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UDA South East Antrim Brigade
The UDA South East Antrim Brigade was previously one of the six brigades of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and are heavily involved in the drug trade. It is claimed they control "100%" of an illegal drugs network in south-east Antrim, Northern Ireland. A mural in support of the group lists its areas of activity as being Rathcoole (the mural's location), Rathfern, Monkstown, Glengormley and Whitewell, all of which are part of Newtownabbey, as well as Carrickfergus, the Shore Road, Greenisland, Ballymena, Whitehead, Antrim and Larne. A newer mural in the Cloughfern area of Newtownabbey and flags have updated the areas to include Ballycarry, Ballyclare, the rural hinterland of Ballymena called 'Braidside' and despite not being in County Antrim, the town of Newtownards. ''The Guardian'' has identified it as "one of the most dangerous factions". ''The Irish News'' described the brigade as 'powerful' and at one time being 'the most bloody and murderous gang operating with ...
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Rathcoole UDA Mural
Rathcoole may refer to: * Rathcoole, County Dublin, a village in County Dublin, Ireland * Rathcoole (Newtownabbey), a large housing estate in Newtownabbey, County Antrim, Northern Ireland * Rathcoole, County Cork Rathcoole, also spelled Rathcool () is a village in the north west of County Cork, Ireland. It is in civil parish of Dromtarrife in the barony of Duhallow. Rathcoole is within the Dáil constituency of Cork North-West. Location and amenitie ..., a village in north west Cork * Rathcoole, County Kilkenny, a parish in County Kilkenny * Rathcoole Aerodrome, County Cork, Ireland {{geodis ...
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Ballyclare
Ballyclare () is a small town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 9,953 according to the 2011 census, and is located within the Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council area. It sits on the river Six Mile Water. The town probably owes its origins to its being a crossing point of the river, the strategic importance of which is shown by existence of a small Norman motte on the south side of the river and presently located in the War Memorial Park. The broad main street dates from the 17th century. In the centre of the town is the Market Square with the Town Hall. The town grew in the 19th century with the coming of the railway and it became an important industrial town with a large paper mill in the South West of the town and a large Linen Bleach Green. These factories gave their names to the roads leading to them, the Mill Road and the Green Road, but have been closed for some time. It is now a local service centre with a significant dormitory role in relati ...
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Johnny Adair
John Adair (born 27 October 1963), better known as Johnny Adair or Mad Dog Adair, is an Ulster loyalist and the former leader of the "C Company", 2nd Battalion Shankill Road, West Belfast Brigade of the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). This was a cover name used by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a loyalist paramilitary organisation. In 2002 Adair was expelled from the organisation following a violent internal power struggle. Since 2003, he, his family and a number of supporters have been forced to leave Northern Ireland by the mainstream UDA. Early life Adair was born into an Ulster Protestant loyalist family and raised in Belfast. He grew up on the Old Lodge Road, a now mostly demolished road linking the lower Shankill Road to the lower Oldpark area, a site of many sectarian clashes and riots during the Troubles. The son of Jimmy and Mabel Adair, he was the youngest of their seven children, his siblings being (in age order) Margaret, Mabel, Jean, Etta, Lizzie and Archi ...
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UDA West Belfast Brigade
The UDA West Belfast Brigade is the section of the Ulster loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), based in the western quarter of Belfast, in the Greater Shankill area. Initially a battalion, the West Belfast Brigade emerged from the local "defence associations" active in the Shankill at the beginning of the Troubles and became the first section to be officially designated as a separate entity within the wider UDA structure. During the 1970s and 1980s the West Belfast Brigade was involved in a series of killings as well as establishing a significant presence as an outlet for racketeering. The Brigade reached the apex of its notoriety during the 1990s when Johnny Adair emerged as its leading figure. Under Adair's direction the West Belfast Brigade in general and its sub-unit "C Company" in particular became associated with a killing spree in the neighbouring Catholic nationalist districts of west Belfast. With Adair and his supporters suspicious of the dev ...
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Joe English (loyalist)
Joe English is a former Ulster loyalist activist. English was a leading figure in both the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and was instrumental in the early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process. He is a native of the Rathcoole area of Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland.Henry McDonald & Jim Cusack, ''UDA - Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror'', Penguin Ireland, 2004, p. 217 English is a member of the Apprentice Boys of Derry. Early years English had been a member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) since the early days of the Troubles. He first came to prominence in the 1980s when he was involved in writing ''Common Sense'', a UDA policy document that supported a form of power-sharing with Catholics. He was an opponent of Davy Payne, the UDA's North Belfast brigadier and an unpopular figure with many members due to allegations of racketeering and involvement in the death of John McMichael.McDonald & Cusack, ''UDA'', p. 160 He served as ...
