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UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade formed part of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force in Northern Ireland. The brigade was established in Lurgan, County Armagh in 1972 by its first commander Billy Hanna. The unit operated mainly around the Lurgan and Portadown areas. Subsequent leaders of the brigade were Robin Jackson, known as "The Jackal", and Billy Wright. The Mid-Ulster Brigade carried out many attacks, mainly in Northern Ireland, especially in the South Armagh area, but it also extended its operational reach into the Republic of Ireland. Two of the most notorious attacks in the history of the Troubles were carried out by the Mid-Ulster Brigade: the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings and the Miami Showband killings in 1975. Members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade were part of the Glenanne gang which the Pat Finucane Centre has since linked to at least 87 lethal attacks in the 1970s. The brigade has been active from 1972 until the present day. The Portadown unit along with the brigade's leader Billy Wright was officially stood down on 2 August 1996 by the UVF's Brigade Staff (its Belfast leadership) following the brigade's killing of a Catholic taxi driver during a UVF ceasefire. The brigade, however, continued to function in the mid-Ulster area. In 2000-2001 the Mid-Ulster Brigade was involved in an acrimonious feud with the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), the group set up by Billy Wright. It was during this feud that Mid-Ulster brigadier Richard Jameson was shot dead by the LVF. ==Beginnings== (詳細はUlster Volunteer Force (UVF) member William Henry Wilson Hanna, known as "Billy", who sat on its Brigade Staff, which was the UVF's ruling council based on the Shankill Road in Belfast. Hanna served as a sergeant and permanent staff instructor (PSI) in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), and was a decorated war hero who won the Military Medal for gallantry in the Korean War when he served in the Royal Irish Rifles.〔(London Gazette )〕〔 Hanna started the UVF brigade in his home town of Lurgan in 1972 with the full endorsement of imprisoned UVF leader Gusty Spence.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Sunningdale pushed hardliners into fatal outrages in 1974 )〕 Spence had spent four months out of prison in 1972 when his false kidnapping was staged by the UVF in July after he had been given leave by prison authorities to attend his daughter's wedding. During his period of freedom he had restructured the UVF on its original 1913 lines by adding brigades, battalions, companies, platoons, and sections. He also managed to procure weaponry. On 23 October 1972 an armed UVF gang raided a UDR/Territorial Army depot in Lurgan and stole a large cache of sophisticated guns and ammunition.〔Taylor, p.112〕 Spence was recaptured by the British Army and sent back to prison in November. By 1972 the Provisional IRA's bombing campaign had escalated in its intensity, which triggered a violent response from loyalist paramilitary groups such as the UVF and Ulster Defence Association (UDA). When the religious and political conflict that came to be known as "the Troubles" had broken out in the late 1960s, unionists had immediately formed vigilante groups, ostensibly to protect loyalist areas from nationalist attacks.〔Taylor, pp-58-59〕 These had gone on to merge into larger umbrella paramilitary organisations. Hanna, who held the rank of brigadier, appointed himself the brigade's commander, and personally recruited and trained young men from the Portadown and Lurgan areas who were "prepared to defend Ulster at any cost".〔(Dublin and Monaghan Bombings: Cover-up and incompetence - page 2". ''Politico''. Joe Tiernan. 3 May 2007 )〕 These included Robin "the Jackal" Jackson, Harris Boyle, Wesley Somerville, David Alexander Mulholland, and William Fulton, among others. When a new member was sworn into the UVF, he was brought before a table, which was flanked by two masked men and presided over by another; on the table rested the Ulster banner and a gun. Under Hanna's leadership the Mid-Ulster Brigade became the deadliest loyalist paramilitary group outside Belfast. According to journalist Joe Tiernan, at least 100 Catholics and a number of Protestants lost their lives at the hands of this brigade.〔 Tiernan also suggested that Hanna carried out bank and post office robberies and intimidated local businessmen into paying protection money to the Mid-Ulster UVF.〔 Hanna was eventually expelled from the UDR on account of his UVF activity.〔McKittrick, David (1999). ''Lost Lives''. UK: Mainstream Publications. p.554〕 The Mid-Ulster UVF had always operated as a semi-autonomous, self-contained group maintaining its distance from the Belfast leadership, even if Hanna did have a seat on the Brigade Staff. Journalist Brendan O'Brien stated that the UVF had derived its greatest strength as well as the organisation's most ruthless members from its Mid-Ulster Brigade.〔O'Brien, Brendan (1999). ''The Long War: the IRA and Sinn Féin''. Second Edition. Syracuse University Press. p.92〕 Author Don Mullan described the brigade as one of the most ruthless battalions operating in the 1970s.〔Mullan, Don; Scally, John; Irwin, Margaret (2000). ''The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings''. Dublin: Wolfhound Press. p.205〕 A 2011 RTE documentary ''Bombings'' called it an "efficient sectarian killing machine".〔Bombings: Programme Four: Miami Showband. RTE. 2011. Retrieved 28 October 2011〕 It covered a wide area of operations, drawing membership from Portadown, southern County Londonderry, Dungannon, Armagh, Lurgan, Cookstown, and rural settlements near these towns, although it had little or no membership in County Fermanagh, where loyalist paramilitaries never joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British Army as the defenders of choice in the eyes of local unionists to the degree they did elsewhere.〔Jim Cusack & Henry McDonald, ''UVF'', Poolbeg, 1997, pp. 271-272〕 The Mid-Ulster Brigade was part of the Glenanne gang, a notorious group of loyalist extremists who carried out a series of killings and attacks against Catholics, mainly in the South Armagh area, in the 1970s. The Pat Finucane Centre attributes at least 87 violent attacks to this gang, which comprised rogue members of the UDR, RUC, as well as the Mid-Ulster UVF and Ulster Defence Association (UDA). It was allegedly directed by British Military Intelligence and/or RUC Special Branch. Its name derived from a farm in Glenanne, County Armagh which was owned by RUC reservist James Mitchell.〔 It was Hanna who first approached Mitchell and obtained permission to use the farm as a UVF arms dump and bomb-making site.〔 The UVF was a proscribed paramilitary organisation since its formation in 1966; however the ban was lifted on 4 April 1974 by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees in an effort to bring the group into the democratic process. The UVF was once more outlawed by the British government in October 1975.〔Taylor, Peter (1999). ''Loyalists''. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. p.124〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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