nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...
Ulster Unionist Party
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule mo ...
.
Career
In the 1960s, Garland became convinced that the
Northern Ireland civil rights movement
The Northern Ireland civil rights movement dates to the early 1960s, when a number of initiatives emerged in Northern Ireland which challenged the inequality and discrimination against ethnic Irish Catholics that was perpetrated by the Ulster Pro ...
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
and that its activities would lead to the persecution of
Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
s. As a result he got deeply involved in
paramilitarism
A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units car ...
, Orangeism and Unionism.BBC NI - Eyewitness /ref> At that time one of the organisations Garland supported was Tara, a movement, led by William McGrath, which espoused extreme
anti-Catholic
Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the Uni ...
views. In the late 60s, he worked closely with the UVF in an attempt the strengthen links between the two groups. Garland later became a prominent opponent of McGrath and helped expose his involvement in the
Kincora Boys' Home
The Kincora Boys' Home was a boys' home in Belfast, Northern Ireland that was the scene of serious organised child sexual abuse, causing a scandal and attempted cover-up in 1980, with allegations of state collusion.Dodd, Vikram; Norton-Taylor, Ric ...
scandal.
Some years later, Garland had grave doubts about the direction in which the Orange Order and the
Ulster Unionist Party
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule mo ...
(UUP) were going and he left both organisations. According to Garland, "...there was a lot of twisting of the rules, and also I heard stories about people within our organisation attacking Catholics and I felt that this wasn't right, this was not the war, you know, to protect ourselves - this was actually an aggressive war."
Garland subsequently returned to the UUP, aiming to support a non-sectarian unionism. However he is a vocal opponent of closer links between the UUP and the Conservative Party, and was in October 2009 described as one of "four older men who no longer play an active role in the party."
He inherited his family's cleaning-products business, and is now a journalist and writer for the '' Irish News''. He is also the author of several books including ''
Gusty Spence
Augustus Andrew Spence (28 June 1933 . ''