton Index of Deaths: Crosstabulations". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2011. – choose "organisation" as First Variable and "religion summary" as Second Variable
  16. ^ Nelson, Sarah (1984). Ulster's Uncertain Defenders: Loyalists and the Northern Ireland Conflict. Belfast: Appletree Press. pp. 117–127.
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Further reading edit

  • Bruce, Steve. The Red Hand, 1992, ISBN 0-19-215961-5
  • Crawford, Colin. Inside the UDA: Volunteers and Violence, 2003.
  • Moloney, Ed.The Secret History of the IRA
  • O'Brien, Brendan. The Long War, the IRA and Sinn Féin
  • Wood, Ian S., Crimes of Loyalty: A History of the UDA

January 01, 1970
ulster, defence, association, company, redirects, here, bollywood, movie, kkompany, ulster, loyalist, paramilitary, group, northern, ireland, formed, september, 1971, umbrella, group, various, loyalist, groups, undertook, armed, campaign, almost, years, partic. C Company redirects here For the Bollywood movie see C Kkompany The Ulster Defence Association UDA is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary 9 group in Northern Ireland It was formed in September 1971 as an umbrella group for various loyalist groups 10 and undertook an armed campaign of almost 24 years as one of the participants of the Troubles Its declared goal was to defend Ulster Protestant loyalist areas 10 and to combat Irish republicanism particularly the Provisional Irish Republican Army IRA In the 1970s uniformed UDA members openly patrolled these areas armed with batons and held large marches and rallies Within the UDA was a group tasked with launching paramilitary attacks that used the cover name Ulster Freedom Fighters UFF so that the UDA would not be outlawed The British government proscribed the UFF as a terrorist group in November 1973 but the UDA itself was not proscribed until August 1992 11 12 Ulster Defence AssociationEmblem of the Ulster Defence AssociationLeadersCharles Harding Smith 1971 1973 Andy Tyrie 1973 1988 John McMichael Commander of the UFF until 1987 1 Inner Council Jackie McDonald Johnny Adair Jim Gray Andre Shoukri James Simpson South East Antrim Commander Billy McFarland Matt Kincaid 1 Dates of operationSeptember 1971 present on ceasefire since October 1994 ended armed campaign in November 2007 Group s Ulster Young Militants youth wing HeadquartersBelfast 2 Active regionsNorthern Ireland mostly Republic of Ireland EnglandIdeologyUlster loyalism Protestant extremism 3 Irish unionism Anti Catholicism Anti Irish sentiment Anti Islam 4 Ulster nationalism briefly Size40 000 at its peak 1972 Over 5 000 at the end of its armed campaign 5 5 000 present 6 AlliesLoyalist Volunteer Force 7 Red Hand Defenders until 2002 8 OpponentsUnited Kingdom British Army Royal Ulster Constabulary Republic of Ireland Garda Siochana Provisional Irish Republican Army Irish National Liberation Army Irish People s Liberation Organization Irish republicans Irish nationalists Ulster Volunteer Force 2000 2002 Battles and warsThe TroublesDesignated as a terrorist group by United Kingdom United StatesFlag The UDA UFF were responsible for more than 400 deaths The vast majority of its victims were Irish Catholic civilians 13 14 15 killed at random in what the group called retaliation for IRA actions or attacks on Protestants 16 17 18 19 20 High profile attacks carried out by the group include the Top of the Hill bar shooting the Milltown massacre the Sean Graham s and James Murray s bookmakers shootings the Castlerock killings killings of Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews and the Greysteel massacre Most of its attacks were in Northern Ireland but from 1972 onward it also carried out bombings in the Republic of Ireland The UDA UFF declared a ceasefire in 1994 and ended its campaign in 2007 but some of its members have continued to engage in violence 21 The other main Loyalist paramilitary group during the conflict was the Ulster Volunteer Force UVF All three groups are proscribed organisations in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000 11 Contents 1 History 1 1 UDA formation 1 2 Membership 1 3 Women s units 1 4 Paramilitary campaign 1 5 Post ceasefire activities 1 6 South East Antrim group 2 Politics 3 Support from other groups 4 Structure and leadership 5 Deaths as a result of activity 6 See also 7 References 8 Further readingHistory editThe Ulster Defence Association emerged from a series of meetings during the middle of 1971 of loyalist vigilante groups called defence associations 22 The largest of these were the Shankill and Woodvale Defence Associations 23 with other groups based in East Belfast the Hammer and Roden Street 24 UDA formation edit The first meeting in September 1971 was chaired by Billy Hull with Alan Moon of the lower Shankill as its vice chair Moon was quickly replaced by Jim Anderson 25 26 20 Moon who had become reluctant to be involved in vigilantism since the group s formation willingly stepped aside and ended his association with the UDA soon afterwards 27 50 The structure of this new movement soon took shape with a thirteen man Security Council established in January 1972 as a reaction to a Provisional IRA bomb the previous month at the Balmoral furniture showroom on the Shankill which killed four people including two infants 26 22 By this point Charles Harding Smith had become the group s leader with former Royal Army Ordnance Corps soldier Davy Fogel as his second in command who trained the new recruits in military tactics the use of guns and unarmed combat Its most prominent early spokesperson was Tommy Herron 22 however Andy Tyrie would emerge as leader soon after 28 Its original motto was Cedenta Arma Togae Law before violence 29 30 and it was a legal organisation until it was banned by the British government on 10 August 1992 22 Under Smith s command the UDA was organised along paramilitary lines into battalions companies platoons and sections 31 103 The organisation drew more members becoming the largest loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland Unlike its principal rival the Ulster Volunteer Force UVF the UDA was legal In April 1972 the organisation s leader Charles Harding Smith and leading UDA member John White were arrested in London for gun trafficking 31 103 A temporary de facto leadership assumed control and Anderson became the acting chairman of the UDA 31 103 At the end of May 1972 Fogel by then the leader of B Company and Harding Smith s second in