Loyalist Volunteer Force

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Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF)
Participant in The Troubles
Flag of the Loyalist Volunteer Force.
Active	August 1996 – October 2005
Ideology	Ulster loyalism
Leaders	Billy Wright;[1] Mark Fulton;[2] Jim Fulton[3]
Headquarters	Portadown
Area of operations	Northern Ireland
Strength	Unknown
Originated as	Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
Allies	Ulster Defence Association (UDA)[4]
Opponents	Irish republicans, Irish nationalists

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The Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed by Billy Wright when the Mid-Ulster brigade of the UVF, which he commanded, was stood down by that organisation's leadership in Belfast. Wright subsequently broke away from the UVF to form a new rival organisation. The LVF is outlawed as a terrorist organization in the UK and Republic of Ireland. The United States has designated it a terrorist organisation also.^[5] The LVF have killed 18 people. 13 were civilians, 1 was a former Provisional IRA member, and 3 were UVF members. The LVF have also killed one of its own members.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Early days 1.2 Death of Billy Wright 1.3 Belfast Agreement and ceasefire 1.4 Post-ceasefire activities 2 Timeline of attacks 3 References 4 Further reading

[edit] History

[edit] Early days

Billy Wright was the leader of the mid-Ulster brigade of the UVF.^[6] Internal differences between Wright and the UVF's brigade staff in Belfast came to a head in July 1996 during the Drumcree dispute. The body of a Roman Catholic taxi driver, Michael McGoldrick, a recent university graduate, was found a few miles outside Lurgan. Although no grouping claimed the murder, it was believed to have been carried out by men under Wright's command.^[7] Consequently, on 2 August 1999 the mid-Ulster unit was stood down by the UVF leadership,^[8] as it had breached the ceasefire the organisation had been observing while its representatives were in negotiations on the Belfast Agreement.^[6]

Wright then took most of the unit's members with him and set up the LVF. Wright (who had previously been a lay preacher) is believed^[who?] to have exerted a strong moral force among LVF members, for example, banning pornography in the LVF wing of the HMP Maze prison.^{[citation needed]}

Although behind many activities in the mid-Ulster area—centred on the Lurgan/Portadown area, including many attacks on civilians, Wright was finally charged with menacing behaviour and sentenced to eight years at the Maze prison.^[9][10] There he demanded a separate wing for the LVF prisoners. The authorities agreed and the wing became a gathering point for various dissident shades of loyalist paramilitaries, including many from Belfast and north Down.^[11]

[edit] Death of Billy Wright

Wright was murdered on 27 December 1997 in an attack by members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) housed in an adjacent wing of the prison.

As Wright sat in a van waiting to be taken for a visit, three men scaled a number of roofs in the prison before running across a courtyard and shooting Wright dead.

The INLA claimed that the killing was in reprisal for Wright's sectarianism: neither of the two other LVF men in the prison van, one of whom was on remand for beating to death a Catholic teenager, was harmed.

That night, LVF gunmen killed a former IRA member.^[12]

[edit] Belfast Agreement and ceasefire

In March 1998, during the negotiations for the Good Friday Agreement, the LVF issued a statement expressing support for the stance of the anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party, saying the party's leader, Ian Paisley, had got it "absolutely right".^[13] Members of the DUP - including prominent member of parliament Rev. William McCrea - have appeared on public platforms with LVF leaders, including Billy Wright.^[14][15]

In May 1998 it called a ceasefire and urged people to vote No in the referendum. The NIO accepted its cease-fire in November making its prisoners eligible for the early release scheme under the Belfast Agreement. Later, it handed over a small amount of weapons to the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning. The weapons; four sub-machine guns, two rifles, two pistols, a sawn-off shotgun, 348 rounds of ball ammunition, 31 shotgun shells, five electrical detonators, two pipe bombs, two weapons stocks and five assorted magazines, were destroyed and recorded via video.

[edit] Post-ceasefire activities

The Secretary of State was moved to declare on 12 October 2001 that the government no longer recognised their ceasefire.^[16]

Wright's successor as LVF leader, Mark Fulton, was found hanged in Maghaberry prison in 2002. He is believed to have committed suicide.^[17]

Following a particularly bloody feud with the UVF in the summer of 2005, and loyalist violence in Belfast city that September, the LVF announced in October 2005 that it was standing down following the IRA's previous standing down and disarmament [1]. In February 2006, the Independent Monitoring Commission confirmed that the feud with the UVF was over, but said that the LVF's involvement with organized crime and drug trafficking continued, describing it as a "deeply criminal organization".

