with Paisley saw themselves as a bulwark against greater encroachment of British liberal democratic norms on their state. Paisleyites, as they soon became known, departed from this inclusive form of liberal unionism, preferring to hold fast to the belief that Northern Ireland should govern only on behalf of one section of its divided population. For these extremists, Northern Ireland was truly a ‘Protestant state for a Protestant people’. The faith-based ideology expounded by Paisley blended an extreme loyalty to the Crown with a narrow and exclusive interpretation of Ulster unionism and, above all, a rabid hatred for all things Roman Catholic.
By the mid-1960s, Paisley had attained cult-like status. His stirring speeches whipped his wide array of followers into a frenzy, and helped galvanise street protests. On one level, his oratory was certainly effective in winning over adherents, but his ‘swift rise to prominence occurred because fertile ground awaited the seeds of his bigotry’.7 He was an effective speaker, but he acted principally as a lightning rod for angst, frustration and fear amongst the Protestant working class.
***
The car carrying the Belfast men pulled off the minor B-road and followed a country lane towards a series of farm buildings, including a large barn. Outside, hurricane lamps swung violently in the wind. Men mingled in small knots. Some smoked cigarettes, while others avoided being drawn into small talk by looking at their feet. Those gathered outside only averted their eyes into the darker recesses of the surrounding undulating landscape when they spotted the car carrying the Belfast men approaching. As the vehicle pulled up next to the barn, the driver let the engine idle for a few moments before finally switching it off. The doors flung open to reveal the four visitors. They climbed out of the car with bearing and purpose. The Belfast men were greeted by an organiser, who had been expecting them. They exchanged pleasantries before being shown inside to the poorly lit barn. Shadows disappeared into the ambient light of the lamps which dangled from high wooden beams.
About forty men had gathered from different parts of the country on land owned by a prominent family in the area. The men stood side by side as they were brought to attention by a former British Army colonel and told to raise their right hand as they were sworn into a newly rejuvenated grouping, which was to become known as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), tracing its lineage back to the paramilitary organisation formed in the early twentieth century.8 While the objective of the old UVF was to oppose the British policy of Home Rule for Ireland by ‘any means necessary’, this new UVF was raised to oppose ‘an assumed threat’9 from physical force republicanism. In reality this new private army was formed by elements within the right wing of the Unionist Party as part of a wider conspiracy to oppose O’Neill’s liberal unionist agenda.10
These were desperate times, said the faceless men presiding over the secret ceremony, and they called for desperate measures. The visitors from Belfast readily agreed. Some of them had seen the dangers posed by subversive movements in far-flung colonial outposts, like Cyprus; others were led to believe they were joining an underground organisation, preparing for a doomsday scenario in which armed republicans would be fielded in an attempt to seize control of the local state and impose upon them an island-wide Irish republic.11
***
A few weeks before the swearing in ceremony in Pomeroy, the Honorary Secretary of the East and Mid Tyrone Unionist Association had written a gloomy letter to the Minister of Home Affairs, Brian McConnell, to inform him of some worrying developments. At their last meeting, reported the party functionary, a motion had been unanimously passed pleading with those ‘responsible for the peace of our beloved Province’ to ‘take immediate and appropriate action to ensure that peace will prevail during this dangerous period’. Local party members were people who took a ‘serious view … of the fact that preparations are in hand, by our political enemies, to have large scale celebrations on the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916.’ Republicans were not only content to commemorate the past violent deeds of their ancestors, warned the East and Mid Tyrone Unionist Association. They were also intent on spreading fear by intimidating Protestants living along the border with an irredentist neighbour next door. ‘We fear that these celebrations could disturb the present peaceful state of Northern Ireland and lead to grave breaches of the peace,’ wrote the Honorary Secretary.12 Something had to be done, he urged, and fast.
What compounded frustrations amongst Protestants in his part of Mid Ulster was the political dominance of the old Nationalist Party, which had returned Austin Currie in the 1964 Westminster election. To those living in the Mid Ulster area there could be no compromise with nationalism wherever it reared its head, whether politically or culturally. A handful of members of the Orange Order, including several who wore the uniform of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC, known popularly as the ‘B-Specials’), an auxiliary force to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), met in secret to plan for the worst. They were determined to step into the breach, should O’Neill’s government prove unwilling or unable to confront what these hardliners suspected was a direct threat to their security. Matters soon came to a head when local newspapers reported that up to 30,000 people planned to gather in Pomeroy for the town’s Easter Rising parade.
A few miles north of Pomeroy, in Magherfelt, nine prominent unionists from the area, who also held overlapping members of the Orange Order and, in some cases, the B-Specials, paid a visit to the local RUC commander for the area. They warned of ‘strong intervention by loyalists’ if republicans were permitted to hold a commemorative parade in a local centre known as the Loup, which would ‘probably result in the use of firearms’ if it was to go ahead. After he showed them out, the police chief reported to RUC Headquarters that he was ‘convinced beyond all doubt’ the men were ‘prepared, if necessary, to use sufficient physical force in order to prevent these celebrations taking place’.13 An undercover Crime Special Department (later renamed Special Branch) detective attending a local election meeting in South Derry also reported how republicans wished to hold a protest in a ‘peaceful and orderly manner’ but that if they were given any trouble would ‘give all the trouble that would be needed’. Applause and loud cheers greeted these defiant words.14 Tensions between both communities ran exceptionally high.
At Stormont, McConnell’s replacement at the Ministry of Home Affairs, Bill Craig, was busy poring over more detailed intelligence reports from the RUC about the steps they were taking to tighten up the security situation. Craig promised Inspector General Sir Albert Kennedy the fullest co-operation and support from the government as they moved to preserve law and order. The Minister informed Parliament that he had authorised the mobilisation of the B-Specials as a necessary precaution, ‘to deal with the threatened IRA outbreak which constituted a very serious threat to the peace of this Province’.15 Briefings provided by intelligence chiefs in London, far removed from Mid Ulster, concluded that 3,000 IRA members were armed and poised to take action.16 Such alarmism within security circles was now matched by Paisleyites, who stoked fears amongst grassroots Protestants of an imminent armed attack by republicans.17
Not far from Stormont on the Ravenhill Road, Paisley was busy playing to a packed congregation in his church, the Martyrs Memorial. ‘England had always been weak in the face of Roman Catholic onslaughts and now rebels were dictating the policies of the country’, he told his flock, many of whom were thrown into hysterics by his booming, uncompromising rhetoric. ‘Free Presbyterians had been branded extremists’, he said, ‘in a way that left them with few options to register their grievances.’ This only encouraged them to amplify their chorus of disapproval, argued Paisley. The more republicans and the unionist government played up to one another, the more extreme Free Presbyterians would become. ‘My fellow ministers and I are united in denouncing the action of the Northern Ireland government in allowing celebrations of the Easter Rebellion to take place’, Paisley told them. Concluding his remarks, the Free Presbyterian leader vowed to continue to ‘protest in the strongest possible manner’.18
When the report of the sermon by the RUC’s Crime Special Department eventually landed on Craig’s desk, it left him in no doubt that Paisley was planning to heighten tensions, though few knew what form his plan would
