Ulster Volunteer Force

The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) is a Loyalist paramilitary organization that has carried out numerous bombings and assassinations in an attempt to ensure continued rule by the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland.

Since the late 1960s in Northern Ireland, Roman Catholics (also called Republicans or Nationalists) and Protestants (also Loyalists or Unionists) have been battling over control of the region. Catholics wish Northern Ireland to become a part of the Republic of Ireland, and Protestants wish it to remain part of Great Britain. Paramilitary organizations have formed within each group—both employing violence to achieve their ends.

The UVF takes its name from a private army set up in 1912 by Sir Edward Carson. The modern UVF was re-founded in 1966 by Andrew Spence and several friends who feared that the paramilitary Nationalist group Irish Republican Army (IRA) was again becoming active in Northern Ireland. (The IRA is [Page 378]believed to have had only a few dozen members in the mid-1960s.) Spence and his fellow UVF members vowed to kill IRA men or their sympathizers.

The UVF's first action was the attempted firebombing of a Belfast pub on May 7, 1966; Matilda Gould, a 76-year-old Protestant, was killed. Over the next weeks, the group killed two Roman Catholics, neither of whom was a member of the IRA. Following the murders, the leaders of the UVF were arrested and, in October 1966, Spence and two others were sentenced to 20 years in prison. The UVF remained active, however, embarking on a bombing campaign in 1969.

While Spence and his cohorts were imprisoned, a conflict began to take shape within Northern Ireland. A Catholic civil rights movement had sparked violent confrontations between protesters and police, and in August 1969 British troops had been called in to keep the peace. By early 1970, the IRA had been revitalized and was patrolling Catholic neighborhoods and attacking British troops. Many Protestants now viewed Spence as prophetic, and UVF membership soared.

While other Protestant paramilitary organizations concentrated on killing Catholics in Northern Ireland, the UVF concentrated on the south, the Republic of Ireland, much as the IRA had begun carrying out bombings in England. On May 17, 1974, the UVF planted three car bombs in and around Dublin; these bombs exploded almost simultaneously around 5:30 P.M., a fourth bomb in County Monaghan detonated about an hour later. Thirty-three people were killed, the highest number of casualties in a single day during the 30 years of conflict.

In the mid-1970s, the UVF organized street gangs in Belfast that murdered Catholics. The methods of the most vicious of these gangs, the Shankhill Road Butchers, have been likened to those of Jack the Ripper. By 1979, many gang members, including most of the Butchers, had been arrested and jailed. During the 1980s, the UVF suffered heavily from informants used by the security forces. Dozens of UVF members were arrested and imprisoned, though many convictions based solely on informant information were later overturned.

Spence, whose years in prison caused him to reconsider the use of violence, led the UVF toward peace in the early 1990s. On October 13, 1994, the UVF declared a cease-fire prior to opening peace negotiations with the government; in a statement the UVF leadership expressed sorrow and regret about the 28 years of violence. In 1996, the UVF's continued commitment to peace negotiations would prompt some of its members to break with the organization, forming the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). In April 1998, the Progressive Unionist Party, the UVF's political arm, signed the Good Friday Accords.

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