The twentieth IMC report stated that the group was small and without political purpose. Most of its violence was more criminal than paramilitary in nature. Its members who continue violent activity do so for personal gain and only associate with the organisation at large when it is expedient to do so. The report said that simple aggressive police work could damage the group's continuance.^[18]

[edit] Timeline of attacks

• 7 July 1996: The LVF shot dead a Catholic taxi driver and burnt his car in Aghagallon. It was believed to be a response to the Drumcree parade dispute.^[19]
• 12 May 1997: The LVF kidnapped and a Catholic civilian as he left Bellaghy GAA club. He was shot dead and his body found the next day in a burt-out car.^[20]
• 14 May 1997: The LVF tried to kill a Catholic taxi driver in Milford, but he escaped when the gun jammed.^[20]
• 24 May 1997: The LVF planted a bomb in Dundalk, but it was defused by Gardaí (Irish police).^[20]
• 2 July 1997: The LVF threatened to kill Catholic civilians if the Drumcree parade planned for 6 July was not allowed to proceed along the nationalist Garvaghy Road.^[20]
• 15 July 1997: The LVF shot dead a Catholic civilian in Aghalee. She was shot in the head as she slept in the home of her Protestant boyfriend's parents.^[20]
• 24 July 1997: The LVF kidnapped a Catholic civilian outside Newcastle, County Down. He was tortured, beaten to death with a hammer, and his body set alight. His burnt and mutilated body was found three days later in a waterlogged ditch near Clough.^[20]
• 5 August 1997: The LVF tried to kill a Catholic taxi driver in Lurgan, but he escaped when the gun jammed.^[20]
• 5 August 1997: The LVF left four small bombs in Dundalk. The Gardaí removed the "suspicious devices" for examination.^[20]
• 5 December 1997: The LVF shot dead a Catholic civilian outside a GAA club in Glengormley.^[20]
• 27 December 1997: The LVF shot dead a Catholic civilian and wounded three others outside a hotel in Dungannon.^[20]
• 10 January 1998: The LVF shot dead a Catholic civilian on Talbot Street, Belfast. He was a cross-community worker who helped steer young people away from violence.^[21]
• 18 January 1998: The LVF kidnapped and shot dead a Catholic civilian in Maghera.^[21]
• 23 January 1998: The LVF shot dead a Catholic construction worker on Hesketh Road, Belfast.^[21]
• 24 January 1998: The LVF shot dead a Catholic taxi driver and left his body on Upper Glen Road, Belfast.^[21]
• 25 January 1998: The LVF shot and wounded a Catholic civilian in Lurgan. The man was sitting in the cab of a lorry when a lone gunman shot at him several times.^[21]
• 27 January 1998: The LVF tried to kill a Catholic taxi driver in North Belfast, but he escaped when the gun jammed.^[21]
• 3 March 1998: The LVF shot dead a Catholic and Protestant civilian in the Railway Bar, Poyntzpass. The two were close friends.^[21]
• 5 March 1998: The LVF carried out a gun attack on a house in a mainly-Protestant area of Antrim. It was owned by a Protestant woman with a Catholic husband. The woman and her daughter were wounded.^[21]
• 21 April 1998: The LVF shot dead a Catholic civilian in Portadown. He was the first victim of the conflict since the signing of the Belfast Agreement.^[21]
• 25 April 1998: The LVF shot dead a Catholic civilian in Crumlin.^[21]
• 2 July 1998: The LVF set fire to ten Catholic churches and fired petrol bombs at the houses of two Catholics in Derry.^[21]
• 5 June 1999: The LVF killed a Protestant civilian in Portadown when they threw a pipe bomb through the window of her house. She was married to a Catholic man.^[22]
• 10 January 2000: The LVF shot dead a UVF member on Derrylettiff Road near Portadown. Part of a loyalist feud.^[23]
• 26 May 2000: The LVF shot dead a UVF member on Silverstream Park, Belfast.^[23]
• 11 April 2001: The LVF shot dead a UVF member in Tandragee.^[24]

In total the LVF have killed 18 people – 13 were civilians, 1 was a former Provisional IRA member, and 3 were UVF members. The LVF have also killed one of its own members.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Eighth report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, 1 February 2006 [2]
• Chris Anderson, "The Billy Boy - The Life And Death Of LVF Leader Billy Wright" (ISBN 1-84018-639-9)