From the Loyalist blog It's Still Only Thursday, a fifth piece in a series looking at 'legitimate targets' during the North's politically violent conflict.
For an overview of the ‘Killing by Numbers’ series, please see Part 1.

Part 5: The UDA and the Ulster Freedom Fighters 

The Ulster Defence Association was formed in September, 1971, as an umbrella organisation for the various local vigilante groups that had sprung up in and around Belfast to physically defend Loyalist neighbourhoods from violent republican attacks.

 The UDA quickly grew into a mass movement and by about 1974 had over 40,000 members across Northern Ireland. Throughout the 1970s, uniformed UDA members openly patrolled working class Loyalist areas armed with batons, cudgels and other weapons (often homemade) and held huge public marches and rallies.

By the Mid 1970s, the Ulster Defence Association was truly a mass movement, with 10 brigades across NI and a large number of battalions in England and Scotland. Glasgow, London, Liverpool, Ayrshire and the Greater Manchester area all had a significant UDA presence, with volunteers providing financial, moral, logistical and sometimes physical support to their comrades in Ulster.

Although the UDA drew most of it’s membership from working class districts across Northern Ireland, it was not an exclusively working class movement, nor (as is often portrayed) was it an exclusively male movement.

Continue reading @  It's Still Only Thursday.

Killing By Numbers ➤ Part 5

From the Loyalist blog It's Still Only Thursday, a fifth piece in a series looking at 'legitimate targets' during the North's politically violent conflict.
For an overview of the ‘Killing by Numbers’ series, please see Part 1.

Part 5: The UDA and the Ulster Freedom Fighters 

The Ulster Defence Association was formed in September, 1971, as an umbrella organisation for the various local vigilante groups that had sprung up in and around Belfast to physically defend Loyalist neighbourhoods from violent republican attacks.

 The UDA quickly grew into a mass movement and by about 1974 had over 40,000 members across Northern Ireland. Throughout the 1970s, uniformed UDA members openly patrolled working class Loyalist areas armed with batons, cudgels and other weapons (often homemade) and held huge public marches and rallies.

By the Mid 1970s, the Ulster Defence Association was truly a mass movement, with 10 brigades across NI and a large number of battalions in England and Scotland. Glasgow, London, Liverpool, Ayrshire and the Greater Manchester area all had a significant UDA presence, with volunteers providing financial, moral, logistical and sometimes physical support to their comrades in Ulster.

Although the UDA drew most of it’s membership from working class districts across Northern Ireland, it was not an exclusively working class movement, nor (as is often portrayed) was it an exclusively male movement.

Continue reading @  It's Still Only Thursday.

2 comments:

  1. It hardly needs restating that there was no such as a "legitimate target" in the NI troubles. The spurious metrics of "legitimate targets" produced in this article just sugarcoat the sheer savagery of the UDA/UFF murder campaign; the "Romper Rooms"; the killing of unarmed pensioners with tenuous links to the Republican movement and the butchery of unarmed SDLP senator Paddy Wilson and his Protestant girlfrienf among many atrocities.

    Also airbrushed from this apologia for loyalist terrorism is the involvement of Johnny Adair's C Company is drug trafficking and prositution.

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  2. Part 5 of revisionist shite would be a better headline.

    Makes no mention of the fact that the 'young scumbags' also held their own communities in fear, and you can't polish a turd but can roll it in glitter which is what the author is at when they completely ignore the WIDESPREAD drug dealing throughout Loyalists areas which the wombles were up to their poncy gold medallions in.

    Fucking womble cunts. There's more to math than percentages and every cretin knows you can make statistcs sound like anything you want.

    ReplyDelete