Joint footpatrol of British UDA terrorists and British Army soldiers, British Occupied North of Ireland, 1970s

The Seeds Of The Northern War

We’ve seen a lot of outraged (and outrageous) speeches in recent days from politicians representing the British Unionist minority in the north-east of Ireland demanding an “apology” from the government of Ireland for its alleged role in fostering the divisions in the Irish Republican Army in the late 1960s that led to the establishment of the breakaway Provisional Army Council in December of 1969. Some Unionists claim that the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) was the direct result of Irish government policies in relation to the growing conflict in the British Occupied North of Ireland and an attempt to arm and direct a growing anti-British insurgency in the period from 1969 to 1970. In fact, of course, the conflict began many years earlier in 1966 when attacks by British terrorist gangs on Irish communities across the northern part of Ireland led to several deaths and injuries, and the destruction of property north and south of the border. The oldest victim was 74 year old Matilda Gould, a Protestant grandmother murdered by “mistake”, while the youngest was Peter Ward, an 18 year old teenage boy gunned down with two others. The violence was the work of the Ulster Volunteer Force or UVF which was led by several ex-members of the British Armed Forces who had earlier been active with a local anti-Irish and anti-Catholic vigilante group founded in 1956 called the Ulster Protestant Association. That organisation’s most famous member was the Reverend Ian Paisley, a firebrand fundamentalist preacher who founded his own Christian sect, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, in 1951.

One unexpected side-effect of this intermittent Unionist reign of terror was the burgeoning Civil Rights movement by Roman Catholics opposed to the apartheid-state of “Northern Ireland” established by the British through the partition of the island of Ireland in the 1920s (the movement itself drew inspiration from contemporary organisations in White-ruled South Africa and the southern United States). In the form of “Northern Ireland” the British colony in Ireland had been shrunk down to a microcosm of itself but with all the worse aspect of British colonial rule in the country given renewed impetus as the British Unionist and mainly Protestant population attempted to sustain their position as an unassailable colonial elite. Under continuous one-party Unionist rule the north-eastern part of the country became synonymous with a police state, a dictatorial regime hiding behind a paper-thin façade of gerrymandered democracy and selective rule of law.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s this quasi-colony of Britain perched on the edge of Europe could no longer be sustained – or defended. The Unionist regime at Stormont implemented draconian measure after measure to smash the Civil Rights organisations, principally through the actions of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the RUC, a paramilitary police force drawn exclusively from the Unionist population) and various related armed militias, official and unofficial. The latter were more numerous, including the Ulster Volunteer Force and other shadowy groups whose record of state-sponsored terrorism on behalf of the Unionist statelet in Ireland and of Britain itself was unparalleled in post-WWII European history until the ferocity of the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

It is in this context that we must place the ideological and policy divisions of the Irish Republican movement in Ireland during the 1960s and early ‘70s and the emergence of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (or more correctly simply the Irish Republican Army) as the prime insurgent force opposing the continued British Occupation. The IRA, “Provisionals” or “Provos”, were in the beginning little more than a community self-defence force, protecting the Irish civilian population of the North of Ireland from attacks by the Unionist and British state during the suppression of the Civil Rights’ movement. Ill-armed, ill-equipped, lacking in organisation and training, a loose group of serving and former IRA Volunteers formed the core of the organisation. Many were aged veterans, whose military careers dated to the 1940s or ‘50s. Around them coalesced others, mostly raw recruits, teenagers doing the unthinkable and defying the Stormont regime and the community it represented after decades of servility. What little support came from “the south”, be it governmental or personal, was barely sufficient to meet the ongoing crisis. As Unionist mobs, with the connivance or encouragement of Stormont ministers and the RUC paramilitary police, swept through Nationalists communities implementing the old tactic of “pogrom” (what today is better known as “ethnic cleansing”), thousands fled across the border into temporary refugee camps set up by the Irish government and Red Cross. In Belfast and elsewhere entire streets went up in flames, the perpetrators often being serving police officers or local members of the British military.

