|
Richard Jameson (loyalist)
Richard Jameson (c. 1953 – 10 January 2000), was a Northern Irish businessman and loyalist, who served as the leader of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force's (UVF) Mid-Ulster Brigade. He was killed outside his Portadown home during a feud with the rival Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), the breakaway organisation founded by former Mid-Ulster UVF commander Billy Wright after he and the Portadown unit of the Mid-Ulster Brigade were officially stood down by the Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership) in August 1996. Following Jameson's death, the feud between the UVF and LVF escalated into a series of retaliatory killings. These went on intermittently until the LVF disbanded in 2005. Early life and paramilitary career Richard Jameson was born in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland to a Protestant Church of Ireland family in about 1953, one of five sons. He had a twin brother, Stuart. He was married to Moira by whom he had three children: Glen, Wayne and Kirsty. A former ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portadown
Portadown () is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about southwest of Belfast. It is in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area and had a population of about 22,000 at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 Census. For some purposes, Portadown is treated as part of the "Craigavon Urban Area", alongside Craigavon (planned town), Craigavon and Lurgan. Although Portadown can trace its origins to the early 17th century Plantation of Ulster, it was not until the Victorian era and the arrival of the railway that it became a major town. It earned the nickname "hub of the North" due to it being a major railway junction; where the Great Northern Railway (Ireland), Great Northern Railway's line diverged for Belfast, Dublin, Armagh and Derry. In the 19th and 20th centuries Portadown was also a major centre for the production of textiles (mainly Irish linen, linen). Portadown is the site of the long-ru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muriel Gibson (loyalist)
Muriel Gibson (born 29 September 1949) is a leading Northern Irish loyalist who was a member of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). The organisation was founded in 1996 by Billy Wright. She was acquitted of murdering a Catholic council worker, Adrian Lamph, in 1998, but convicted in January 2007 and sentenced to eight years imprisonment for destroying evidence following the 1998 murder, impeding the arrest and prosecution of his killers, and LVF membership. She was also found guilty of withholding information regarding a shooting, possession of firearms, detonators and pipe bombs. Her co-accused, LVF leader Jim Fulton, was convicted of directing the 1999 murder of Elizabeth O'Neill, along with a series of other offences, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Their trial, which lasted from September 2005 until December 2006, was the longest in the legal history of Northern Ireland. Early years and marriage Gibson was born in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland on 29 Sep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ulster Defence Association
The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is an Ulster loyalism, Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 as an umbrella group for various loyalist groups and Timeline of Ulster Defence Association actions, undertook an armed campaign of almost 24 years as one of the participants of the Troubles. Its declared goal was to defend Ulster Protestant loyalist areas and to combat Irish republicanism, particularly the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In the 1970s, uniformed UDA members openly patrolled these areas armed with batons and held large marches and rallies. Within the UDA was a group tasked with launching paramilitary attacks that used the cover name Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) so that the UDA would not be outlawed. The British government proscription, proscribed the UFF as a terrorist group in November 1973, but the UDA itself was not proscribed until August 1992. The UDA/UFF were responsible for more than 400 deaths. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary McMichael
Gary McMichael (born 1969) is a Northern Ireland community activist, and retired politician. He was the leader of the short-lived Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) during the Northern Ireland peace process, and was instrumental in organizing the Loyalist ceasefire in the Troubles in 1994. Early years McMichael is the eldest son of the John McMichael, a former leader of the Loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA). He left school in his native Lisburn in 1985, and began working with the civil service, although he subsequently also worked as a youth worker and an insurance salesman. He became involved in local protests against the Anglo-Irish Agreement soon after it was signed. McMichael joined the Lisburn Club, the local branch of the pan- unionist Ulster Clubs movement that his father had helped to establish, and for a while served as chairman of this branch. John McMichael was killed on 22 December 1987 and Gary McMichael was informed by police when his name was read ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drumcree Conflict
The Drumcree conflict or Drumcree standoff is a dispute over yearly parades in the town of Portadown, Northern Ireland. The town is mainly Protestant and hosts numerous Protestant/loyalist marches each summer, but has a significant Catholic minority. The Orange Order (a Protestant, unionist organization) insists that it should be allowed to march its traditional route to and from Drumcree Church on the Sunday before the Twelfth of July. However, most of this route is through the mainly Catholic/Irish nationalist part of town. The residents, who see the march as sectarian, triumphalist and supremacist, have sought to ban it from their area. The Orangemen see this as an attack on their traditions; they had marched the route since 1807, when the area was mostly farmland. There has been intermittent violence over the march since the 1800s. The outbreak of the Troubles led to the dispute intensifying in the 1970s and 1980s. At this time, the most contentious part of the route was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Hutchinson
Billy "Hutchie" Hutchinson (born 1955) is an Ulster Loyalist politician serving as the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) since 2011. He was elected to Belfast City Council in the 1997 elections. Hutchinson was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Belfast North from 1998 to 2003. He lost his assembly seat in 2003, and his council seat in 2005. He returned to the council in 2014 and was re-elected in 2019. Before this he had been a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and was a founder of their youth wing, the Young Citizen Volunteers (YCV). UVF activity A native of the Shankill Road, Belfast, Hutchinson took part in a series of riots in the area, during which Shankill dwellers clashed with residents of the neighbouring nationalist Unity Flats area. Members of the UVF fired shots at Unity Flats and it was around this time Hutchinson became a member of the organisation, describing his part in the rioting as "my initiation" into the UVF. A strong ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Ervine
