Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- Introduction
- 1 Drills, Fights and Defence
- 2 ‘Civil rights, unrest, death’ (1960s)
- 3 Football, Flags and Fighting (1970–71)
- 4 Protestants at War? (1971–72)
- 5 Convergence (1972)
- 6 From Boys Brigade Belts and Bibles to Bombs and Bullets (1972–75)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- Introduction
- 1 Drills, Fights and Defence
- 2 ‘Civil rights, unrest, death’ (1960s)
- 3 Football, Flags and Fighting (1970–71)
- 4 Protestants at War? (1971–72)
- 5 Convergence (1972)
- 6 From Boys Brigade Belts and Bibles to Bombs and Bullets (1972–75)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If you look through history you will find that it was a Protestant that at all times fed Rebellions … but the Protestant had a great fear that with the Roman Catholic majority in the South that he would lose his identity
John McKeagueThe planters’ home guards, the Volunteers of the 1780s, the Yeomen, ‘Peep o’ Day Boys’ and Orangemen of the 1790s, the rifle clubs and ‘Young Ulster’ at the end of the nineteenth century, the UVF of 1912 and the USC of the last fifty years: these are the varied forms taken by Ulster's paramilitary Protestantism. All have professed a fanatical devotion to the British Crown, the British constitution, the British way of life: and all have been prepared to fight Britain to stay British.
David BoultonMay our Maxim be: if you are not for us, then you must be against us. Lead, and fight on young tartan, all Ulster salutes you.
Loyalist News (6 May 1972)In the early 1970s many young men from both the Protestant and Catholic working class in Belfast found themselves thrust to the forefront of an increasingly vicious sectarian war. While republicans had always fostered a culture of rebellion and struggle in their quest for a united Ireland, loyalists had sought to preserve the broad status quo. They wished to remain part of the UK, and shared similar experiences to their working-class neighbours in the industrial heartlands of England, Scotland and Wales. In the same manner, street gangs in working-class Protestant areas of Belfast mirrored the experiences and subcultural rituals of similar gangs in those countries and their major cities.
When faced with constitutional uncertainty and IRA violence directed at the communities from which they came, the Protestant youth gangs evolved into the more militant Tartans. In May 1972 they were described by one woman in East Belfast as ‘Our boys of tomorrow’. What did she mean by this? That became abundantly clear only a matter of weeks later, when numbers of the Woodstock Tartan were recruited into the RHC, UVF and UDA.
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- Tartan Gangs and ParamilitariesThe Loyalist Backlash, pp. 208 - 215Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2016