It is hardly surprising then that the government of Ireland, with a constitutional, legal and moral duty to protect its citizens, did what it could to help the hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens trapped in the collective dictatorship of “Northern Ireland”. Despite the clams of Unionists, and their fellow travellers in Britain, it is clear that there was no attempt by Dublin to organise an armed resistance to the British Occupation or to force a British withdrawal by military means. Instead such direct efforts as were made were entirely aimed towards the self-defence of besieged Irish communities – and at a time when the British forces of law and order in the North of Ireland were on a murderous rampage throughout the region. Even the deployment of the British Armed Forces did little to halt this orgy of Unionist destruction. As quickly became apparent to all, the British Army was there to defend the last remnants of the British colony in Ireland in whatever form it took  – not to keep the peace or oversee its reform. Within weeks of deployment the British military were on the attack, terrorising the Irish populace alongside the existing British Unionist organs of terror, be they the RUC or UVF. Nothing had changed. Instead of peaceful progress towards mutual agreement between both communities in the North of Ireland and between the two nations of Ireland and Britain, what occurred was a reigniting of the Irish War of Independence in the north-east of the country and Britain’s counter-insurgency response. It was a return to the default setting for the British in Ireland: defend the British colony and the British colonists at all costs.

Peter Robinson caught on camera in late 1984 during a visit to the Israel-Lebanon border with an automatic assault rifle

The Formation Of The Ulster Resistance

In this historic setting must be placed the actions of British Unionist politicians in the 1980s when the governments of Ireland and Britain, in the aftermath of the Hunger Strikes and the growing political power of the Irish insurgency (and the reluctant realisation by the British that their war in Ireland could not be won), signed an international treaty to normalise relations between both states and facilitate progress towards a peaceful political settlement in the North. The Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 15th 1985 saw Britain tacitly secede a portion of its sovereignty over “Northern Ireland” to Ireland by accepting Irish input into its administration as the “guarantor” of the Irish populace of the region. From then on Irish civil servants would have an advisory role in the North of Ireland through various inter-governmental bodies and a permanent secretariat based outside Belfast.

This attempt by both governments to lay the groundwork for eventual peace caused outrage amongst the local British Unionist population which responded with a year-long series of political and violent protests and a renewed campaign of murder by the British terror gangs. At this time the frayed relationship that had developed over the previous decade between the RUC paramilitary police and Unionist terrorist groups was patched up and given a new momentum, as both reflected the opposition within their community to the Anglo-Irish détente. Similarly Britain’s Intelligence services, principally the Security Service (better known by the acronym MI5) and its various military equivalents stepped up their support for Unionist terrorist organisations as many within the British state expressed outrage at the perceived “surrender” to Irish Nationalism.

On the 10^th of November 1986 many of these forces of opposition came together in the Ulster Hall in Belfast where 3000 delegates attended a by-invite-only meeting. Amongst those organising  the gathering were the leaders of the Democratic Unionist Party (or DUP) including the Reverend Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Reverend Ivan Foster (who were all members or clergymen of Paisley’s self-styled Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster). Paisley and Foster had been founders in 1981 of a previous Unionist militia, the Third Force, and Foster had a long history as a pastoral figure in the Free Presbyterian congregation, presiding at the funerals of several slain Unionist terrorists who belonged to it. Peter Robinson had earlier in the year established his militant credentials when on the 7^th of August 1986 he led 500 members of the Third Force in an invasion of the small Irish village of Clontibret in County Monaghan, across the border. During the incursion, which terrified the inhabitants, the local station of the Gardaí (the unarmed, Irish civilian police service) was attacked, two Gardaí were surrounded and badly beaten, and a military parade was held on the main street. The invasion was only repulsed when Garda reinforcements arrived, the gangs fleeing back across the border during which a number of shots were fired. These actions made Robinson a hero in Unionist circles and he remained a central figure in militant Unionism in the years that were to follow. Another leading attendee in the Ulster Hall was Alan Wright, the Chairman of the Ulster Clubs, a quasi-paramilitary organisation founded in November 1985 that shared considerable cross-membership with the Third Force.

During the meeting a new organisation was unveiled by Ian Paisley, the Ulster Resistance, a paramilitary army to oppose the Anglo-Irish Agreement and any further attempts to resolve the northern conflict through negotiations between both governments and communities. Paisley and his deputy, Peter Robinson, were later photographed in the distinctive Ulster Resistance red berets, and Robinson in camouflage fatigues as well. The Ulster Resistance quickly subsumed other previous groupings, including the Third Force and Ulster Clubs, forming itself into nine battalions, and established informal links with the existing British terrorist organisations in Ireland, principally the banned Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the then still legal Ulster Defence Association or UDA (this large grouping used the title of the Ulster Freedom Fighters or UFF for its terrorist attacks, which led to repeated calls for its banning by the International community which the British government steadfastly refused until August of 1992 – after 22 years of terrorism).

