Ulster Clubs

The Ulster Clubs was the name given to a network of unionist organisations founded in Northern Ireland in November 1985. Emerging from an earlier group based in Portadown, the Ulster Clubs briefly mobilised wide support across Northern Ireland and sought to co-ordinate opposition to the development of closer relations between the governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The group's motto was "hope for the best and prepare for the worst".

The movement had its origins in the Portadown Action Committee, a group established in the County Armagh town during the middle of 1985 to oppose plans to reroute the traditional 12 July Orange Order parades away from nationalist areas of the town. This group was reconstituted as a wider umbrella movement, the United Ulster Loyalist Front (UULF) not long after the Twelfth. Leadership of the group rested with Alan Wright, a member of the Salvation Army, whose policeman father had been murdered by the Irish National Liberation Army in 1979.

The UULF was given the support of the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA) with South Belfast Brigade chief and UDA deputy leader John McMichael being appointed to the group's co-ordinating committee. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985 by Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald, the UULF organised a rally in Belfast in opposition to the agreement. Those in attendance dressed in combat clothes with dark glasses and slouch hats, indicating the support the group had secured from the UDA as well as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

After an initial flurry of activity, the UULF, which was a loose alliance at best, ground to a halt. However, the movement was given a new lease of life when a meeting was held at the Ulster Hall on 1 November at which the formation of a more formalised arrangement, the Ulster Clubs, was announced. A network of clubs was to be established across Northern Ireland with the aim, according to Ian S. Wood, of working to uphold "equal citizenship" and "fight the erosion of their Protestant heritage". Before long 88 clubs had been established, with around 20,000 members listed as having joined. The new name was chosen in homage to a similarly titled network established by Edward Carson during the crisis surrounding the Government of Ireland Act 1914.

...
Wikipedia