Thread by @Seanofthesouth

Will be posting up some interesting stuff on the formation of the UVF.... busting a few myths to boot..stay tuned.

Here’s a teaser.. the photo has a distant building or tower in the background-anyone know what it is.?

Ok, the scene is set-literally at the bottom of a steep slope in a sleepy hamlet overlooked by Lord Dufferin’s folly of ‘Helens Tower’ (a sad story I will link back to) in the midst of Clandeboye in a busy and tidy Uvf encampment.....

Starting in Newtownards-1914 one of the Ulster towns where armed unionism dominated. The British govt. sent military reinforcements to guard key installations in the north of Ireland, while Royal Navy gunboats sailed along the coast. The Curragh Mutiny had happened in March so

the brits were very nervous.. On an April night, ships docked at Larne, Bangor and Donaghadee, bringing consignments of rifles purchased by unionists in Hamburg. Within days, Edward Carson’s Ulster Volunteer Force carried the smuggled weapons on parade...so what’s the story

about these guns, if you to listen to some you’d think every unionist had a gun... that was not the case it an historical farce mixed in with myth...with some facts. There wasn’t even enough live ammo to train with never mind guns...

24,600 rifles were landed dispersed throughout the north-But what about more mundane issues, such as the organisation, officering and personnel of the UVF between January 1913 and July 1914? Were the Ulster Volunteers an efficient military ‘force’, or simply a theatrical ‘farce’?

Could they handle all these weapons-did they prepare? The UVF itself largely grew out of the Orange Order and the Unionist Clubs, which had started to drill in March 1912. Other UVF units had more obscure origins. In Magherafelt, the ‘Catch my Pal’ Temperance Society had started-

drilling twice weekly by May 1912; Church Lads’ Brigade in Derry provided a precursor to the UVF in that city. Elsewhere, many units were formed on purely private initiative ,a small cavalry unit in Omagh, Newry Unionist Club etc.. bit all over the shop to be honest..

Realistically, the UVF could only have proved an effective military force if, like the IRA five years later, it had adopted guerrilla tactics, modelled on those practised by the Boers in the South African War of 1899-1902. James Craig, himself a Boer War veteran, was firmly...

opposed to this policy. He was aware that such a war would be condemned by the vast majority of the British public and he also expressed fears that UVF morale would collapse during a prolonged campaign. However, the truth of the matter is that the UVF lacked the training, modern

modern weapons, logistical support and, crucially, artillery and cavalry required for the the ‘stand up fight’ with British troops which Craig envisaged in the event of Home Rule being enacted... it was all a scary bluff-so far

So were the Ulster Volunteers a ‘force’ or a ‘farce’? Certainly, they were not an efficient, modern, military force as they were poorly equipped, badly trained and, in most cases, inadequately officered. As for equipment the UVF has been the subject of much scholarly attention-

A Belfast firm, Gregg and Company, did a roaring trade offering dummy wooden rifles for sale to UVF units at between one shilling and one shilling and sixpence, depending on the quality of wood used, and this says much about the UVF arsenal at this time. It wold increase after

the gunrunning landings. The truth is the amount of ammunition available to the UVF would scarcely have trained the force, let alone equipped it for a prolonged battle. The UVF armoury was also rather antiquated. Most rifles were of the single shot type and about one-fifth were

Vetterli rifles, from the bargain basement of the international arms market, having been withdrawn from service in the Italian army in 1887. The UVF possessed no field artillery, no more than six machine guns (all with insufficient supplies of ammunition) and pitifully few

revolvers. In this context, the gun-running incidents appears to have been carried out, to boost morale in the UVF (many of whose members were, by April 1914, disillusioned with drilling with dummy guns) rather than to equip it as a modern military force.

It worth noting that Edward Carson, in Prof. Paul Bew’s opinion, was motivated to raise the force simply to control Loyalist hooligan elements in Belfast. Carson was fairly certain that any bloodshed caused by the UVF would have seen British Tory support for Unionism evaporate-

..so was it all smoke and mirrors? the outcome as I mentioned the UVF was not capable of engaging in a ‘stand up fight’ with British troops. Had civil war erupted in Ulster in August 1914 one suspects that while some units (notably the Belfast Special Service Force) would have

fought on, possibly using guerrilla tactics, until forced to surrender, others, especially in rural areas where Protestants were in the minority, would have surrendered before a shot was fired. The game was up and the bluff called-then WW1 broke out and all changed. The photo

So I go back to my first tweet (picture) it shows quiet serenity nestled in Clann Aodha Buí, before the madness of #WW1 and the death and horror of trench warfare. The faint figure in the distance is of ‘Helens Tower’ it holds a special place for me. I played around it and in it

as a child. It looked over all those who trained and drilled in her gaze in 1914 it stood tall and proud, years later a replica was built in the north-east of Thiepval Wood in France (called The Ulster Tower) after #WW1 -it would gaze over the same men only this time they

were six feet underground far from home in cold french clay....

I’ll finish with a quote from Confederate General Lee at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862 as he watched the destruction of the Unions famed ‘Irish Brigade’ at that terrible battle in the UScivil war...

...
# “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”

...we learnt nothing

Finally—the rub, saying that the UVF fought in the 1stWW is myth making perhaps-it’s just as legitimate then to say the IRA fought in the trenches of France as many did... Here Éamon Phoenix explains...

irishnews.com/news/2016/06/3…

Sin é