Peter Robinson leads Ulster Resistance militants in a rally, British Occupied North of Ireland, 1987, including Noel Little, UDA terrorist and arms smuggler

Arms Smuggling From Lebanon

In June of 1987 the UVF staged an armed robbery at the Northern Bank in Portadown which netted the organisation in excess of 300,000 pounds sterling. The money was then added to funds gathered by the UDA and Ulster Resistance from various criminal activities and donations from Unionist businessmen and community leaders to purchase arms from a black-market weapons-dealer in the Middle East which arrived at Belfast docks in December 1987 in crates marked as containing ceramic tiles after a long sea voyage from the Lebanon. Though the exact quantity and types of weapons imported are unknown sources give the following lower estimates:

• Over 200 Czech-made VZ.58 automatic assault rifles
• 94 Browning 9mm automatic pistols
• 12 or more RPG-7 anti-armour rocket launchers and between 60 – 150 warheads
• 400 – 500 RGD-5 fragmentation grenades
• Over 30,000 rounds of assorted ammunition

The masterminds behind this arms smuggling operation were not the leaders of the British terrorist movements in Ireland. Instead the inspiration and drive came from Brian Nelson, a former British soldier turned senior UDA terrorist who was also an agent acting on behalf of the Force Research Unit, a secret group operating within the British Army’s Intelligence Corps. Co-operating with the Security Service (MI5) both organisations wished to derail the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the increasingly friendly relations between Dublin and London by strengthening the counter-insurgency campaign of their Unionist paramilitary proxies.

The Czech-made VZ.58 automatic assault rifle imported by British Intelligence to arm British terrorists in Ireland

Through Nelson it was the Security Service that had put the UDA in contact with arms-smuggling networks in the Middle East, which up to then had been quite beyond their capabilities (and ever since). These included organising meetings between the UDA and the Apartheid-era South African National Intelligence Service (NIS) and its associate in the region, the American-born arms-dealer Douglas Berndhart, who also worked for the South African arms industry. Berndhart organised the supply of the weapons for the Unionists through a Lebanese gunrunner named Joe Fawzi, the arms coming from PLO stocks that had been captured by the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militias when Palestinian guerrillas had been expelled from south Lebanon in 1982 following the Israeli invasion. Berndhart was in close contact with the Israeli intelligence services, whose allies were the Christian militias, at a time when South Africa and Israel regularly traded arms technologies and security information. In fact much of the smuggled weapons had been sold on to South Africa by the Israelis for use in its border wars with its African neighbours. This has led to the obvious conclusion that the Israelis must have given the go-ahead for the shipments despite deteriorating relations between the two countries at a governmental level in the late ‘80s.

The munitions imported from Lebanon were transported to a rural location between Armagh and Portadown to be stored and later distributed to the UVF, UFF and Ulster Resistance. On the 8^th of January 1988 part of the UDA’s share was unexpectedly intercepted by a Royal Ulster Constabulary checkpoint during transport from Portadown to Belfast in a convoy of three cars. 61 assault rifles, 30 handguns, 150 grenades and over 11,000 rounds of ammunition were seized and three UDA men arrested. Davy Payne, the UDA’s North Belfast leader and another former British soldier (a paratrooper), was later sentenced to 19 years in prison and the two others to 14 years each. An Ulster Resistance member, Noel Little, a former British Army soldier (in the notorious Ulster Defence Regiment or UDR) and the Armagh chairman of the Ulster Clubs was arrested in connection with the find but later released without charge.

Subsequently rumours circulated in Unionist terror circles that the three car-loads of weapons had been “sacrificed” in order to allow larger consignments to get through, a deliberate act of misdirection to distract those RUC factions who disagreed with the rearming of Unionist paramilitary gangs. Others pointed towards long-standing rivalries within the British Intelligence community over government policy in Ireland, and the possibility that the British Secret Intelligence Service (commonly known as MI6) had leaked what they knew of the smuggling operation to contacts within the RUC. Certainly it later emerged that the British navy had been tracking the smuggling vessel in the Mediterranean but had somehow mysteriously “lost” it en route to Ireland in circumstances that have never been explained.