command erected the first UDA roadblocks and street barricades making Woodvale the area under Fogel s command a no go area 32 The operation attracted a great deal of media and press coverage resulting in much publicity for the UDA 32 British Army troops under the command of Major General Robert Ford were sent to the area where a stand off with the UDA ensued Leading UDA figures eventually entered into street negotiations with senior Army officers where it was eventually agreed that the UDA could erect small temporary barriers in Loyalist neighbourhoods 26 29 That summer the UDA marched through the streets of central Belfast in a massive demonstration of strength In December 1972 Harding Smith and White were acquitted and returned to Belfast Immediately after their return a fierce power struggle ensued after Harding Smith declared to his associates I m the boss I take orders from no one 26 34 Fogel was promptly ousted from the B Company command while the formidable East Belfast brigadier Tommy Herron appeared on the scene to challenge Harding Smith s leadership Anderson became joint chairman of the UDA with Harding Smith 31 114 The struggle that ensued between Harding Smith and Herron overshadowed the Inner Council and during the height of the feud Anderson often had to call a register at its meetings so poor were the turnouts 26 33 Herron and Anderson became linked and the East Belfast brigadier took to styling himself as deputy leader to Anderson whom he treated as sole chairman 26 38 By spring 1973 however Fogel had already returned to his native England and Anderson decided to stand down 31 114 He publicly announced his resignation as joint chairman in March 1973 in part because he was a fairly law abiding individual who sat uneasily with violently chaotic figures like Harding Smith and Herron It had been Anderson who had been one of the main thinkers behind the UDA s motto Law Before Violence although this was ditched shortly after his resignation in favour of Quis separabit 26 64 As a compromise candidate between the rival factions of Harding Smith and Herron Andy Tyrie commander of West Belfast Brigade s A Company was chosen as the UDA s chairman He would soon become the UDA s Supreme Commander a position he held until an attempted car bombing brought about his retirement in March 1988 31 200 Early in its history the UDA was closely associated with the Vanguard movement led by William Craig and it was regularly described as the military wing of Vanguard 33 At a rally in Lisburn in February 1972 Craig inspected uniformed ranks of UDA members Craig issued a warning during a rally at Ormeau Park the next month where thousands of UDA men were present If the politicians fail us it might become our responsibility to eliminate the enemy However by 1979 the UDA had turned on Craig over his increasingly conciliatory approach to Nationalists and condemnation of the 1977 loyalist strike leading the UDA to instead back Peter Robinson in that year s general election 34 Membership edit nbsp UDA members marching through Belfast city centre mid 1972 At its peak of strength it held around forty thousand members mostly part time 35 36 During this period of legality the UDA committed a large number of attacks using the name Ulster Freedom Fighters 37 38 including the murder of Social Democratic and Labour Party SDLP politician Paddy Wilson and his companion Irene Andrews in 1973 39 The UDA was involved in the successful Ulster Workers Council Strike in 1974 which brought down the Sunningdale Agreement a power sharing agreement for Northern Ireland which some unionists thought conceded too much to nationalist demands The UDA enforced this general strike through widespread intimidation across Northern Ireland The strike was led by VUPP Assemblyman and UDA member Glenn Barr 40 The UDA were often referred to by the nickname Wombles by their rivals mainly the Ulster Volunteer Force UVF The nickname is derived from the furry fictional children s TV creatures The Wombles and was given to the UDA because many of its members wore fur trimmed parkas 41 Its headquarters is in Gawn Street off the Newtownards Road in east Belfast 42 and its current motto is Quis Separabit which is Latin for Who will separate us Women s units edit The UDA had several women s units which were independent of each other 43 44 Although they occasionally helped staff roadblocks the women s units were typically involved in local community work and responsible for the assembly and delivery of food parcels to UDA prisoners This was a source of pride for the UDA 45 The first women s unit was founded on the Shankill Road by Wendy Bucket Millar whose sons Herbie and James Sham Millar would later become prominent UDA members 46 The UDA women s department was headed by Jean Moore who also came from the Shankill Road She had also served as the president of the women s auxiliary of the Loyalist Association of Workers Her brother Ingram Jock Beckett one of the UDA s founding members had been killed in March 1972 by a rival UDA faction in an internal dispute 47 Moore was succeeded by Hester Dunn of east Belfast who also ran the public relations and administration section at the UDA headquarters 48 Wendy Millar s Shankill Road group was a particularly active women s unit and another was based in Sandy Row south Belfast a traditional UDA stronghold The latter was commanded by Elizabeth Lily Douglas 49 Her teenaged daughter Elizabeth was one of the members 50 The Sandy Row women s UDA unit was disbanded after it carried out a vicious romper room punishment beating on 24 July 1974 which left 32 year old Ann Ogilby dead The body of Ogilby a Protestant single mother who had an affair with the husband of one of the unit s members was found in a ditch five days later 51 The day of the fatal beating Ogilby was abducted and forced upstairs to the first floor of a disused bakery in Sandy Row that had been converted into a UDA club Two teenage girls Henrietta Cowan and Christine Smith 52 acting under Elizabeth Douglas orders to give Ogilby a good rompering 53 punched kicked then battered her to death with bricks and sticks the autopsy later revealed that Ogilby had suffered 24 blows to the head and body The killing which was carried out within earshot of Ogilby s six year old daughter caused widespread revulsion throughout Northern Ireland and was condemned by the UDA prisoners serving inside the Maze Prison None of the other UDA women s units had consented to or been aware of