The British and Irish governments have welcomed the announcement by the UDA
that the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) has stood down from midnight last
night and its weaponry will be "put beyond use".
Irish Times, 12. November 2007
Latest stunt will not make UDA disappear
By Brian Feeney
It is depressing how many media outlets bought the NIO spin about the UDA
standing down its 'military wing'.
Let's be clear at the outset: the UDA never had a military wing. The
so-called UFF never existed as a separate entity from the main body. The
cover-name UFF was invented in 1973 when UDA leaders feared the government
was going to proscribe the organisation because of the appalling
bloodthirstiness of their killing spree that year. Particularly horrific
killings were attributed to the UFF but that did not stop UDA members from
killing Catholics anyway.
Was John White in something called the UFF? Of course not. His manic knife killings
were carried out as part of a UDA gang.
Can someone please point out where the UFF wing was in Long Kesh? Don't
bother trying. There wasn't one. All the killers went into the UDA wing,
full stop. By the 1980s it's true the UDA had a couple of squads, or 'wee
teams' as they preferred to call them, who specialised in killing Catholics
and they tended to issue statements calling themselves 'the UFF', but they
were all UDA.
So what was Sunday's piece of grotesque theatre all about? It was all of a piece with the NIO's
attempt to portray the UDA as equivalent to the IRA.
It's been extraordinary to watch this nonsense over the years.
First, in the seventies after the UDA emerged with British intelligence and
RUC Special Branch assistance as a classic counter-gang to terrorise
innocent Catholics, the NIO was at pains to advise uninformed British
ministers to treat the UDA differently from the IRA. They were only a
reaction to IRA violence you see. Better not ban them. Better not open
another front. Concentrate on defeating the real enemy, the IRA.
Once the IRA campaign was over the NIO spent the last decade advising
equally uninformed British ministers to treat the UDA the same as the IRA
even down to using the same words in statements written for ministers. For
example, last weekend our proconsul, a featherweight shuttlecock if ever
there was one, repeated exactly the same words used about IRA moves in the
past: "This is a significant move by the leadership of the UDA."
In both cases the NIO was fundamentally wrong. The British administration
here should have cracked down immediately on the UDA the same as they did
with the IRA, but then of course they couldn't, because elements in
intelligence were artificially sustaining the UDA.
Still, it never occurred to anyone in the NIO to argue that indulging a
barbaric organisation like the UDA would make matters worse. Secondly, it is
a fantasy that the UDA should now somehow be seen as the loyalist mirror
image of the IRA. It's not.
Yet, helped by NIO flattery, UDA leaders imagine it is.
Jackie McDonald mumbled into a terrible sound system that "90% of the people
we represent don't want to decommission". Sorry. You don't represent anyone.
Repeated attempts to masquerade as a political party have been rejected
derisively by unionist voters. Even the UDA's own members didn't vote for
UDA front candidates.
Furthermore the UDA is not a united organisation. The darling of the NIO and
the Aras, the said Jackie, has no control over large baronies in Antrim and
Derry. Third, the UDA has no central command and has no idea how many
weapons the various wee teams have in their possession, though maybe MI5 has
since they supplied so many.
Guiding this fantasy that was staged on Sunday is the mirage that somehow
the UDA will be brought in from the cold, lured into politics, build
something like Sinn Féin. Why?
They don't want to.
They have no constituency.
They have no reason for existence other than to feather their own nests.
By asking them to disappear the NIO is asking UDA top dogs in each district
to give up their lavish lifestyle financed by drug dealing, extortion,
brothel-keeping and instead sign on the dole.
If there is anything to be learnt from the past three months it is that
Margaret Ritchie's hard line with the UDA delivers more than any number of
rounds of golf at the K Club.