Thread by @Seanofthesouth, 1/#Unionisms stormtroopers and their 'reign of terror'. A story of the 'Ulster [...]

1/ #Unionisms stormtroopers and their 'reign of terror'. A story of the 'Ulster Volunteer Force' in police uniform that morphed into the 'birth of the B-men' and the creation of #UlsterSpecials in 1920 coming up soon in this thread.....

2/ British PM David Lloyd George agreed to create an armed special constabulary in the north in 1920 and that recruitment begin in asap, but in reality it merely formalised the already illegal Protestant militia's stocking the cities, villages and hamlets of Ulster. Some of the

3/ new Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) were committed to the new regimes survival with 'God and Ulster' emblazoned on their hearts, with the added bonus of letting rip on the minority community through shameful, cowardly and murderous atrocities with a keen eye on the wages and

4/ great allowances. The UVF was formed in 1913 to resist Home Rule but disbanded apparently/officially at the beginning of Ww1. That ofcourse was a nonsense thay carried on throughout the war with the Enfield rifle in the thatch with a beady eye on opponents, even offering help

5/ Crown forces during the #EasterRising in 1916 aswell as actually patrolling parts of the north at the time from potential insurgents ie- Republicans. After the Ww1 all those young hardened soldiers..(former UVF) hadn't found any work and needed work after de-mobbing, the USC

6/Ulster unionist leader James Craig harboured twin fears: firstly, armed republicans crossing the border or, worse still, home-grown nationalists rising from within the new state; secondly, ‘Bolsheviks’ and ‘socialists’ organising among working-class Protestants in Belfast’s

7/shipyards and factories, and in textile mills across Ulster. If those forces combined into a cross-community class-conscious movement, all was lost. Craig needed to bottle the aggression and violence of the unionist working classes—seen so vividly in the shipyard expulsions

8/and numerous sectarian riots of the time directed against nationalists. He aimed to keep the ‘rank and file’ under discipline and use them to repress any nationalist threat to the new state. With its personnel and organisation still intact, the UVF offered Craig the perfect

9/ means to do just that. From July 1920 the UVF re-formed and reactivated. In Fermanagh, future prime minister Basil Brooke (later Lord Brookeborough) organised the workers on his estate and in the local border community into the ‘Fermanagh Vigilance Force’ to fend off border

10/ raids from republicans and to keep local unionist bigoted ‘hotheads’ from taking matters into their own hands and murdering local catholics. In Lisbellaw ‘Carsonite Volunteers’ formed an ‘Orange patrol’. In Tyrone unionist leaders formed a vigilance group organised by the UVF

11/ officers acting independently of Crown forces. Founded three classes ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ . Lisburn District Council had responded to sectarian violence and raising unofficial ‘corps of special constables’ numbering around 800! In Belfast ‘vigilance committees’ formed in the

12/ in the shipyards, factories and textile mills to stop expelled catholics and ‘rotten Prods’ returning to work. Even Belfast's lord mayor organised a ‘Special Force’ nationalists were implicitly excluded, Wilfrid Spender arrived in Belfast in July 1920 to organise the UVF.

13/ He considered recruitment from outside the UVF to be shameful and a stain on the organisation’s puffed up honour, commitment and loyalty. Within days the Belfast #pogroms started as murder and mayhem was unleashed by the UVF on the catholic civilian population of the city.

14/ Remember these are an unofficial murderous militia running riot across Belfast and Lisburn causing the chaos -not republicans. Belfast was under no threat from the IRA, it was an early form of ethnic cleansing to rubber stamp partition. It was later that October unionism made

15/ its move, get the British government to legitimise these murderous militias and arm them(Uvf) rename them the new shiny 'Ulster Special Constabulary'! because of the terrible things going on in Ulster (instigated by the very same people) to get a hold of events, wink wink

16/ Carson helped to stir the sectarian pot ofcourse as the UVF took a prominent part in the Pogroms as well as local sectarian freelancers. It was Carson and Craig who suggested that the loyalists should be armed by the British government. This was initially dismissed but then,

17/Craig made his move as Secretary to the Admiralty in the Coalition government, discussed with the Ulster Unionist Council the possibility of actually carrying out the plan.
The London ‘Times’ correspondent in Belfast said the purpose of the meeting was “to discuss an offer

18/ which has been made to the Government that the Ulster Volunteers should be taken over by the military authorities and used as a force for maintaining law & order in the north. The suggestion is that the Government should arm and equip them"
Unionism had concocted the created

19/ and concocted the whole affair from start to finish with the blessing of the British govt. The ‘Times’ writer said it would have “most disastrous results” to do this. The ‘Daily Mail’ said the plan “raised serious question of the sanity of the Government”!
It pointed out that

20/ these are the very people who have been looting Catholic shops and driving thousands of Catholic women and children from their homes”. If it went ahead “there can be no hope left of rehabilitating the shaken credit of the British government in Ireland”. Prompted by Unionist

21/ James Craig, Lloyd George decided to go ahead and recruit a ‘special constabulary’. When this was announced in October 1920, Colonel Wilfred Spender, Commander of the UVF said
"The Government plans are a great advance on previous proposals. The Government has definitely

22/ ...recognised that there are two distinct elements among the population – those who are loyal to the British Crown and Empire and those who are not…There is no reason why the UVF should not furnish all the numbers required.” game on, the iron grip of unionism was about to

23/ I promise to finish this thread soon.... #standby

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