the fatal punishment beating until it was reported in the news 44 Douglas Cowan and Smith were convicted of the murder and sentenced to imprisonment at Armagh Women s Jail Seven other members of the women s unit and a UDA man were also convicted for their part in the murder 50 53 The UDA romper rooms named after the children s television programme were places where victims were beaten and tortured prior to being killed This was known as a rompering The romper rooms were normally located in disused buildings lock up garages warehouses and rooms above pubs and drinking clubs 54 The use of the romper rooms was a more common practice among male members of the UDA than their female counterparts 44 Paramilitary campaign edit See also Timeline of Ulster Defence Association actions nbsp The flag of the Ulster Freedom Fighters with a clenched fist representing the Red Hand of Ulster and the Latin motto Feriens tego meaning striking I defend Starting in 1972 the UDA along with the other main Loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force undertook an armed campaign against the Catholic population of Northern Ireland that would last until the end of the troubles In May 1972 the UDA s pressured leader Tommy Herron decided that responsibility for acts of violence committed by the UDA would be claimed by the UFF Its first public statements came one month later 55 The UDA s official position during the Troubles was that if the Provisional Irish Republican Army Provisional IRA called off its campaign of violence then it would do the same However if the British government announced that it was withdrawing from Northern Ireland then the UDA would act as the IRA in reverse 56 Active throughout the Troubles its armed campaign gained prominence in the early 1990s through Johnny Adair s ruthless leadership of the Lower Shankill 2nd Battalion C Company which resulted in a greater degree of tactical independence for individual brigades 57 C Company s hit squad led by Stephen McKeag became notorious for a campaign of random murders of Catholic civilians in the first half of the 1990s 58 They benefited along with the Ulster Volunteer Force and a group called Ulster Resistance set up by the Democratic Unionist Party from a shipment of arms imported from Lebanon in 1988 59 The weapons landed included rocket launchers 200 rifles 90 pistols and over 400 grenades 59 Although almost two thirds of these weapons were later recovered by the Royal Ulster Constabulary RUC they enabled the UDA to launch an assassination campaign against their perceived enemies nbsp A UFF mural in the Kilcooley estate in Bangor nbsp A UFF mural in the Sandy Row area of South Belfast North Belfast UDA brigadier Davy Payne was arrested after his scout car had been stopped at a RUC checkpoint and large caches of the weaponry were discovered in the boots of his associates cars He was sentenced to 19 years in prison In 1992 Brian Nelson a prominent UDA member who served as the organisation s intelligence chief was arrested by the Stevens Inquiry Team It was subsequently uncovered that he was also an agent of the Force Research Unit FRU an undercover Intelligence Corps unit Over a period of two months Nelson dictated a police statement covering 650 pages He claimed that he had been tasked by his FRU handlers with transforming the UDA into a more effective force particularly at carrying out killings Using information supplied by his handlers Nelson produced dossiers on proposed targets which were passed on to UDA hitmen Nelson was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison 60 61 One of the most high profile UDA attacks came in October 1993 when three masked men attacked a restaurant called the Rising Sun in the predominantly Catholic village of Greysteel County Londonderry where two hundred people were celebrating Halloween The two men entered and opened fire Eight people including six Catholics and two Protestants were killed and nineteen wounded in what became known as the Greysteel massacre The UFF claimed the attack was in retaliation to the IRA s Shankill Road bombing which killed nine people seven days earlier According to the Sutton database of deaths at the University of Ulster s CAIN project 62 the UDA was responsible for 259 killings during the Troubles 220 of its victims were civilians predominantly Catholics 37 were other loyalist paramilitaries including 30 of its own members three were members of the security forces and 11 were republican paramilitaries According to the Stevens Enquiry a number of these attacks were carried out with the assistance or complicity of elements of the British security forces 63 64 The preferred modus operandi of the UDA was individual killings of civilian targets in nationalist areas rather than large scale bomb or mortar attacks The UDA employed various codewords whenever they claimed their attacks These included The Crucible Titanic Ulster Troubles and Captain Black citation needed Post ceasefire activities edit Its ceasefire was welcomed by the Northern Ireland Secretary of State Paul Murphy and the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland Hugh Orde nbsp A UDA UFF mural in Belfast nbsp A UFF flag in Finvoy a rural area of County Antrim Since the ceasefire the UDA has been accused of taking vigilante action against alleged rival drug dealers 65 including tarring and feathering a man on the Taughmonagh estate in south Belfast 66 67 It has also been involved in several feuds with the UVF which led to many killings The UDA has also been riddled by its own internecine warfare with self styled brigadiers and former figures of power and influence such as Johnny Adair and Jim Gray themselves bitter rivals falling rapidly in and out of favour with the rest of the leadership Gray and John Gregg are amongst those to have been killed during the internal strife On 22 February 2003 the UDA announced a 12 month period of military inactivity 68 It said it would review its ceasefire every three months The UPRG s Frankie Gallagher has since taken a leading role in ending the association between the UDA and drug dealing 69 Following an August 2005 Sunday World article that poked fun at the gambling losses of one of its leaders the UDA banned the sale of the newspaper from shops in areas it controls Shops that defy the ban have suffered arson attacks and at least one newsagent was threatened with death 70 The Police Service of Northern Ireland began accompanying the paper s delivery vans 71 72 The