David Ervine (21 July 1953 – 8 January 2007) was a Northern Irish Ulster Loyalist politician who served as leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) from 2002 to 2007, and was also a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East from 1998 to 2007. During his youth Ervine was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and was imprisoned for possessing bomb-making equipment. Whilst in jail he became convinced of the benefits of a more political approach for Ulster loyalism and became involved with the PUP. As a leading PUP figure, Ervine helped to deliver the loyalist ceasefire of 1994. Biography David Ervine was the youngest of five children born to Walter and Elizabeth Ervine, and raised in a Protestant working-class area of east Belfast between the Albertbridge and Newtownards roads. His household was not loyalist at all, his father Walter described himself as a socialist, had no time for Ian Paisley and didn't attend church. When Ervine joined the Or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Progressive Unionist Party
The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) is a minor unionist political party in Northern Ireland. It was formed from the Independent Unionist Group operating in the Shankill area of Belfast, becoming the PUP in 1979. Linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando (RHC), for a time it described itself as "the only left of centre unionist party" in Northern Ireland, with its main support base in the loyalist working class communities of Belfast. Since the Ulster Democratic Party's dissolution in 2001, the PUP has been the sole party in Northern Ireland representing paramilitary loyalism. Party leaders History The party was founded by Hugh Smyth in the mid-1970s as the "Independent Unionist Group". In 1977, two prominent members of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, David Overend and Jim McDonald, joined. Overend subsequently wrote many of the group's policy documents, incorporating much of the NILP's platform.Aaron Edwards, ''A history of the Northern Irel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Trimble
William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, (15 October 1944 – 25 July 2022) was a British politician who was the first First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002, and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 1995 to 2005. He was also Member of Parliament (MP) for Upper Bann from 1990 to 2005 and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Upper Bann from 1998 to 2007. Trimble began his career teaching law at The Queen's University of Belfast in the 1970s, during which time he began to get involved with the paramilitary-linked Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party (VPUP). He was elected to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975, and joined the UUP in 1978 after the VPUP disbanded. Remaining at Queen's University, he continued his academic career until being elected as the MP for Upper Bann in 1990. In 1995 he was unexpectedly elected as the leader of the UUP. He was instrumental in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Minister
A first minister is any of a variety of leaders of government cabinets. The term literally has the same meaning as "prime minister" but is typically chosen to distinguish the office-holder from a superior prime minister. Currently the title of ''first minister'' is used to refer to the political leader of a devolved national government, such as the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, or of a dependent territory. Canada In Canada, a first minister is any of the Canadian first ministers of the Crown, otherwise known as heads of government, including the Prime Minister of Canada and the provincial and territorial premiers. The title is used in such formulae as " first ministers' meetings". In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Inuit self-governing region of Nunatsiavut provides for a first minister responsible to the Nunatsiavut Assembly. Norway The head of government of Norway was called ''first minister'' () between 1814 and 1873, while it was in pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shankill Road
The Shankill Road () is one of the main roads leading through West Belfast, in Northern Ireland. It runs through the working-class, predominantly loyalist, area known as the Shankill. The road stretches westwards for about from central Belfast and is lined, to an extent, by shops. The residents live in the many streets which branch off the main road. The area along the Shankill Road forms part of the Court district electoral area. In Ulster-Scots it is known as either ''Auld Kirk Gate'' ("Old Church Way"), or as ''Auld Kirk Raa'' ("Old Church Road"). In Irish, it is known as "" ("the road of the old church"). History The first Shankill residents lived at the bottom of what is now known as Glencairn: a small settlement of ancient people inhabited a ring fort, built where the Ballygomartin and Forth rivers meet. A settlement around the point at which the Shankill Road becomes the Woodvale Road, at the junction with Cambrai Street, was known as Shankill from the Irish ''Seanchi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dungannon
Dungannon () is a town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is the second-largest town in the county (after Omagh) and had a population of 14,340 at the 2011 Census. The Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council had its headquarters in the town, though since 2015 it has been covered by Mid-Ulster District Council. For centuries, it was the 'capital' of the O'Neill dynasty of Tír Eoghain, who dominated most of Ulster and built a castle on the hill. After the O'Neills' defeat in the Nine Years' War, the English founded a plantation town on the site, which grew into what is now Dungannon. Dungannon has won Ulster in Bloom's Best Kept Town Award five times. It currently has the highest percentage of immigrants of any town in Northern Ireland. History For centuries, Dungannon's fortunes were closely tied to that of the O'Neill dynasty which ruled a large part of Ulster until the 17th century. Dungannon was the clan's main stronghold. The traditional site of inauguration f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Portadown")
_(9191426648).jpg "Click for more on -> Shankill Road")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Dungannon")