After several years away from the spotlight, Spence was again asked to read the statement, a role which senior loyalists said was indicative of his significance within Northern Ireland loyalism. Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly said many nationalists would remember Spence as someone "who was central to the sectarianism that gave birth to the modern loyalist paramilitary". Fifteen Catholic civilians were killed and seventeen wounded. Spence in 1972, while at large from prison, National Committee on American Foreign Policy, Biographies of people prominent during 'the Troubles': S, "CAIN: Background: Chronology of Key Events 1800 to 1967". House of Commons: Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Cusack & McDonald, p.3435, 105, 199, 205, The Lost Lives, David McKittrick, Page 1475, Last edited on 28 February 2023, at 06:47, Timeline of Ulster Volunteer Force actions, protests throughout Northern Ireland, some of which became violent, Provisional IRA campaign 1969-1997 Loyalists and the IRA killing and reprisals, Republic of Ireland national football team, Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, "Report drawn up on behalf of the Political Affairs Committee on the situation in Northern Ireland", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfGe4WO8yok, "Sutton Index of Deaths: Organisation responsible for the death", "Sutton Index of Deaths: Crosstabulations", "Inside the UVF: Money, murders and mayhem - the loyalist gang's secrets unveiled", "UVF mural on Shankill Road being investigated by police", "UVF 'behind racist attacks in south and east Belfast'", Chronology of Key Events in Irish History, 1800 to 1967, "Irish tighten security after Dublin bombing", "Call for probe of British link to 1974 bombs", "Collusion in the South Armagh / Mid Ulster Area in the mid-1970's". Captain Robert Nairac of 14 Intelligence Company was alleged to have been involved in many acts of UVF violence. Spence was initially held over the murder of the first victim of the Troubles, John Scullion, who was shot by the UVF in the Falls Road area of Belfast. Gusty Spence funeral to have no . [114] Many retaliatory attacks on Catholics were claimed using the covername "Protestant Action Force" (PAF), which first appeared in autumn 1974. These included the Miami Showband killings of 31 July 1975 when three members of the popular showband were killed, having been stopped at a fake British Army checkpoint outside Newry in County Down. [151][152] These shipments were considered enough for the UVF/UDA to wage its campaign, most of which were used to kill its victims. He would go on to hold private talks with the then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds. There was to be much overlap in membership between the UCDC/UPV and the UVF.[22]. As a PUP representative he took a principal role in delivering the loyalist ceasefires of 1994. 28 September 2011 Gusty Spence announced the loyalist paramilitary ceasefires in 1994 Hundreds of mourners have attended the funeral of the former loyalist leader Gusty Spence. [10] Whatever the truth of this intelligence, Gusty Spence's Shankill UVF team was made up of only around 12 men on its formation. [103], On 25 March 2022, the UVF was blamed[by whom?] Hundreds of mourners have attended the funeral of the former loyalist leader Gusty Spence. [13][14][15][16][17] The other main loyalist paramilitary group during the conflict was the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), which had a much larger membership. [4] He married Isabella "Bella" Hayes, Gusty Spence's mother, in 1919. [150] The Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee noted in its report that "in 1992 it was estimated that Scottish support for the UDA and UVF might amount to 100,000 a year. [92], During the Belfast City Hall flag protests of 201213, senior UVF members were confirmed to have actively been involved in orchestrating violence and rioting against the PSNI and the Alliance Party throughout Northern Ireland during the weeks of disorder. The party's former leader Dawn Purvis told his funeral in the loyalist heartland of Belfasts Shankill Road that Mr Spence became involved in violence in the 1960s. The UVF stated that the attempted attack was a protest against the Irish Army units "still massed on the border in County Donegal". The weapons were Palestine Liberation Organisation arms captured by the Israelis and sold to Armscor, the South African state-owned company which, in defiance of a 1977 United Nations arms embargo, set about making South Africa self-sufficient in military hardware. Henry McDonald. [1] Spence, along with other Shankill Road loyalists, broke from Paisley in 1965 when they sided with Jim Kilfedder in a row that followed the latter's campaigns in Belfast West. [123][124], The strength of the UVF is uncertain. Human error to blame for train crash - Greek PM, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece. In keeping with his wishes, there were no paramilitary trappings and his coffin was draped with the regimental flag of the Royal Ulster Rifles, in which he served. A piper leads a procession for Huntington Beach Police Officer Nicholas Vella in La Habra, CA on Tuesday, February 22, 2022. Afterwards a plot was concocted where his nephew Frankie Curry, also a UVF member, would drive Spence back to jail but the car would be stopped and Spence "kidnapped". Then, use free funeral planning tools to plan out the best funeral for your loved one. Video, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story, Harry and Meghan told to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage, Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart, Dozens of girls treated after new Iran poisonings, Prince Andrew offered Frogmore Cottage - reports, China and Belarus call for peace in Ukraine, Beer and wine sales in Canada fall to all-time low, Man survives 31 days in jungle by eating worms, Havana Syndrome unlikely to have hostile cause - US. Spence said loyalists offered "abject and true remorse" to