Ulster Volunteers
Ulster Volunteer Force | |
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Irish republicans) British government | |
The Ulster Volunteers was an Irish
After the war, the British Government decided to
A loyalist paramilitary group calling itself the Ulster Volunteer Force was formed in 1966. It claims to be a direct descendant of the older organisation and uses the same logo, but there are no organisational links between the two.[1]
Before World War I
By 1912, the
The two key figures in the creation of the Ulster Volunteers were
In January 1913, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was formally established by the
The Ulster Unionists enjoyed the wholehearted support of the British Conservative Party, even when threatening rebellion against the British government. On 23 September 1913, the 500 delegates of the Ulster Unionist Council met to discuss the practicalities of setting up a provisional government for Ulster, should Home Rule be implemented.[9]
On 25 November 1913, partly in response to the formation of the UVF,
In March 1914, the British Army's
The Ulster Volunteers were a continuation of what has been described as the "Protestant volunteering tradition, in Ireland", which since 1666 spans the various Irish Protestant militias founded to defend Ireland from foreign threat.[11] References to the most prominent of these militias, the Irish Volunteers, was frequently made, and there were also attempts to link the activities of the two.[11]
World War I
The third Home Rule Bill was eventually passed despite the objections of the
Although many UVF officers left to join the British Army during the war, the unionist leadership wanted to preserve the UVF as a viable force, aware that the issue of Home Rule and partition would be revisited when the war ended. There were also fears of a German naval raid on Ulster and so much of the UVF was recast as a home defence force.[16]
World War I ended in November 1918. On 1 May 1919, the UVF was 'demobilised' when Richardson stood down as its
Existing conditions call for the demobilisation of the Ulster Volunteers. The Force was organised, to protect the interests of the Province of Ulster, at a time when trouble threatened. The success of the organisation speaks for itself, as a page of history, in the records of Ulster that will never fade.[17]
During Partition
In the
As a response to IRA attacks within Ulster, the
During the conflict, loyalists set up small independent "vigilance groups" in many parts of Ulster. Most of these groups would patrol their areas and report anything untoward to the RIC. Some of them were armed with UVF rifles from 1914.[19] There were also a number of small loyalist paramilitary groups, the most notable of which was the Ulster Imperial Guards, who may have overreached the UVF in terms of membership.[19] Historian Peter Hart wrote the following of these groups:
Also occasionally targeted [by the IRA] were Ulster Protestants who saw the republican guerrilla campaign as an invasion of their territory, where they formed the majority. Loyalist activists responded by forming vigilante groups, which soon acquired official status as part of the Ulster Special Constabulary. These men spearheaded the wave of anti-Catholic violence that began in July 1920 and continued for two years. This onslaught was part of an Ulster Unionist counter-revolution, whose gunmen operated almost exclusively as ethnic cleansers and avengers.[20]
The UVF was involved in sectarian clashes in Derry in June 1920. Catholic homes were burned in the mainly-Protestant Waterside area, and UVF members fired on Catholics fleeing by boat across the River Foyle. UVF members fired from the Fountain neighbourhood into adjoining Catholic districts, and the IRA returned fire.[21] Thirteen Catholics and five Protestants were killed in a week of violence.[22] In August 1920, the UVF helped organise the mass burning of Catholic property in Lisburn. This was in response to the IRA assassinating an RIC Inspector in the town.[23] That October, armed UVF members drove off an IRA unit that had attacked the RIC barracks in Tempo, County Fermanagh.[24]
The sluggish recruitment to the UVF and its failure to stop IRA activities in Ulster prompted
In his book Carson's Army: the Ulster Volunteer Force 1910–22, Timothy Bowman gave the following as his last thought on the UVF during this period:
It is questionable the extent to which the UVF did actually reform in 1920. Possibly the UVF proper amounted to little more than 3,000 men in this period and it is noticeable that the UVF never had a formal disbandment ... possibly so that attention would not be drawn to the extent to which the formation of 1920–22 was such a pale shadow of that of 1913–14.[29]
See also
Footnotes
- ^ MacDermott, John (1979). An Enriching Life. Privately published. p. 42.
- ISBN 0856404985.
- ^ "BBC Short History of Ireland: Home Rule promised". Archived from the original on 18 May 2010.
- ISBN 0-85389539-2.
- ^ "HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN (from 1707)". www.historyworld.net. Archived from the original on 11 April 2007. Retrieved 27 February 2007.
- ^ "Ireland - The 20th-century crisis". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 3 May 2020. Retrieved 30 April 2020.
- ^ Martin, Francis X. (1967). Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin 1916. Taylor & Francis. p. 72. Archived from the original on 21 June 2013. Retrieved 20 September 2012.
- ^ Timothy Bowman, Carson's Army: the Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910-22, p.98
- ^ HM Hyde; Carson. p340-341.
- ISBN 978-1-84176-685-0
- ^ ISBN 9780719073724.
- ^ Macardle, Dorothy (1968). The Irish Republic. Corgi Books. p. 69.
- ISBN 0-14-029165-2.
- ^ Fisk says 35,000 enlisted. 5,000 being killed during the attack on German lines at Thiepval on the Somme. P.15.
- ^ Stewart, A.T.Q. (1967). The Ulster Crisis. Faber & Faber. pp. 237–242.
- ^ Bowman, p.166
- ^ Bowman, pp.182-183
- ^ a b c d e Bowman, Timothy. Carson's Army: the Ulster Volunteer Force 1910–22. p.192
- ^ a b Bowman, p.190
- ^ Peter Hart in, Joost Augusteijn (ed), The Irish Revolution, p.25
- ^ Lawlor, Pearse. The Outrages: The IRA and the Ulster Special Constabulary in the Border Campaign. Mercier Press, 2011. pp. 16–17
- ^ Eunan O'Halpin & Daithí Ó Corráin. The Dead of the Irish Revolution. Yale University Press, 2020. pp.143–145
- ^ Lawlor, pp.115–121, 153
- ^ Lawlor, pp. 74–75
- ^ a b Bowman, p.195
- ^ Bowman, p.198
- ^ Hopkinson, Irish War of Independence, p. 158
- ^ Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence, p263
- ^ Bowman, p.201
Bibliography
- Proclamation by the UVF in the Larne Times newspaper, January 1914 here.
- ISBN 0198208065.
- Hopkinson, M, Green Against Green – The Irish Civil War: A History of the Irish Civil War
- Hopkinson, M, Irish Revolution
- Montgomery Hyde, H. Carson. Constable, London 1974. ISBN 0-09-459510-0.
- Details on UVF links to the 36th Ulster Division which fought at the Somme here.
- Fisk, Robert In time of War: Ireland, Ulster, and the price of neutrality 1939 - 1945 (Gill & Macmillan) 1983 ISBN 0-7171-2411-8.