UDA was also considered to have played an instrumental role in loyalist riots in Belfast in September 2005 73 On 13 November 2005 the UDA announced that it would consider its future in the wake of the standing down of the Provisional IRA and Loyalist Volunteer Force 74 In February 2006 the Independent Monitoring Commission IMC reported UDA involvement in organised crime drug trafficking counterfeiting extortion money laundering and robbery 65 nbsp A UDA UFF mural in Bangor On 20 June 2006 the UDA expelled Andre Shoukri and his brother Ihab two of its senior members who were heavily involved in organised crime Some saw this as a sign that the UDA was slowly coming away from crime 75 The move did see the southeast Antrim brigade of the UDA which had been at loggerheads with the leadership for some time support Shoukri and break away under former UPRG spokesman Tommy Kirkham 76 Other senior members met with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for talks on 13 July in the same year 77 On 11 November 2007 the UDA announced that the Ulster Freedom Fighters would be stood down from midnight of the same day 78 with its weapons being put beyond use although it stressed that these would not be decommissioned 79 Although the group expressed a willingness to move from criminal activity to community development the IMC said it saw little evidence of this move because of the views of its members and the lack of coherence in the group s leadership as a result of its decentralised structure While the report indicated the leadership intends to move towards its stated goals factionalism hindered this change and was the strongest hindrance to progress Although most loyalist actions were curtailed since the IMC s previous report most of loyalist paramilitary activity was coming from the UDA The IMC report concluded that the leadership s willingness to change has resulted in community tension and the group would continue to be monitored although the mainstream UDA still has some way to go Furthermore the IMC warned the group to recognise that the organisation s time as a paramilitary group has passed and that decommissioning is inevitable Decommissioning was said to be the biggest outstanding issue for loyalist leaders although not the only one 80 nbsp A UDA UFF South East Antrim Brigade mural in Newtownabbey On 6 January 2010 the UDA announced that it had put its weapons verifiably beyond use 81 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 81 The decommissioning was confirmed by Canadian General John de Chastelain chairman of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning as well as Lord Eames former Archbishop of Armagh and Sir George Quigley former top civil servant 82 Chastelain stated that the decommissioning included arms ammunition explosives and explosive devices and the UDA stated that the arms constitute the totality of those under their control 81 Following the decommissioning the Ulster Political Research Group the UDA s political representatives stated that the Ulster Defence Association was formed to defend our communities we state quite clearly and categorically that this responsibility now rests with the Government and its institutions where legitimacy resides 82 UDA representative Frankie Gallagher also stated that the group now regretted being responsible for the killing of more than 400 people 83 Shaun Woodward the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland stated that this is a major act of leadership by the UDA and further comprehensive evidence of the success of politics over violence in Northern Ireland and the act was also welcomed by Sinn Fein and DUP politicians 84 The President of the Republic of Ireland Mary McAleese described the decommissioning as a very positive milestone on the journey of peace 85 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also welcomed the move as a step towards lasting peace in Northern Ireland 86 South East Antrim group edit Main article UDA South East Antrim Brigade This area also continues to use the UDA title in its name although it too expressed willingness to move towards community development Although serious crime is not prevalent among its members some who were arrested for illegal drug sales and extortion were exiled by the Brigade A clear distinction between the factions was not available in the 20th IMC report as this was the first report to differentiate between the two 80 Politics edit nbsp Some UDA leaders supported an independent Northern Ireland in the mid late 1970s In the 1970s the group favoured Northern Ireland independence but they have retreated from this position 87 The New Ulster Political Research Group NUPRG was initially the political wing of the UDA founded in 1978 which then evolved into the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party in 1981 under the leadership of John McMichael a prominent UDA member killed by the IRA in 1987 amid suspicion that he was set up to be killed by some of his UDA colleagues In 1987 the UDA s deputy commander John McMichael who was then the leader of the UFF promoted a document entitled Common Sense which promoted a consensual end to the conflict in Northern Ireland while maintaining the Union The document advocated a power sharing assembly involving both nationalists and unionists an agreed constitution and new Bill of Rights It is not clear however whether this programme was adopted by the UDA as their official policy 56 However the killing of McMichael that same year and the subsequent removal of Tyrie from the leadership and his replacement with an Inner Council saw the UDA concentrate on stockpiling weapons rather than political ideas 88 In 1989 the ULDP changed its name to the Ulster Democratic Party UDP It finally dissolved itself in 2001 following very limited electoral success and internal difficulties Gary McMichael son of John McMichael was the last leader of the UDP which supported the signing of the Good Friday Agreement The Ulster Political Research Group UPRG was subsequently formed to give political analysis to the UDA and act as community workers in loyalist areas It is currently represented on the Belfast City Council In early January 1994 the UDA released a document calling for ethnic cleansing and repartition with the goal of making a new Northern Ireland which would have been wholly Protestant 89 The plan was to be implemented should the British Army withdraw from Northern Ireland Areas in the south and west with strong