the loved ones of all the innocent victims of the Troubles. [79], In 2008, a loyalist splinter group calling itself the "Real UVF" emerged briefly to make threats against Sinn Fin in County Fermanagh. There are various credible[citation needed] allegations that elements of the British security forces colluded with the UVF in the bombings. Openly paraded with the UVF and thanked Gusty Spence repeatedly for his services to Ulster. [72], On 12 February 2006, The Observer reported that the UVF was to disband by the end of 2006. The arms are thought to have consisted of: The UVF used this new infusion of arms to escalate their campaign of sectarian assassinations. [121][122] The UVF did not return to regular bombings until the early 1990s when it obtained a quantity of the mining explosive Powergel. LocationLa Habra, CA 90631 EmailGet a free estimate Call(562) 579-5980. [46] A few days after the announcement, Spence made a trip to the United States along with the PUP's David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson and the UDP's McMichael, Adams and Joe English. Reverend Chris Hudson, who helped broker contacts between loyalist paramilitaries and the Irish government, said that aspect of the statement was significant. During his time in prison Spence renounced violence and helped to convince a number of fellow inmates that the future of the UVF lay in a more political approach. One of the first UVF members to be convicted of murder, Spence was a senior figure in the organisation for over a decade. [34] Spence was arrested along with around thirty other men at a UVF drinking club in Brennan Street; but after giving a false name, he was released. [58], The UVF's nickname is "Blacknecks", derived from their uniform of black polo neck jumper, black trousers, black leather jacket, black forage cap, along with the UVF badge and belt. Its name was taken from . Though, for its own purposes, it assumed the same name it has nothing else in common. [11] Whenever it claimed responsibility for its attacks, the UVF usually claimed that those targeted were IRA members or were giving help to the IRA. [36] Catholic churches were also attacked. [39], The following year, 1972, was the most violent of the Troubles. From late 1975 to mid-1977, a unit of the UVF dubbed the Shankill Butchers (a group of UVF men based on Belfast's Shankill Road) carried out a series of sectarian murders of Catholic civilians. "He was an Irishman and looked upon himself as an Ulster Irishman as well as being British. The group also carried out attacks in the Republic of Ireland from 1969 onward. [89][90] A dissident Republican was arrested for "the attempted murder of police officers in east Belfast" after shots were fired upon the police. [18] Two days later, the government of Northern Ireland used the Special Powers Act to declare the UVF illegal. Six of the victims were abducted at random, then beaten and tortured before having their throats slashed. Flanked by his PUP colleagues Jim McDonald and William Plum Smith, as well as Ulster Democratic Party members Gary McMichael, John White and Davy Adams, Spence read out the statement from Fernhill a former Cunningham family home on their former Glencairn estate in Belfast's Glencairn area. In February, it began to target critics of militant loyalism the homes of MPs Austin Currie, Sheelagh Murnaghan, Richard Ferguson and Anne Dickson were attacked with improvised bombs. Berenice's Cremation & Burial Care offers qualified funeral services in La Habra, CA, 90631. Accueil / Non class / gusty spence funeral; 15 Sep 0. gusty spence funeral . The UVF's leadership is based in Belfast and known as the Brigade Staff. The statement also included a warning that activities could "provoke another generation of loyalists toward armed resistance". [89] The UVF leader in East Belfast, who is popularly known as the "Beast of the East" and "Ugly Doris" also known as by real name Stephen Matthews, ordered the attack on Catholic homes and a church in the Catholic enclave of the Short Strand. The 78-year-old died in hospital at the weekend after a long illness. Instead his coffin was adorned with the beret and regimental flag of the Royal Ulster Rifles, his former regiment. The funeral of 78-year-old Gusty Spence, the former leader of the UVF paramilitary organisation, has taken place in Belfast. [134] Like the IRA, the UVF also operated black taxi services,[135][136][137] a scheme believed to have generated 100,000 annually for the organisation. [27][28] Spence respected some Irish republican paramilitaries, who he felt also lived as soldiers, and to this end he wrote a sympathetic letter to the widow of Official IRA leader Joe McCann after he was killed in 1972. [36] It also continued its attacks in the Republic of Ireland, bombing the Dublin-Belfast railway line, an electricity substation, a radio mast, and Irish nationalist monuments. While republicans were the expressed target, the attacks that followed were explicitly sectarian. ", This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 06:47. The Shankill loyalists supported Kilfedder and following his election as MP sent a letter to Paisley accusing him of treachery during the entire affair. [2] He ran his part of the Maze along military lines, drilling inmates and training them in weapons use while also expecting a maintenance of discipline. [7] His family had a long tradition of Orange Order membership. Spence told Radio Ulster that the UVF had been "engaged in murder, attempted murder of civilians, attempted murder of police officers. The widow of former PUP leader David Ervine, Jeanette, also attended. Former Ulster Volunteer Force leader Gusty Spence has died aged 78. The chip shop has since been closed down. