UVF Renounces Violence

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK):

The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) on May 3, 2007, renounced violence, promised it had put its weapons beyond use and said it would cease to exist as a paramilitary group at midnight tonight.

The UVF statement was read out this morning in west Belfast by Gusty Spence, one of the founders of the modern day UVF in 1966. The statement, signed Captain William Johnston, said the UVF and its associated group, the Red Hand Commandos, "will assume a non-military, civilised role".

Mr Spence, who was jailed for one of the UVF's first murders in 1967 and who is now a pro-Belfast Agreement politician, said: "All recruitment has ceased. Military training has ceased. Targeting has ceased, and all intelligence rendered obsolete."

On weapons, the statement said: "All ordnance has been put beyond reach and the IICD [Independent International Commission on Decommissioning] instructed accordingly."

The IICD, which is tasked with overseeing paramilitary disarmament, welcomed the UVF statement but expressed "concern" the group had dealt with the issue of its weapons on its own. The IICD offered to meet the UVF to talk about how to "work together in dealing with arms".

Overall, the announcement is likely to be seen in London and Dublin as an indicator the peace process is still on track ahead of the restoration of the province's power-sharing government at Stormont next Tuesday.


Today's move by the UVF will increase pressure on the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the largest of the Protestant paramilitary organisations still heavily involved in all forms of criminality, to follow the same path.

The UVF statement expressed regret about past violence but also said the group reaffirmed the "legitimacy of our tactical response to violent Nationalism". The statement ended: "For God and Ulster."

The IRA
has offered to "bury" weapons as well in the past. But, it's kind of like having attorneys appointed by the president, investigate the president. The IICD needs to do what I guess Bush thought he was doing in Iraq: confirm the existence of weaponry and its subsequent burial or destruction.

What happens? Mistrust and contempt continues because an independent authority does not give its seal of confirmation that the weapons are decommissioned and that violence will not ensue.

Much of the paramilitary crimes which still go on in Northern Ireland (esp. in Belfast and Derry) are the doings of thugs, common gangsters and hit-men. Johnny Adair, is one of the most ruthless personalities among these gangs. When I was staying in Belfast, in 2002, the hotel innkeeper was explaining to me how many Prods and Catholics were actually getting along but that some of the leaders of the IRA, Real IRA, UVF, UDA, etc., want the world to believe that this is not the real story. She was married to a Catholic. And, when Johnny Adair came into her hotel bar one evening, she kicked him out and said he was not welcomed there, ever!




What do you think?
Email comments for publication to hannah@menashalibrary.org.

Who would have believed it?

After a political tour of Northern Ireland in 2002 I continued reading about the "Troubles". I was fascinated by the stories I heard from a few of the Catholic men imprisoned for merely marching in a parade, or, for showing up at a demonstration. All of my sympathies at that time rested with the disenfranchised minority in the North of Ireland.

I found a piece on the Internet regarding the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force). A man whose name I initially believed had been misspelled (Gutsy, right? Not, Gusty!), intrigued me. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1967. Inside the Maze Prison he was the "leader" or the "commander" for the UVF. But, get this: ten years later, in 1977, Spence broke from violence and left the UVF altogether the following year, calling instead for reconciliation in Northern Ireland. He also became a speaker of the Irish language during his time spent in the gaol.

This is tremendous, unbelievable! For a Protestant to want to learn Irish??? Gusty - what in the world did you think you were doing? Released from prison in 1984, he soon became a leading member of the Progressive Unionist Party and a central figure in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Of all the paramilitary heroes, the Bobby Sands, the victims of Bloody Sunday - here was one of the foe who suddenly had violated all of my expectations of the Protestant hoods, thugs and vigilantes in Ulster. If he could change - and, what helped this transformation (?), there was hope for Armagh, Portadown....for everyone in the North.