Catholic nationalist majorities would be handed over to the Republic and those Catholics left stranded in the Protestant state would be expelled nullified or interned 89 The story was printed in The Sunday Independent newspaper on 16 January 90 The doomsday plan was based on the work of Dr Liam Kennedy a lecturer at Queen s University Belfast 89 who in 1986 had published a book called Two Ulsters A Case for Repartition although it did not call for ethnic cleansing The UDP s Raymond Smallwoods said I wasn t consulted but the scenario set out is a perfectly plausible one 89 The DUP s Sammy Wilson stated that the plan shows that some loyalist paramilitaries are looking ahead and contemplating what needs to be done to maintain our separate Ulster identity 89 Support from other groups editSee also Paramilitary finances in the Troubles The UDA had links with Neo Nazi groups in Britain specifically Combat 18 91 formed in 1992 and the British National Socialist Movement 92 formed in 1985 Members of these groups helped to smuggle weapons for the UDA The UDA has received backing from Combat 18 the National Front and the British National Party 93 94 The links may not have been politically motivated but for mutually beneficial arms deals On one occasion the UDA sent Louis Scott one of a few black members of the UDA to make the transaction 95 Johnny Adair who had been in Combat 18 before the UDA established stronger links once he became a brigadier 96 97 The Red Hand Defenders is a cover name used by breakaway factions of the UDA and the LVF 1 The term was coined in 1997 when members of the LVF carried out attacks on behalf of Johnny Adair s UFF 2nd Battalion C Company Shankill Road and vice versa 1 The relationship between the UDA specifically Adair s West Belfast Brigade not the wider leadership of the UDA was initially formed after the death of Billy Wright the previous leader of the LVF and grew from Adair s personal friendship with Mark Swinger Fulton the organisation s new chief The necessity for a cover name resulted from the need to avoid tensions between the UDA and the UVF the organisation from which the LVF had broken away It was perceived that any open co operation between the UDA and the LVF would anger the UVF something which proved to be the case in following years and resulted in a loyalist feud 1 There has been debate as to whether or not the Red Hand Defenders have become an entity in their own right 98 made up of dissident factions from both the UDA and the LVF both of which have now declared ceasefires whilst the RHD has not although much intelligence has been based on the claims of responsibility which as has been suggested 1 are frequently misleading A 1985 MI5 assessment reported that 85 of the UDA s targeting material came from security force records 99 Scotland was a source of fundraising and other types of aid Former MI5 agent Willie Carlin said There were safe houses in Glasgow and Stirling The ferry between Scotland and Northern Ireland was pivotal in getting arms into the north and anything like checkpoints or armed police and Army in Scotland would have b d that all up 100 An Irish government memo written by David Donoghue stated The commonest contribution of Scots UDA and UVF is to send gelignite 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 Donoghue noted the links between Orange Lodges in Scotland and loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and that membership of the Orange Order in Scotland at the time was 80 000 and was concentrated in Glasgow Lanarkshire and Inverness 101 The Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee noted in its report that in 1992 it was estimated that Scottish support for the UDA and UVF might amount to 100 000 a year 102 Protestants in Canada also supported the loyalist paramilitaries in the conflict Sociologist Steven Bruce described the support networks in Canada as the main source of support for loyalism outside the United Kingdom Ontario is to Ulster Protestants what Boston is to Irish Catholics After the Troubles began an Orange Canadian loyalist organization known as the Canadian Ulster Loyalist Association CULA provided the besieged Protestants with the resources to arm themselves 103 A Canadian branch of the UDA also existed and sent 30 000 to the UDA s headquarters in Belfast by 1975 In 1972 five Toronto businessmen shipped weapons in grain container ships out of Halifax bound for ports in Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland which were destined for loyalist militants 103 104 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 103 104 These shipments were considered enough for the UVF UDA to wage its campaign most of which were used to kill its victims 103 On 10 February 1976 following the sudden uptick of violence against Catholic civilians by loyalist militants Irish cardinal William Conway and nine other Catholic bishops met with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his cabinet asking them as to where the loyalist militants had acquired guns to which Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees replied Canada 105 Structure and leadership editThe UDA is made up of the Inner Council the Ulster Freedom Fighters UFF whose role was to carry out attacks on republican and nationalist targets However many regard the UFF as merely a covername used when the UDA wished to claim responsibility for attacks 106 the Ulster Defence Force UDF whose role was to give specialist military training to a select group of UDA members The UDF was initiated by John McMichael 107 the then UDA UFF commander in 1985 as a response to the Anglo Irish Agreement The UDF operated training camps in rural parts of Northern Ireland that young loyalists such as Johnny Adair claim to have attended 107 One reported survival training technique was to leave trainees stranded in Dublin with only 1 107 The training which was described by UDA members as forming the nucleus of a new loyalist army at the ready was made possible thanks to a sophisticated network of legal businesses which allowed for the implementation of ambitious training programmes 108 the Ulster Young Militants UYM the youth wing of the group Formed in 1973 109 the Ulster Political Research Group UPRG the UDA s political advisory body Formed in 1978 110 The UDA operated a devolved structure of leadership each with a brigadier representing one of its six brigade areas 107 It is not clear whether this brigade structure has been maintained in the UDA s