In February of 1988 another part of the UDA’s weapons store was uncovered in North Belfast with the recovery of an RPG7 rocket launcher and 26 warheads, 38 assault rifles, 15 handguns, 100 grenades and an unprecedented 40,000 rounds of ammunition by the RUC.

The Ulster Resistance’s share of the munitions was discovered in November of that year by RUC searches at a number of locations in County Armagh. In a large haul of military equipment the RUC found an RPG7 rocket launcher and 5 warheads, 3 assault rifles, an automatic pistol, 10 grenades, 12,000 rounds of ammunition, combat uniforms and other items including Ulster Resistance berets and badges. Unexpectedly components of a British-made Javelin surface-to-air missile (SAM) were also found. These had been stolen in October from the Short Brothers factory in Belfast where they were produced and which had an entirely Unionist workforce. The parts consisted of a detailed model of the missile’s aiming system facilitating copying by competitors. It quickly emerged that the technology had been stolen by Ulster Resistance activists as part of the “payment” to South Africa for the supply of weapons and ammunition to the Unionist terror gangs.

At this time the South Africans were under an international arms embargo over the issue of Apartheid and White Minority rule which had led the country to developing its own indigenous arms industry in the guise of the Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor) which had very close ties to similar companies in Israel. Dick Wright, an employee of Armscor, was an uncle of Alan Wright, the leader of the Ulster Clubs and a co-founder with Ian Paisley of the Ulster Resistance. He had met the leadership of the UDA in east Belfast during a visit home to Ireland in 1985 and made an offer of arms from South Africa in return for money or British missile technology from the Shorts armaments factory in Belfast. The UDA boss John McMichael instructed Brian Nelson to travel to South Africa in 1985 where he was taken to a warehouse in Johannesburg filled with weaponry that could be supplied to the UDA in return for it’s co-operation in smuggling out of the North of Ireland British munitions’ technology for the Apartheid regime.

A second two-week trip by Nelson in June of 1987, following the fund-raising bank robbery, sealed the deal. During it Unionists agreed to use their own money to part-pay for the initial purchase and smuggling of the arms, with stolen missile parts or blueprints paying for the rest. The South Africans agreed to sell the first round of armaments at less than half-price, with an agreement to supply more weapons for free and up to one million pounds sterling to fund an intensified British terrorist campaign in Ireland if all went as planned. Due to the persistent work of dedicated journalists and lawyers it later emerged, incredibly, that the British Ministry of Defence had paid for Nelson’s South African trips at the request of British Military Intelligence.

During 1988 a technical officer at the South African embassy in Paris, which was now “handling” the UDA and Ulster Resistance contacts, arranged for three Unionist terrorists to receive arms training in France, including the use of the RPG-7 anti-armour rocket-launchers. During the course of renewed negotiations the South Africans offered to pay several million pounds sterling for access to the newest and most advanced British missile system, Starstreak, as well as more weapons. At least 50,000 pounds was handed over as a down-payment on this.

In early April of 1989 parts of a Blowpipe missile went missing and another was stolen from a British Army base in Newtownards. Subsequently three members of the UDA, Noel Little, previously arrested in connection with the 1987 importation of arms (and photographed with Peter Robinson in Ulster Resistance uniform), James King (like Little a member of Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church and DUP party) and Samuel Quinn, a British Army sergeant and weapons’ instructor at the Newtownards military base, were arrested at the Hilton Hotel in Paris on the 21^st of April 1989 along with a diplomat from South Africa, Daniel Storm, and the agent and arms dealer, Douglas Bernhart, by the then French security service DST. French police recovered various missile parts, most of which seemed to be non-functioning.

The three Unionists were charged with arms trafficking and associating with criminals involved in terrorist activities, while several South African embassy officials were expelled by the French authorities. In October 1991 after more than two years on remand the three were convicted though they received suspended sentences and fines following representations on their behalf by British Intelligence officials to their French counterparts.

In September of 1989 a 33 year old man from Poyntzpass and a 35 year old man from Tandragee were jailed for storing and moving weapons and explosives on behalf of the Ulster Resistance. In January 1990 a 32 year old former British Army soldier (another ex-UDR militiaman) from Richill was jailed for 12 years for possessing Ulster Resistance arms and explosives.

Shortly afterwards, as the political pressure mounted on the DUP, Ian Paisley issued a statement claiming that his party had severed links with the Ulster Resistance in 1987, news that took many observers by surprise.

