A critical comparison of the IRA and UVF.

This essay refers to both the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). Within this piece of work, following the IRA’s internal split in 1969, the Provisional Irish Republican Army is understood to represent the continuation of the IRA, and as such are referred to as the IRA.

 Northern Ireland (NI) is not one hundred years old, yet it has been one of the most challenging nations to habitat, govern, and understand, since its formation in 1921. A small nation of less than two million, geographically similar in size to Yorkshire, it has a history of division and violence; for a thirty year period, the most violent in Europe. Between 1970 and 2007, this region of the United Kingdom saw the fifth most terrorist attacks on the planet, ahead of nations such as Iraq, Pakistan, and Israel (LaFree, 2010). This astonishing fact is inexorably linked with two of the most prolific terrorist organisations in Anglo-Irish history; the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF); two organisations with opposing religions, ideologies, and goals. This essay will seek to understand the political aims of both groups and study their use of violence as a means of achieving them. Both organisations played large roles in the history of Northern Ireland prior to the 1960s, however this essay will predominantly focus on the two groups’ violent activities from this point onwards. Nonetheless we must first understand the groups’ political aims, aims established long before the Troubles.

The IRA’s history stretches back to the early nineteenth century, when following the Easter Rising, the Irish Volunteers reorganised to form the Irish Republican Army, going on to oppose the British and Unionist forces in the War of Independence. Following the formation of Northern Ireland in 1921, those within the IRA in favour of the Anglo-Irish Treaty split to create the Irish National Army, whilst those who opposed the Treaty and the state of Northern Ireland, remained within the IRA. The split resulted in the Irish Civil War 1922-23, fought between the two previously unified armies, and resulting in the defeat of the IRA (Smith, 1995). From this point until the outbreak of the Troubles, the IRA was involved in a number of campaigns, albeit not recognised as a legitimate force of the Irish Republic. Their fight to protect the Catholics of Northern Ireland, and ultimately destroy the state of Northern Ireland continued in both territories, as well as on the British mainland, and briefly saw the organisation flirt with the Nazi Party of Germany during the Second World War in an attempt to destabilise the British. Ironically, the defeat of the Nazis in Europe would go on to strengthen the IRA in the near future, as British welfare reforms following the war resulted in free secondary education. The further and higher education of the 1950s would go on to create a growing Catholic middle class in Northern Ireland, one not prepared to accept persecution. Teamed with the introduction of internment without trial in both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland during the IRA’s ‘Border Campaign’; the civil rights movement was born in 1967 (BBC history, 2007)

Two years later, following the Battle of the Bogside, a conflict between Catholic residents of the Derry neighbourhood and the police, the IRA once again split into two separate factions. The leaders of the IRA had become increasingly left-leaning following the failed Border Campaign, and subscribed to the belief that the struggle to unite Ireland was a class issue, rather than a sectarian one, leading to a decision to not defend the Catholic communities throughout the Northern Ireland riots of 1969. This was seen by some as an aberration of one of the IRA’s main responsibilities; the protection of Catholic communities in NI. As such, those who believed in the traditional values of the  IRA split to create the Provisional IRA (PIRA), whilst those who maintained the Marxist based theory renamed the Official IRA.  The Official IRA would continue on until a ceasefire in 1972, although allegations of an armed threat continued after. Opposingly, the Provisional IRA would offer a violent opposition to British and Unionist forces until the end of the Troubles (Bowyer Bell, 1989). The first PIRA council was made up of prominent figures such as Seán Mac Stíofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Paddy Mulcahy, Sean Tracey, Leo Martin, and Joe Cahill. They outlined their aims within their first public statement:

“We declare our allegiance to the 32 county Irish republic, proclaimed at Easter 1916, established by the first Dáil Éireann in 1919, overthrown by forces of arms in 1922 and suppressed to this day by the existing British-imposed six-county and twenty-six-county partition states.” (English, 2004, p106)

Similarly to the Irish Republican Army, the UVF has a history dated back to the early nineteenth century, when the Ulster Volunteers were founded by Edward Carson in 1912 to oppose the Home Rule movement. The military faction known as the Ulster Volunteer Force grew to ninety thousand and was organised by a small but highly trained leadership. Despite the military prowess of the UVF’s hierarchy, a lack of arms embarrassed the organisation. That was until 1914 when gun running from Germany resulted in thirty-five thousand rifles and two million rounds of ammunition being distributed throughout Ulster. Overnight the UVF was ready to not only fight the Republicans, but also the British government (Bruce, 1992).