post cease fire state The UDA s six brigade areas were North Belfast East Belfast South Belfast the UDA s largest brigade area covering all of South Belfast down to Lisburn and operating as far away as South County Down Lurgan Portadown and Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh 111 West Belfast Southeast County Antrim North County Antrim amp County Londonderry nbsp A wall sign in Dervock showing support for the North Antrim and Londonderry brigade In addition to these six core brigades two others may have existed A seventh Mid Ulster Brigade is mentioned by Steve Bruce as having existed for part of the UDA s history 112 although Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack characterise this as a battalion rather than a brigade and suggest that its rural location prevented it from fully developing 113 In the late 1970s a Scottish Brigade was established under the command of Roddy McDonald but this proved short lived The security forces infiltrated this brigade almost immediately and in 1979 arrested almost its entire membership ninety people in all Six members received particularly lengthy prison sentences for their involvement in UDA activities in Perth and the Scottish Brigade quietly disappeared 114 Some of the notable brigadiers include Jackie McDonald South Belfast 1980s present 115 Resident of the Taughmonagh estate in South Belfast 115 McDonald was a cautious supporter of the UDA s ceasefire and a harsh critic of Johnny Mad Dog Adair during his final years of membership of the organisation 115 McDonald remains the only brigadier who did not have a commonly used nickname Johnny Mad Dog Adair West Belfast 1990 2002 107 An active figure in the UDA UFF Adair rose to notoriety in the early 1990s when he led the 2nd Battalion C Company unit in West Belfast which was responsible for one of the bloodiest killing sprees of the Troubles 107 Jim Doris Day Gray East Belfast 1992 2005 107 116 An unlikely figure in Northern Ireland loyalism the openly bisexual 107 Gray was a controversial figure in the organisation until his death on 4 October 2005 Always flamboyantly dressed Gray was a key figure in the UDA s negotiations with Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid It is widely believed that Gray received his nickname from the RUC Special Branch 107 Jimbo Bacardi Brigadier Simpson North Belfast Unknown 2002 107 Simpson is believed to have been an alcoholic hence his nickname He was leader of the UDA in the volatile North Belfast area an interface between Catholics and Protestants in the New Lodge and Tiger s Bay neighbourhoods 107 Billy The Mexican McFarland North Antrim and Londonderry Unknown 2013 107 He earned his nickname because of his moustache and swarthy appearance and had overall command of the UDA s North Antrim and Londonderry brigade at the time of the Good Friday Agreement He supported the leadership against Johnny Adair and has been associated with the magazine Warrior which makes the case for Ulster Independence Andre The Egyptian Shoukri 107 North Belfast 2002 2005 107 Initially a close ally of Johnny Adair Shoukri and his brother Ihab became involved with the UDA in his native North Belfast The son of an Egyptian father and a Northern Irish mother he was expelled from the UDA in 2005 following allegations of criminality John Grug Gregg South East Antrim c 1993 117 2003 John Grug Gregg was a man with a fearsome reputation within the loyalist movement known as a Hawk in loyalist circles and controlled the streets of south east Antrim On 14 March 1984 he severely wounded Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in an assassination attempt for which he was jailed When asked by the BBC in prison if he regretted anything about the shooting his reply was only that I didn t succeed He was killed on Belfast s Nelson Street along with another UDA member Rab Carson while travelling in a taxi from the docks in 2003 and the murder was blamed on supporters of Johnny Adair who had recently been expelled from the UDA in 2002 Deaths as a result of activity edit nbsp UDA South Belfast Brigade memorial plaque in Sandy Row Malcolm Sutton s Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland part of the Conflict Archive on the Internet CAIN states that the UDA UFF was responsible for at least 260 killings and lists a further 256 loyalist killings that have not yet been attributed to a particular group 118 According to the book Lost Lives 2006 edition it was responsible for 431 killings 119 Of those killed by the UDA UFF 13 209 80 were civilians 12 of whom were civilian political activists 11 4 were members or former members of republican paramilitary groups 37 14 were members or former members of loyalist paramilitary groups 3 1 were members of the British security forces The CAIN database says there were 91 UDA members and four former members killed in the conflict 120 See also editReal Ulster Freedom Fighters Timeline of Ulster Defence Association actions Ulster Volunteer Force Provisional Irish Republican Army Irish National Liberation ArmyReferences edit a b c d e f David Lister and Hugh Jordan Mad Dog The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair How the RUC protected the UDA Irish Times Archived from the original on 11 November 2020 Retrieved 9 October 2019 On May 26th 1981 the RUC searched UDA headquarters in Belfast N J Haagerup 1983 1984 Report drawn up on behalf of the Political Affairs Committee on the situation in Northern Ireland PDF European Parliament European Communities Archived PDF from the original on 8 October 2018 Retrieved 9 October 2018 There is a high correlation between racist attacks and areas which are staunchly Loyalist and a traditional heartland for affiliation to prominent Loyalist paramilitary groups such as the Ulster Volunteer Force UVF and Ulster Defence Association UDA Organisations U Archived 22 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine CAIN Loyalist paramilitary groups in NI have 12 500 members BBC News 2 December 2020 Archived from the original on 2 December 2020 Retrieved 3 August 2021 David Lister and Hugh Jordan Mad Dog The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair UFF condemns death threats BBC News 15 January 2002 Archived from the original on 23 September 2021 Retrieved 28 March 2010 Mulholland Marc Northern Ireland A very short introduction Oxford University Press 2002 p 80 a b A history of the UDA BBC News 6 January 2010 Archived from the original on 26 July 2017 Retrieved 