Loyalists' feud calls halt to ceasefire

Sunday Herald, The, Jul 9, 2000 by Neil Mackay

IT is a moment, and an image, which Northern Ireland long thought it had put behind it. A loyalist gunman, masked, his pistol cocked and fitted with a silencer, standing before the cameras, making explicit his intention to pull the trigger and take a human life.

But this was not a loyalist gunman vowing to take the lives of Catholics or target IRA men. This was a loyalist gunman from the Ulster Volunteer Force promising to murder fellow Protestants - fellow paramilitaries, in fact.

In a specially convened meeting in Portadown between the leadership of the mid-Ulster UVF and the Sunday Herald, two of the organisation's most senior members made public for the first time that the UVF now considered itself at war with the rival loyalist paramilitary group, the LVF, the Loyalist Volunteer Force.

To mainland Britain, the idea of two loyalist terrorist groups turning their guns on each other will be not only be shocking but absurd. But the battle between these two heavily armed and bloodily violent groups is rooted in the annual Drumcree disturbances - and ironically that is why the UVF have gone to war with the LVF at the very time when loyalists are gathering in solidarity to push the Orangemen of Drumcree down the Garvaghy Road.

The LVF was formed in 1996 when loyalist godfather Billy Wright, then leader of the mid-Ulster UVF which controls the Portadown area, split from his old comrades. He wanted the UVF as an organisation to publicly support the Drumcree Orangeman by putting their men out on the street, in a display designed to intimidate the government into allowing the Garvaghy Road march to go ahead. The Belfast leadership said no - it was under ceasefire and said the battle should be considered one for the Orangemen to fight alone.

Wright defied the leadership and set up the LVF as a rival terror gang with its stronghold in Portadown. He was given just days to leave the Province or else face execution. Wright was later killed by Republican gunmen while in jail.

Since then an undeclared feud has been simmering. In January this year, Portadown UVF man Richard Jamieson was shot dead. No organisation claimed responsibility for the killing, but the UVF were certain the LVF was behind it.

Both groups differ politically. Although both are on ceasefire, the UVF supports the Good Friday Agreement, while the LVF is opposed to it, seeing it as a betrayal of loyalism. Last week the LVF took to the streets of Portadown in support of the Drumcree Orangemen - a blatant gesture to the UVF that they were vying for total control of mid-Ulster, not only the heartland of loyalism but the traditional home to the most brutal units of loyalist terrorism. The mid-Ulster UVF were behind the Dublin-Monaghan bombings in the early 1970s, the single biggest loss of life on a single day during the entire Troubles.

Two of the mid-Ulster leadership said last night they considered themselves to be at war with the LVF - the first time either organisation has publicly admitted a feud or pledged itself to murder, and a statement which makes the UVF the only large terrorist organisation to effectively break ceasefire. One of the UVF leaders was among the most influential members of the organisation - a man on whom the Belfast leadership depend and listen to.

As his second-in-command posed for pictures, in an open display of aggression against the LVF, the prominent UVF officer said: "We consider the LVF to be an organisation steeped not only in anti- social behaviour such as drug dealing, but also in the murder of a loyalist. Their killing of Richard Jamieson is the direct cause for our public declaration of war at this time.

"The LVF are hated among Protestant people. They have terrorised and brought crime and drugs to their own neighbourhoods, and we will remove them from the face of loyalism."

In a safe house on the outskirts of Portadown, the leader of the ultra-hardline LVF made clear that his organisation intended to begin military operations against the republican community and security forces.

The leadership of the outlawed terror group also made clear it intended to respond to any attacks on its membership by the UVF, which it accused of killing at least 15 Protestants since 1994, and said its rival organisation could no longer be considered loyalist. Its leader described the UVF as "a direct threat to loyalism and loyalists".

The LVF leader said his organisation had tried to open dialogue with the UVF to mediate. "The UVF has not responded to our overtures and they are the aggressors. They obviously have no interest in drawing this feud to a close. The LVF was not formed to kill Protestants, but to defend them. We do not want to go to war with the UVF, but if they attempt to kill any of our volunteers we will not hesitate to respond in kind."

The LVF, which decommissioned a small amount of arsenal in 1998, said it would not surrender "another round" given the current situation. "We have the firepower and the volunteers to aggressively defend ourselves against the UVF, to carry out military operations as part of our campaign over Drumcree and to defend Protestant people against unacceptable treatment by the security forces," its leader said.