Four months later and the outbreak of the First World War shifted the focus of Britain towards Europe. Secretary for War, Lord Kitchener, urged the UVF to enlist and encouraged them to do so by ensuring no Home Rule Act would be implemented until after the war. Furthermore he guaranteed the men would be kept together and formed the 36^th Ulster Division who would go on to fight in the Battle of the Somme. Following the war, the sacrifice of the 36^th Division was rewarded when the Government of Ireland Act 1920 exempted six northern counties from Home Rule, creating Northern Ireland, and it’s own Ulster parliament. (Bruce, 1992). The Republican response which followed, led by the IRA, resulted in the reformation of the UVF in 1920. Once again it’s leadership was swelled with “lords, knights, and very senior army officers” (Bruce, 1992, p12). This reformed UVF would go on to defeat the IRA a year later and create a reserve police force known as the ‘B Specials’.

The UVF’s legacy would remain solely within the B Specials until 1966, when following the bombing of a Catholic pub on the Shankill Road in Belfast, a group calling itself the Ulster Volunteer Force issued a statement:

“From this day, we declare war against the Irish Republican Army and its splinter groups. Known IRA men will be executed mercilessly and without hesitation. Less extreme measures will be taken against anyone sheltering or helping them, but if they persist in giving them aid, then more extreme methods will be adopted... we solemnly warn the authorities to make no more speeches of appeasement. We are heavily armed Protestants dedicated to this cause.”

(Nelson, 1984, p61)

 

The statement, issued by Gusty Spence, the new leader of the reformed UVF and former British war veteran, came as a response to the Border Campaign of the IRA and the bombing of Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin, a series of events which Protestant Loyalists saw as a enhancing a fresh wave of Republicanism. Prime Minister Terence O’Neill responded by denouncing the group’s links with the original UVF, illegalising the group, placing them in the same category as the IRA. From this position, both organisations would go on to implement a campaign of incredible violence; the Irish Republican Army fighting for the destruction of the Northern Irish State and the Ulster Volunteer Force defending the status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom.

Following the 1969 creation of the PIRA, the group’s main focus was on the recruitment and training of volunteers. Their initial aim was to effectively protect the Northern Irish Catholic community as they did not yet have the means to enter into open warfare, doing so throughout several riots and gun battles with British forces in their first year of operation, most notably in Belfast. Armed activities took the lives of five Unionists, four civilians, and one IRA volunteer in June and July of 1970. However the conflict was destined to change, J.Bowyer Bell writes:

“The IRA Active Service Units increasingly met provocation with provocation. The keen tactics of the British (who had used CS gas on a number of occasions against large crowds partaking in minor offences) thus encouraged the IRA to move from a defensive to an offensive campaign… the British Army largely transformed the rocks and riots of 1969 and 1970 into a very real if low-intensity war the following year, with snipers, car bombs, shootouts in housing estates, and battles on the border”.  (Bowyer Bell, 1989, p378).

During further riots in January 1971, sparked and further enflamed by house-to-house searches and imposed curfews, Robert Curtis became the first British soldier killed in the conflict. One month later an IRA landmine killed five civilians including two BBC engineers, who’s Land Rover was mistaken for a British Army vehicle. The introduction of IRA snipers to the conflict also resulted in the loss of British lives; two soldiers shot dead in February also. The following months saw 37 bombs in April, 47 in May, and 50 in June (Bowyer Bell, 1989, p378). The IRA had moved from defenders to aggressors and their use of violence had changed accordingly.

Their operations also became more complex as growing support increased funds and expertise. The kidnapping of three off-duty Scottish soldiers and their subsequent murder in March of 1971, was followed by the destruction of a Royal Navy survey vessel in Dublin in April, and in July an IRA bomb destroyed the Daily Mirror printing plant in Dunmurry. A move not focused on the forces of the British establishment in Northern Ireland, but on it’s economy.

The increasing level of activity of the IRA led to the re-introduction of internment, a move that imprisoned 343 suspects on both sides of the conflict, however the number of which were active or integral to IRA operations was minimal. The bloodshed in response to internment took the conflict to a new level of violence, 150 lives lost in the closing months of 1971 (BBC History, 2007).

Then on 30 January 1972, 13 demonstrators were shot dead and another mortally wounded by the British Parachute Regiment at a civil rights march in Derry. The day in question would go on to be known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ and has become one of the most infamous events of the Troubles. It’s impact on the conflict was immense, the BBC reports:

“…as a result of the killings, new recruits swelled the ranks of the IRA and yet more British troops were deployed to the province to try and contain the ever-rising tide of violence.”

(BBC History, 2007).

One month later in March, the Abercorn Restaurant bombing by the IRA in Belfast was seen as another watershed moment of the conflict. Detonated at 4.30pm on a Saturday afternoon in a busy shopping district, the explosion was aimed not directly at the British forces, but making the state of Northern Ireland increasingly ungovernable, even at the cost of two Catholic lives. A further 136 people were injured.

