Ulster Volunteer Force

The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was a Loyalist paramilitary organization that carried out numerous bombings and assassinations in an attempt to ensure continued rule by the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland. The group officially disbanded in 2007, but authorities suspect that some remnant of the UVF may remain operational.

Beginning in the late 1960s in Northern Ireland, Roman Catholics (also called Republicans or Nationalists) and Protestants (also Loyalists or Unionists) battled for control of the region. Catholics wanted Northern Ireland to become a part of the Republic of Ireland, while Protestants wanted it to remain part of Great Britain. Paramilitary organizations formed within each group, and both factions employed violence to achieve their ends.

The Ulster Volunteer Force took its name from a private army set up in 1912 by Sir Edward Carson. The modern UVF was formed in 1966 by Augustus Andrew “Gusty” Spence and several friends who feared that the paramilitary Nationalist group known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was again becoming active in Northern Ireland. (The IRA is believed to have had only a few dozen members in the mid-1960s.) Spence and his fellow [Page 601]UVF members vowed to kill IRA men or their sympathizers.

The UVF's first action was the attempted fire-bombing 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 its efforts in 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., and a fourth bomb detonated in County Monaghan 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 Shankill 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 the work of 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.

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