28 March 2010 a b Proscribed terrorist groups or organisations Home Office Retrieved 24 December 2021 A History of the UDA BBC News Retrieved 28 December 2021 a b Sutton Index of Deaths Crosstabulations Conflict Archive on the Internet CAIN Archived from the original on 24 March 2016 Retrieved 15 March 2011 choose organisation as First Variable and status summary as Second Variable Wright Neville David 2010 Dictionary of Terrorism Polity p 194 Between the late 1960s and 2007 the UDA carried out more than 250 killings the victims of which were mainly Catholic civilians Sutton Index of Deaths Crosstabulations Conflict Archive on the Internet CAIN Archived from the original on 24 March 2016 Retrieved 15 March 2011 choose organisation as First Variable and religion summary as Second Variable Nelson Sarah 1984 Ulster s Uncertain Defenders Loyalists and the Northern Ireland Conflict Belfast Appletree Press pp 117 127 McKittrick David 20 January 1998 Ireland Many of Belfast s most deadly acronyms are now back in action The Independent Archived from the original on 20 October 2017 Stevens Inquiry Key people 17 April 2003 UK agents worked with NI paramilitary killers BBC News 28 May 2015 Pat Finucane murder Shocking state collusion says PM BBC News 12 December 2012 UFF given the order to stand down BBC News 12 November 2007 Archived from the original on 19 August 2017 Retrieved 28 March 2010 a b c Cain web Service Abstracts on Organisations Cain ulst ac uk Archived from the original on 22 February 2011 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Steve Bruce Unionists and the Border in Malcolm Anderson and Everhard Bort The Irish border history politics culture p 129 Alan O Day Terrorism s laboratory the case of Northern Ireland p 118 Steve Bruce The Red Hand p 50 a b c d e f g McDonald Henry amp Cusack Jim 2004 The UDA Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror Dublin Penguin Ireland Steve Bruce The Red Hand Oxford University Press 1992 H McDonald and J Cusack UDA Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror Dublin Penguin Ireland 2004 pp 64 65 McAuley James 2011 Ulster Loyalism after the Good Friday Agreement Palgrave Macmillan p 20 ISBN 978 0230228856 McDonald Henry Cusack Jim 2004 UDA Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror Penguin Ireland p 64 ISBN 978 1844880201 a b c d e f Taylor Peter 1999 Loyalists London Bloomsbury Publishing Plc a b Wood Ian S 2006 Crimes of loyalty a history of the UDA Edinburgh University Press p 8 Inside Ulster BBC Rewind William Craig The Times Archived from the original on 13 October 2021 Retrieved 29 November 2022 The downfall of Mad Dog Adair part 2 The Guardian London 5 October 2003 Archived from the original on 29 December 2007 Retrieved 26 May 2010 The Peace Process in Northern Ireland 2 Arts gla ac uk Archived from the original on 25 June 2009 Retrieved 16 June 2010 UFF involved in Ulster murders police chief BBC News Archived from the original on 25 September 2020 Retrieved 26 May 2010 Ulster Defense Association Meta religion com Archived from the original on 21 October 2020 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Rosie Cowan Ireland correspondent 6 February 2003 The Guardian The Guardian London Archived from the original on 23 September 2021 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Taylor Peter 1999 Loyalists Bloomsbury Publishing pp 128 131 ISBN 0 7475 4519 7 Sarah Nelson 1984 Ulster s Uncertain Defenders Protestants Political Paramilitary and Community Groups and the Northern Ireland Conflict Belfast Appletree Press p 179 Murphy Dervla 1978 A Place Apart Great Britain Penguin Books p 150 Taylor p 136 a b c McEvoy p 12 Women Loyalist Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland Duty Agency and Empowerment A Report from the Field All Academic Research Sandra McEvoy 2008 p 16 Wilson Iain 14 February 2012 Plea for calm as UDA faction heads south The 40 Loyalists forced out of Belfast for Scotland have decided it is time to move on The Herald Archived from the original on 5 November 2013 Retrieved 14 May 2012 Dillon Martin Lehane Denis 1973 Political murder in Northern Ireland Penguin p 232 Wood Ian S 2006 Crimes of Loyalty a History of the UDA Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press p 94 Kiely David M 2005 Deadlier Than the Male Ireland s Female Killers Dublin Gill amp MacMillan p 108 ISBN 0717138941 a b I heard mum beg for mercy Sunday Life Ciaran Barnes 7 February 2010 Archived 26 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 28 December 2011 Simpson Alan 1999 Murder Madness true crimes of the Troubles Dublin Gill amp MacMillan p 32 ISBN 978 0 7171 2903 4 Simpson p 38 a b Kiely David M 2005 Deadlier Than the Male Ireland s Female Killers Dublin Gill amp MacMillan p 111 ISBN 0717138941 Nelson pp 126 146 Wood Ian S Crimes of Loyalty A History of the UDA Edinburgh 2006 p 21 a b Brendan O Brien the Long War the IRA and Sinn Fein 1995 p 91 Table from CAIN showing deaths per year Cain ulst ac uk Archived from the original on 7 September 2015 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Henry McDonald amp Jim Cusack UDA Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror Dublin Penguin Ireland 2004 p 3 a b O Brien p 92 Peter Taylor Loyalists The Independent obituary for Brian Nelson 14 April 2003 CAIN Sutton Index of Deaths Conflict Archive on the Internet Cain ulst ac uk Archived from the original on 24 March 2016 Retrieved 16 June 2010 UK agents worked with NI paramilitary killers Archived 24 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine BBC News 28 May 2015 Retrieved 15 June 2015 Pat Finucane murder Shocking state collusion says PM Archived 25 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine BBC Retrieved 11 March 2015 a b Eighth Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission Independentmonitoringcommission org 1 February 2006 Archived from the original on 7 August 2010 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Henry McDonald Terror gangs fight to keep street power Archived 24 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine The Observer 2 September 2007 Retrieved 13 January 2008 Henry McDonald Law and order Belfast style as two men are forced on a walk of shame Archived 16 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine The Observer 13 January 2008 Retrieved 13 January 2008 Scotland on Sunday Scotlandonsunday scotsman com Archived from the original on 16 November 2007 