Only a few weeks later, British Prime Minister Edward Heath called for the introduction of direct rule from Westminster, precipitating a period of mass sectarian violence. The IRA’s next large scale attack was the atrocities of ‘Bloody Friday’, a series of twenty explosions across Belfast, largely car bombs, detonated between 2.10pm and 3.30pm, killing seven civilians and two British soldiers, injuring a further 130. Ten days later two more IRA car bombs left nine civilians dead in the Londonderry village of Claudy. In total 496 lives were lost to the conflict in 1972 (Dunn, 1995).

Over the following years IRA activity was refocused on British forces. That was until 1976 when alongside their day to day conflict with British forces, the IRA began a campaign with increasing sectarian tendencies, beginning with the Kingsmill massacre in January of that year. The attack was focused on a minibus carrying workers home in South Armagh, of the 12 on board, one Catholic was spared his life whilst the other 11 Protestants were shot, ten of whom died. Two years later the La Mon Restaurant and Hotel was bombed in Gransha killing 12 Protestants. Similar bombings continued throughout the 1980s and in to the following decade, most notably including the Darkley Church shooting 1983, Enniskillen Remembrance Sunday bombing 1987, and the Teebane bombing 1992. These three events alone took 21 Protestant lives (O’Brien, 1993).

As well as pursuing their sectarian campaign the IRA also focused on targets outside of NI post-1972, most notably including the bombing of British army parades in Hyde Park and Regents park in London 1972, killing 11 soldiers, and the two separate bombings of pubs in Guildford and Birmingham in 1974, killing 26 civilians combined (Pat Coogan, 1993). During the same period a number of attacks were also taken on figures within the British institution, such as the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, uncle of Prince Phillip and second cousin to the Queen, in 1979, and the notorious Brighton bombing of 1984. The assassination attempt on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet left five people dead. Seven years later a further attack was planned for Thatcher’s murder, her replacement by John Major didn’t deter the bombing of Downing Street, but again the Prime Minister was left unscathed.

These attacks on British public figures exemplify the IRA’s willingness to enter into a variety of violent acts. Stretching from protectionist violence, namely the direct conflict with British and Unionist forces, to attacks on Protestant civilians, and attempts to destabilise the British establishment. The IRA caused terror across Northern Ireland, the Republic, and the British mainland, continuing to pose a threat to security into the twenty-first century.

Similarly, the UVF’s acts of terror were varied and extremely violent. The first of which, the bombing of a Catholic pub on the Shankill Road in May 1966 was a response to the Nelson’s Pillar bombing by the IRA and the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. The explosion killed one Catholic civilian, Matilda Gould. The first life lost to the Troubles.

Twenty days later, and after issuing a statement declaring their intent to mercilessly execute members of the IRA, UVF leader Gusty Spence ordered the murder of Belfast Republican, Leo Martin.  The four men sent to murder Martin failed to find him and instead shot dead Catholic civilian John Scullion. One month later, and after failing for a second time to find Martin, Spence and a group of UVF members instead ambushed a number of Catholic barmen as they left a pub on Malvern Street, Peter Ward died of his injuries and Spence was sentenced to life in prison for his part. Of the unprovoked attacks, Spence later wrote "At the time, the attitude was that if you couldn't get an IRA man you should shoot a Taig [a derogatory term for an Irish Catholic], he's your last resort" (Dillon, 1999, p20).

The imprisonment of Spence led to the appointment of Samuel McClelland as the UVF’s Chief of Staff and initiated a series of attacks aimed at destabilising the civil rights movement in NI. In March and April of 1969 several UVF bombs attacked the Northern Irish infrastructure, heavily damaging water and electricity supply. The attacks imitated IRA activity and resulted in the Republican group being blamed for the damage. Damage which eventually spread as far as Stormont as Prime Minister Terence O’Neill, who had been pushing for increased civil rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland, resigned (BBC News, 2011).

Two years later the McGurk’s Bar bombing greatly enhanced the UVF’s impact on the conflict, and sent the organisation in an increasingly sectarian direction. The explosion killed 15 Catholics and wounded a further 17 in the New Lodge district of Belfast, the highest death toll from a single attack during the Troubles (Pat Coogan, 2002). Their influence was again increased a year later in October 1972 when the group procured a large cache of arms through two separate attacks on a Territorial Army base in Lurgan and the Belfast docks, gaining automatic weapons, ammunition, and over twenty tonnes of explosives.