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [146][147] Former MI5 agent Willie Carlin said: There were safe houses in Glasgow and Stirling. Gusty Spence was a significant figure in loyalist Belfast for most of his life. The UVF killed four men in Belfast and trouble ended only when the LVF announced that it was disbanding in October of that year. [87][88], On the night of 20 June 2011, riots involving 500 people erupted in the Short Strand area of East Belfast. It set up a paramilitary-style wing called the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV). The charges were dropped but later in 1966 he was given life for the murder of Peter Ward, who had called in to a Shankill Road bar with Catholic workmates and was shot dead as he left. [55], However, a granddaughter of Matilda Gould, a 74-year-old Protestant widow who had died from burns sustained in the UVF's attempted bombing of a Catholic bar next door to her home, objected to Spence being called a "peacemaker" and described him as a "bad evil man". When Spence was 'abducted' in July 1972 it was the RHC who were at the forefront of this operation. [18][19] Some members have also been found responsible for orchestrating a series of racist attacks. A former leader of the UVF's political wing, the Progressive Unionist Party, described him as "one of the pivots on which a page of Irish history turned". In the 1960s, he founded the modern Ulster Volunteer Force, an organisation which was responsible for hundreds of sectarian murders during the Troubles. He then became involved in politics and announced the landmark loyalist paramilitary ceasefires in 1994. Spence claimed that he was approached in 1965 by two men, one of whom was an Ulster Unionist Party MP, who told him that the UVF was to be re-established and that he was to have responsibility for the Shankill. [125] Members were disciplined after they carried out an unsanctioned theft of 8 million of paintings from an estate in Co Wicklow in April 1974. Colin Wallace, part of the intelligence apparatus of the British Army, asserted in an internal memo in 1975 that MI6 and RUC Special Branch formed a pseudo-gang within the UVF, designed to engage in violence and to subvert the tentative moves of some in the UVF towards the political process. Hawara: 'What happened was horrific and barbaric'. ", "Ulster Volunteer Force is no longer on ceasefire, police warn", "Gary Haggarty: Ex-senior loyalist pleads guilty to 200 terror charges", "Police seize drugs and arrest 11 during raids on east Belfast UVF", "Nine men charged after east Belfast UVF police raids", "Brexit: loyalist paramilitary groups renounce Good Friday agreement", "NI riots: What is behind the violence in Northern Ireland? Augustus Andrew Spence (28 June 1933 [2] - 25 September 2011) was a leader of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and a leading loyalist politician in Northern Ireland. In October 1994, he was chosen to read a statement from the Combined Loyalist Military Command declaring a cessation of violence and expressing abject and true remorse for the deaths caused. In October, UVF and UPV member Thomas McDowell was killed by the bomb he was planting at Ballyshannon power station. Loyalists were successful in importing arms into Northern Ireland. Skip to navigation [n] Skip to content [c] Skip to footer [f] Search Search. [46] Some of the new Brigade Staff members bore nicknames such as "Big Dog" and "Smudger". Images Courtesy of Getty Images. [85][86] Fifty-year-old Stockman was stabbed more than 10 times in a supermarket in Belfast; the attack was believed to have been linked to the Moffett killing. She told mourners that he had made friends among republicans and socialists and among people from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. "The untouchable informers facing exposure at last". The new Brigade Staff's aim was to carry out attacks against known republicans rather than Catholic civilians. In 1984, Gusty was released from prison, and became a leading figure in the Progressive Unionist Party and . Mark Davenport from the BBC has stated that he spoke to a drug dealer who told him that he paid Billy Wright protection money. [67] According to Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), the UVF killed 17 active and four former republican paramilitaries. DeSantis won't say he's running. On 18 June 1994, UVF members machine-gunned a pub in the Loughinisland massacre in County Down, on the basis that its customers were watching the Republic of Ireland national football team playing in the World Cup on television and were therefore assumed to be Catholics. 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[54], Spence died on 25 September 2011, aged 78, in a Belfast hospital;[53] he had been suffering from a long-term illness and was admitted to hospital 12 days prior to his death. [98], On 23 March 2019, eleven alleged UVF members were arrested during a total of 14 searches conducted in Belfast, Newtownards and Comber and the suspects, aged between 22 and 48, were taken into police custody for questioning. Referring to its activity in the early and mid-1970s, journalist Ed Moloney described no-warning pub bombings as the UVF's "forte". These attacks were stepped up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly in the east Tyrone and north Armagh areas. "He was really a role model for many young men who would follow.". [37] As the loyalist Maze commander, Spence initially also had jurisdiction over the imprisoned members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), although this came to an end in 1973 when, following a deterioration in relations between the two groups outside the prison walls, James Craig became the UDA's Maze commander. During its 12 July 1967 march, the Orange lodge to which he belonged stopped outside the prison in tribute to him. He was the first RUC officer to be killed during the Troubles. VideoAt the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Why Covid lab-leak theory is now being taken seriously, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip, Ukraine war casts shadow over India's G20 ambitions, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. In the bombings at the crash uvf gusty spence funeral of 'no hope ' - BBC reporter Greece. 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