Ian Paisley in an Ulster Resistance beret at a rally, British Occupied North of Ireland, 1987

The Ulster Resistance – It Hasn’t Gone Away You Know 

To this day up to a third of the South African-supplied arms imported by the British Intelligence services into the north-east of Ireland remain unaccounted for. In particular it is thought that the majority of Ulster Resistance weapons and ammunition were turned over to the UDA and UVF in the early 1990s in the lead-up to the first IRA ceasefire of 1994 when Unionist terrorist killings of Irish civilians reached levels not seen since the early 1970s. Many of these weapons are thought to have been excluded from the so-called Decommissioning Process. There are also strong suspicions that smaller quantities of munitions were smuggled into the North via South African contacts the details of which remain unknown.

What is known is that the South Africans were also using the Unionist terror gangs in Ireland and Britain to target European-based anti-Apartheid activists in return for military equipment and funds. With their strong links to far right racist and Neo-Nazi groups in Britain, as well as the British state itself,  the UDA and UVF were perfect allies for the South African regime. Additionally throughout the 1950s, ’60s, ’80s and 1990s much of the British Unionist minority in Ireland had remained politically supportive of the White Minority governments in Zimbabwe and South Africa, seeing parallels with their own status in Ireland. Certainly all the main Unionist parties opposed economic and military sanctions against South Africa, including the international boycott, and championed various campaigns defending the Apartheid regime. The significant ex-pat Unionist population in the country, some of whom served in the government or security forces, also created a strong basis for a mutual alliance.

By the early 1980s the South African Intelligence services were also aware of the close relationship between Sinn Féin and the African National Congress (or ANC). In the late 1970s the ANC’s leadership had instructed activists living in Ireland to request Sinn Féin’s help in contacting the Irish Republican Army, seeking military assistance and advice. Eventually it was arranged for two field commanders of the guerilla organisation Umkhonto we Sizwe (better known as MK) to travel to Dublin where they received two weeks of intensive military training from the IRA in a secret camp. These men travelled back to South Africa where they crossed over the border into Angola to impart their skills to new and existing MK fighters.

In the latter half of 1979 senior members of MK suggested an idea that would eventually become one of the highest profile operations in the struggle against White Minority rule. The plan was to sabotage the massive oil refinery run by the company Sasol which was vital to the economic existence of the Apartheid state. Unsure of the best way to go about such an elaborate attack MK again requested IRA assistance and in 1980 two munitions experts travelled from Ireland to Sasolburg in the ironically named Free State Province to reconnoitre the site. In June of that year the attack took place and though the regime immediately issued statements claiming the resulting damage was minimal few believed it, providing an enormous propaganda boost to both MK and the ANC.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that a fear of continued IRA assistance to MK and the ANC was one of the reasons why the South Africans reached out to the British terror gangs in Ireland. The possibility of causing chaos in the North of Ireland was probably one hoped outcome of the alliance with the UDA-UVF-UR axis, as well as striking back at the anti-Apartheid campaign in Europe.

This latter result can be seen in the attempted assassination of the South African-born Queen’s University lecturer, Dr Adrian Guelke. The 44-year-old academic was shot in the back, after UDA gunmen burst into his South Belfast home at around 4.30am on September 4th, 1991. The lecturer was an outspoken critic of the Apartheid dictatorship and it was later revealed that South African military intelligence had used details from a leaked RUC Special Branch file to make him a target for Unionist terrorists. The file had been supplied by the South African agent, Leon Flores, who flew to Belfast via London in the autumn of 1991, contacted the UDA, and provided its south Belfast brigade with the RUC intelligence report.

There are also rumours of Unionist involvement in the assassination of Dulcie September, a well known anti-Apartheid campaigner and ANC member, murdered by an unknown gunman outside the ANC offices in Paris on the 29th of March 1988.

An apology is certainly due in relation to the decades of politically-motivated pain and suffering the people of Ireland have endured. But it is the leaders of British Unionism in Ireland who need to make it. And their allies in Britain.

Recent photo of Ulster Resistance terrorists, one armed with a stripped-down British Army issued SA80 assault rifle

UPDATE 15.10.2012: The British Guardian newspaper carries yet another media exposé of Britain’s state-sponsored terrorism in Ireland and the South African arms importations.

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