However, their next large scale attack didn’t occur for another two years. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 1974 were planned and executed by members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade (MUB), a unit of the UVF commanded by Billy Hanna operating out of Lurgan and Portadown. The attack claimed the lives of 33 civilians through four separate explosions, injuring a further 300. The attack was similar to the IRA’s Bloody Friday with car bombs used to devastating effect. The Mid-Ulster Brigade’s next high profile attack occurred in County Down a year later. The Miami Show Band, a popular Republic based music group, were returning to Dublin on the evening of 31 July 1975 when they were stopped at a bogus checkpoint. The MUB men were dressed in British Army uniform and ordered the contents of the minibus to line up on the road side. Two MUB members attempted to plant a time-bomb which exploded prematurely, killing themselves. It was at this point that the remaining MUB men opened fire on the band members killing Tony Geraghty, Fran O’Toole, and Brian McCoy. The massacre shocked both the Republic and Northern Ireland and led to a number of retaliatory sectarian attacks by the IRA (Bruce, 1994).

Over the following years another UVF unit, the Shankhill Butchers rose to infamousy. Claims the group acted independently vary, however the gang’s members were almost all active within the UVF.  The Shankill Butchers activities were initiated and organised by Lenny Murphy a UVF member since 1969. Following his release from prison in 1975 for his part in the murder of a suspected arms dealer to the IRA, Murphy and his brother William set about organising likeminded Loyalists with the aim of partaking in extreme sectarian violence. Over a seven year period the Shankill Butchers claimed over 30 lives through a variety of attacks, the majority of which took place in the gang’s formative years between 1975 and 1977. However it was the gang’s sadistic kidnapping, torture, and eventual cut-throat murder of Catholic civilians, executed with a butcher’s knife, which gave Murphy’s gang their unique name and resulted in wide spread Catholic fear (Dillon, 1999).

The final years of the 1970s saw wholesale changes within the UVF as a large number of members were imprisoned due to police informers and super-grass plea bargains. Tommy West became Chief of Staff and ushered in a new moderate era for the organisation, focused on paramilitary activity as opposed to civilian attacks. A large shipment of arms in 1982 divided between the UVF and two other Unionist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Resistance, once again reinvigorated the UVF and resulted in a rise in the number of IRA members assassinated by the group. (Cobain, 2012). This policy continued in to the 1990s when on 3 March 1991 UVF gunmen killed three IRA men in the car park of Boyle’s Bar, Cappagh, County Tyrone.

Three years later the UVF joined the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC), signalling their intent to move towards peace in Northern Ireland. However their actions were countered by members on 18 July 1994 as they machine gunned a pub in Loughlinisland for showing the Republic of Ireland football team competing in the World Cup. Six people were killed (Cobain, 2012). Three months later, the CLMC called a ceasefire and the UVF agreed to lay down their arms. Those whom disapproved formed the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) and defected from the organisation. Violence between the UVF and LVF has sporadically flared in the years since the ceasefire, and conflict has also occurred with the UDA leading to a number of deaths post-millennium.

Similarly to their Republican counterpart the UVF inflicted a variety of devastating terrorist attacks. However, unlike the IRA, the UVF held a less ‘protectionist’ role in Northern Ireland as the British forces and relevant Ulster regiments were responsible for maintaining peace across Northern Ireland. The UVF’s main focus as outlined in their first statement on 21 May 1966 was to eradicate the IRA and they aimed to do so through direct attacks on IRA members and associates. However, an aggressive sectarian attitude was adopted for long periods and led to the murder of hundreds of civilians, both as retaliation for IRA activity and in certain circumstances, such as the Shankill Butchers, an internal hatred of Catholics. The organisation’s violence also focused on effecting public feeling, such as the IRA imitation bombings and the Miami Show Band murders.

When drawing a comparison between the two terrorist organisations within this essay we must assess the degree to which their political aims were achieved by their violent activity.  The IRA’s attempted destruction of the state of Northern Ireland, ultimately failed; with critics such as Bowyer Bell suggesting that they did not focus enough attention on industrial and economic targets, however the violence they inflicted throughout the conflict, and the prospect of it’s removal, undoubtedly resulted in a great amount of bargaining power for the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, in the Northern Irish peace process (Bowyer Bell, 1989). Similarly, the UVF’s political branch the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) was heavily involved in the formation of the Good Friday Agreement 1998, a result of their paramilitary activity up to 1994. The organisation dedicated to the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1921 played a role in maintaining an independent Northern Ireland, their violent attacks often responding to IRA activity and acting revenge on behalf of the Loyalist community.

When drawing conclusion it is important to note that the political activities of neither the IRA nor UVF have been explored within this essay and the importance of both Sinn Fein and the PUP in the conflict should not be underestimated. However the role of violence in achieving both organisations’ political aims has proven integral. The UVF were just one of a number of Unionist paramilitary organisations operating in Northern Ireland throughout the Troubles, all of whom shared limited ideals with the British forces, namely the protection of NI. Opposingly, the IRA represented the near singular threat to Northern Irish independence and as such faced a much greater challenge.

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