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Loyalist Drug Dealers Are Scum Says UPRG 4ni co uk 6 November 2007 Archived from the original on 5 June 2011 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Press Gazette Archived from the original on 15 December 2005 The Times amp The Sunday Times www thetimes co uk Archived from the original on 6 January 2006 Nuzhound Nuzhound Archived from the original on 12 June 2010 Retrieved 16 June 2010 BBC BBC News 14 September 2005 Archived from the original on 23 September 2021 Retrieved 16 June 2010 RTE RTE ie 13 November 2005 Archived from the original on 23 February 2011 Retrieved 16 June 2010 BBC Report BBC News 20 June 2006 Archived from the original on 23 September 2021 Retrieved 16 June 2010 UDA expels south east Antrim brigade chiefs Archived from the original on 6 November 2007 Retrieved 19 February 2008 UTV report U tv Archived from the original on 16 March 2009 Retrieved 16 June 2010 UFF given the order to stand down BBC News 12 November 2007 Archived from the original on 13 November 2007 Retrieved 26 May 2010 CBC News Protestant paramilitary group in N Ireland renounces violence Cbc ca Associated Press 11 November 2007 Archived from the original on 24 October 2013 Retrieved 16 June 2010 a b 412882 HC 1112 Text PDF Archived PDF from the original on 18 December 2008 Retrieved 16 June 2010 a b c UDA confirm guns decommissioned Archived 12 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine BBC News Retrieved 8 January 2010 a b UDA decommissions all weapons UK Press Association Retrieved 8 January 2010 Northern Ireland s outlawed Ulster Defence Association says it has fully disarmed Archived 20 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine The Canadian Press Retrieved 8 January 2010 Northern Ireland politicians hail UDA move Archived 9 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine Belfast Telegraph Retrieved 8 January 2010 President hails milestone on journey of peace Archived 23 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine The Irish Times Retrieved 8 January 2010 Clinton welcomes weapons decommission by N Ireland s loyalist paramilitary group dead link Xinhua Retrieved 8 January 2010 Ulster Defence Association Scottishloyalists co uk Archived from the original on 24 May 2007 Retrieved 16 June 2010 UDA Cain ulst ac uk Archived from the original on 22 February 2011 Retrieved 16 June 2010 a b c d e Wood Ian S Crimes of Loyalty A History of the UDA Edinburgh University Press 2006 Pages 184 185 CAIN Cain ulst ac uk Archived from the original on 2 January 2019 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Goodrick Clarke Nicholas Black Sun Aryan Cults Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity NYU Press 2003 Page 45 Goodrick Clarke Nicholas Black Sun Aryan Cults Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity NYU Press 2003 Pages 40 41 Wood Ian S Crimes of Loyalty A History of the UDA Edinburgh University Press 2006 Page 339 40 Why UDA expelled unlikely loyalists BBC News 8 June 2010 Archived from the original on 8 December 2008 Retrieved 16 June 2010 The UDA Inside the Heart of Loyalist terror Henry McDonald Jim Cusack McDonald Henry 12 July 2003 Why the streets of Bolton echo to the sounds of a loyalist vendetta The Observer Archived from the original on 21 December 2016 Retrieved 13 December 2016 via The Guardian How loyalists got out of step with fascism belfasttelegraph Archived from the original on 20 April 2021 Retrieved 3 August 2021 FAS FAS Archived from the original on 27 September 2009 Retrieved 16 June 2010 Collusion Cut Both Ways in the Troubles Standpoint Archived from the original on 4 March 2017 Retrieved 4 March 2017 Neil Mackay 12 October 2019 Inside story Why the IRA never attacked Scotland The Herald Revealed how Scots loyalists sent gelignite to paramilitaries Secret memo says explosives were shipped in small boats The Herald 30 December 2005 Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs Part One The continuing threat from paramilitary organisations UK Parliament Report 26 June 2002 a b c d McDonald Henry amp Cusack Jim UVF The Endgame a b Andrew Sanders and F Stuart Ross 2020 The Canadian Dimension to the Northern Ireland Conflict The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 43 195 JSTOR 27041321 Margaret M Scull 2019 The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles 1968 1998 Oxford University Press p 72 ISBN 978 0 1925 8118 1 CAIN Abstracts of Organisations U Cain ulst ac uk Archived from the original on 22 February 2011 Retrieved 16 June 2010 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Lister David 2004 Mad Dog The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and C Company Cox amp Wyman ISBN 978 1 84018 890 5 Wood Ian S Crimes of Loyalty A History of the UDA Edinburgh University Press 2006 Page 123 CAIN Abstracts of Organisations Y Cain ulst ac uk Archived from the original on 6 August 2011 Retrieved 16 June 2010 CAIN Abstracts of Organisations N Cain ulst ac uk Archived from the original on 14 May 2011 Retrieved 16 June 2010 McDonald amp Cusack UDA pp 186 187 Steve Bruce The Edge of the Union Oxford University Press 1994 p 157 McDonald amp Cusack UDA p 25 McDonald amp Cusack UDA pp 108 109 a b c Lister David 2004 Mad Dog The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and C Company Cox amp Wyman pp 280 283 ISBN 978 1 84018 890 5 Wood Ian S Crimes of Loyalty A History of the UDA Edinburgh University Press 2006 Page 299 Wood Ian S Crimes of Loyalty A History of the UDA Edinburgh University Press 2006 Page 351 Sutton Index of Deaths Organisation responsible for the death Conflict Archive on the Internet CAIN Archived from the original on 9 July 2017 Retrieved 1 September 2014 David McKittrick et al Lost Lives The Stories of the Men Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles Random House 2006 pp 1551 54 Sutton Index of Deaths Status of the person killed Conflict Archive on the Internet CAIN Archived from the original on 14 May 2011 Retrieved 1 September 2014 Further reading editBruce Steve The Red Hand 1992 ISBN 0 19 215961 5 Crawford Colin Inside the UDA Volunteers and Violence 2003 Moloney Ed The Secret History of the IRA O Brien Brendan The Long War the IRA and Sinn Fein Wood Ian S Crimes of Loyalty A History of the UDA Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Ulster Defence Association amp oldid 1216867724, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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