The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group based in Northern Ireland. Formed in 1965, it first emerged in 1966. Its first leader was Gusty Spence, a former Royal Ulster Rifles soldier from Northern Ireland. The group undertook an armed campaign of almost thirty years during The Troubles. It declared a ceasefire in 1994 and officially ended its campaign in 2007, although some of its members have continued to engage in violence and criminal activities. The group is a proscribed organisation and is on the terrorist organisation list of the United Kingdom.
Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson, PC, PC (Ire), from 1900 to 1921 known as Sir Edward Carson, was an Irish unionist politician, barrister and judge, who was the Attorney General and Solicitor General for England, Wales and Ireland as well as the First Lord of the Admiralty for the British Royal Navy. From 1905 Carson was both the Irish Unionist Alliance MP for the Dublin University constituency and leader of the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast. In 1915, he entered the war cabinet of H. H. Asquith as Attorney-General. Carson was defeated in his ambition to maintain Ireland as a whole in union with Great Britain. His leadership, however, was celebrated by some for securing a continued place in the United Kingdom for the six north-eastern counties, albeit under a devolved Parliament of Northern Ireland that neither he nor his fellow unionists had sought. He is also remembered for his open ended cross examination of Oscar Wilde in a legal action that led to plaintiff Wilde being prosecuted, gaoled and ruined. Carson unsuccessfully attempted to intercede for Wilde after the case.
The Irish Volunteers, also known as the Irish Volunteer Force or the Irish Volunteer Army, was a paramilitary organisation established in 1913 by nationalists and republicans in Ireland. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of its Irish unionist/loyalist counterpart the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland". Its ranks included members of the Conradh na Gaeilge, Ancient Order of Hibernians, Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Increasing rapidly to a strength of nearly 200,000 by mid-1914, it split in September of that year over John Redmond's support for the British war effort during World War I, with the smaller group opposed to Redmond's decision retaining the name "Irish Volunteers".
The King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSBs) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the Scottish Division. On 28 March 2006 the regiment was amalgamated with the Royal Scots, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the Black Watch, the Highlanders, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 52nd Lowland Regiment, and 51st Highland Regiment to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland. However, after just a few months the battalion merged with the Royal Scots Battalion to form the Royal Scots Borderers.
Events in the year 1969 in Ireland.
Events from the year 1914 in Ireland.
John Bulmer Hobson was an Irish republican. He was a leading member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) before the Easter Rising in 1916. Hobson swore Patrick Pearse into membership of the IRB in late 1913. He opposed and attempted to prevent the Easter Rising. Hobson was also chief of staff of Fianna Éireann, which he helped to found.
The Larne gun-running was a major gun smuggling operation organised in April 1914 in Ireland by Major Frederick H. Crawford and Captain Wilfrid Spender for the Ulster Unionist Council to equip the Ulster Volunteer Force. The operation involved the smuggling of almost 25,000 rifles and between 3 and 5 million rounds of ammunition from the German Empire, with the shipments landing in Larne, Donaghadee, and Bangor in the early hours between Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April 1914. The Larne gun-running may have been the first time in history that motor-vehicles were used "on a large scale for a military-purpose, and with striking success".
Kilcoole is a town in County Wicklow, Ireland. It is 3 kilometres (2 mi) south of Greystones, 14 kilometres (9 mi) north of Wicklow, and about 28 kilometres (20 mi) south of Dublin. It was used as a filming location for the Irish television series Glenroe, which ran through the 1980s and 1990s.
Joseph O'Doherty was an Irish teacher, barrister, revolutionary, politician, county manager, member of the First Dáil and of the Irish Free State Seanad.
The Ulster Volunteers was an Irish unionist, loyalist paramilitary organisation founded in 1912 to block domestic self-government for Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. The Ulster Volunteers were based in the northern province of Ulster. Many Ulster Protestants and Irish unionists feared being governed by a nationalist Catholic-majority parliament in Dublin and losing their links with Great Britain. In 1913, the militias were organised into the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and vowed to resist any attempts by the British Government to impose Home Rule on Ulster. Later that year, Irish nationalists formed a rival militia, the Irish Volunteers, to safeguard Home Rule. In April 1914, the UVF smuggled 25,000 rifles into Ulster from Imperial Germany. The Home Rule Crisis was interrupted by the First World War. Much of the UVF enlisted with the British Army's 36th (Ulster) Division and went to fight on the Western Front.
Love Ulster was a campaign conducted in Northern Ireland in 2005–08. Acting on the behalf of unionist victims of the Troubles, it was organised by the County Armagh Protestant group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR), led by Willie Frazer.
Asgard is a 51-foot (16 m) gaff-rigged yacht. She was owned by the English-born writer and Irish nationalist Erskine Childers and his wife Molly Childers. She is most noted for her use in the Howth gun-running of 1914.
The Buckingham Palace Conference, sometimes referred to as the Buckingham Palace Conference on Ireland, was a conference called in Buckingham Palace in 1914 by King George V to which the leaders of Irish Nationalism, John Redmond and Irish Unionism Edward Carson, were invited to discuss plans to introduce Irish Home Rule and avert a feared civil war on the issue. The King's initiative brought the leaders of Nationalism and Unionism together for the first time in a conference.
Sir Thomas Myles was a prominent Irish home ruler and surgeon, involved in the importation of arms for the Irish Volunteers in 1914.
Bachelors Walk is a street and quay on the north bank of the Liffey, Dublin, Ireland. It runs between Liffey Street Lower and O'Connell Street Lower and O'Connell Bridge. It was the setting for an eponymous TV series in the early 2000s.
The Howth gun-running involved the delivery of 1,500 Mauser rifles to the Irish Volunteers at Howth harbour in Ireland on 26 July 1914. The unloading of guns from a private yacht during daylight hours attracted a crowd, and the authorities ordered police and military intervention. Despite this the Volunteers evaded the security forces and carried away the arms. As the King's Own Scottish Borderers returned to barracks, they were accosted by civilians at Bachelors Walk, who threw stones and exchanged insults with the regulars. In an event later termed the Bachelor's Walk massacre, the soldiers shot into the civilian crowd and bayoneted one man, resulting in the deaths of four civilians and wounding of at least 38.
The Home Rule movement was a movement that campaigned for self-government for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of World War I.
The Home Rule Crisis was a political and military crisis in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that followed the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 1912.
The RTÉ Studio bombing was a 1969 bomb attack carried out by the Ulster Loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in Dublin, Ireland. It was the first Loyalist bombing in the Republic of Ireland during the Troubles.
