Loyalist Volunteer Force

The Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) is a Protestant Unionist paramilitary group that has been responsible for a number of sectarian killings in Northern Ireland since 1996.

A splinter group of the larger Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the LVF broke with its parent organization in 1996, in a dispute related to the Drumcree Protests of that year. For more than 30 years, Northern Ireland's Roman Catholic minority, who wish the province to become part of the Republic of Ireland, and its Protestant majority, who wish it to remain a part of Great Britain, have been in bloody conflict. In late 1994, the major armed paramilitary groups representing both Protestants (also called Loyalists or Unionists) and Catholics (also called Nationalists or Republicans) had declared cease-fires because they wished to participate in peace negotiations. By 1996, negotiations had stalled and remained so.

Protestant frustration and suspicion at the lack of progress was aggravated in June by the banning of the Orange Order's July 12 March (a parade in Belfast that commemorates a 1690 Protestant victory [Page 218]over Catholics), the route of which passed through a Catholic nationalist neighborhood. Thousands of Loyalists assembled at a church in Drumcree for a protest lasting several days. Billy “King Rat” Wright, the UVF representative in Portadown, threatened violent reprisals if the march were not allowed. The leadership of the UVF had forbidden Wright to break its cease-fire, as this would have resulted in the organization's suspension from peace talks, but on July 8, a Catholic taxi driver named Michael McGoldrick was found murdered a few miles from Drumcree. Many observers believed the shooting to be the work of Wright's men.

Following McGoldrick's murder, Wright broke with the UVF, taking most of the organization's Portadown membership with him, and formed the rival LVF. The LVF has been linked to more than a dozen murders; as with other Loyalist paramilitary groups, most of its victims have been Catholics targeted at random. The LVF has also been implicated in a string of deaths thought to be the result of disputes over drugs.

In the spring of 1997, Wright was arrested on charges of intimidating a witness. On December 27, 1997, while in prison, he was shot to death by members of the Irish National Liberation Army, a Republican paramilitary group. His murder sparked a series of vengeance killings among the prisoners and led to two civilian deaths, as members of the LVF avenged, as best they could, their leader. With the death of the charismatic and popular Wright, a serious blow was dealt to LVF, and no new leader has yet emerged.

In 1998, the LVF declared a cease-fire because it wanted to participate in the early-release program for paramilitary prisoners set up under the Good Friday Accords. Despite the cease-fire, the LVF is thought to be operating still, using the cover name the Red Hand Defenders for sectarian attacks. A spokesperson for the Red Hand Defenders claimed responsibility for the murder of a Catholic postman, Daniel McColgan, on January 12, 2002, and issued a threat declaring all Catholic civil servants and teachers to be legitimate targets; the threat was retracted several days later. Many observers believe that members of the LVF or the Ulster Defense Association were McColgan's actual killers.