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Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast
The Royal Victoria Hospital commonly known as "the Royal", the "RVH" or "the Royal Belfast", is a hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is managed by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. The hospital has a Regional Virus Centre, which is one of the four laboratories in the United Kingdom on the WHO list of laboratories able to perform PCR for rapid diagnosis of influenza A (H1N1) virus infection in humans. History Early history The Royal Victoria Hospital has its origins in a number of successive institutions, beginning in 1797 with The Belfast Fever Hospital and General Dispensary, located in Factory Row (although the dispensary originally opened in 1792). This moved to West Street in 1799, and then to Frederick Street in 1817. In 1847 the hospital separated from the General Dispensary and became the Belfast General Hospital. In 1875 it gained the royal charter, becoming the Belfast Royal Hospital, and in 1899 it was renamed the Royal Victoria Hospital. In 1903 it ...
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John Gregg (UDA)
John Gregg (1957 – 1 February 2003) was a senior member of the UDA/UFF loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland. In 1984, Gregg seriously wounded Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in an assassination attempt. From the 1990s until he was shot dead in 2003 by rival associates, Gregg served as brigadier of the UDA's South East Antrim Brigade. Widely known as a man with a fearsome reputation, Gregg was considered a "hawk" in some loyalist circles. Early life Gregg was born in 1957 and raised in a Protestant family from the Tigers Bay area of North Belfast. Gregg when explaining his family background, revealed that his father, regarded as a quiet man, had trust in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British Army but joined the loyalist vigilante groups set up around the start of the Troubles ostensibly to protect the Protestant community from attacks by republicans. His own earliest memory of the Troubles was the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association marches ...
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Belfast City Hall
Belfast City Hall ( ga, Halla na Cathrach Bhéal Feirste; Ulster-Scots: ''Bilfawst Citie Haw'') is the civic building of Belfast City Council located in Donegall Square, Belfast, Northern Ireland. It faces North and effectively divides the commercial and business areas of the city centre. It is a Grade A listed building. History Belfast City Hall was commissioned to replace the Old Town Hall in Victoria Street. The catalyst for change came in 1888 when Belfast was awarded city status by Queen Victoria. This was in recognition of Belfast's rapid expansion and thriving linen, rope-making, shipbuilding and engineering industries. During this period Belfast briefly overtook Dublin as the most populous city in Ireland. It was in this context that in the late 19th century the new city leaders formed the view that the Victoria Street building was not imposing enough and decided to commission a new building: the site they selected was once the home of the White Linen Hall, an impor ...
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Gerry Adams
Gerard Adams ( ga, Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh; born 6 October 1948) is an Irish republican politician who was the president of Sinn Féin between 13 November 1983 and 10 February 2018, and served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth from 2011 to 2020. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he followed the policy of abstentionism as a Member of Parliament (MP) of the British Parliament for the Belfast West constituency. Adams first became involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s, and had been an established figure in Irish activism for more than a decade before his 1983 election to Parliament. In 1984, Adams was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by several gunmen from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), including John Gregg. From the late 1980s onwards, he was an important figure in the Northern Ireland peace process, entering into talks initially with Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and then subsequently with the Irish and British ...
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Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. Its members founded the revolutionary Irish Republic and its parliament, the First Dáil, during the Irish War of Independence. The party split in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War, giving rise to the two traditionally dominant parties of southern Irish politics: Fianna Fáil, and Cumann na nGaedheal (which became Fine Gael). For several decades the remaining Sinn Féin organisation was small without parliamentary representation. Another split in 1970 at the start of the Troubles led to the Sinn Féin of today, with the other faction eventually becoming the Workers' Party. During the Troubles, Sinn Féin was associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). For most of that conflict, there were broadcasting ba ...
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The Troubles
The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " irregular war" or " low-level war". The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England and mainland Europe. The conflict was primarily political and nationalistic, fuelled by historical events. It also had an ethnic or sectarian dimension but despite use of the terms 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' to refer to the two sides, it was not a religious conflict. A key issue was the status of Northern Ireland. Unionists and loyalists, who for historical reasons were mostly Ulster Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the Unite ...
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Andy Tyrie
Andrew Tyrie (born 5 February 1940) is a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary leader who served as commander of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) during much of its early history. He took the place of Tommy Herron in 1973 when the latter was killed, and led the organisation until March 1988 when an attempt on his life forced him to resign from his command. Background Tyrie was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, one of the seven children of an ex-soldier and a part-time seamstress. He was brought up in a two-bedroomed house in the Shankill Road. He was educated at the local Brown Square school and found work as a gardener with Belfast City Council. Tyrie's family lived in both Ballymurphy and New Barnsley, but were forced out of both heavily Catholic areas in 1969. The family returned to the Shankill. Tyrie's surname is an ancient Scottish clan name; his ancestors migrated from Scotland to Ireland in the early days of the Ulster Plantation. They first went to Dublin, howeve ...
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