Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee

The Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee (ULCCC) was set up in 1974 in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Ulster Workers Council Strike, in order to facilitate meetings and policy co-ordination between the Ulster Workers Council, loyalist paramilitary groups, and the political representatives of Ulster loyalism.

Seen as an important link between grassroots loyalism and more mainstream unionist politics, the ULCCC was chaired by Glenn Barr and met in the Belfast offices of the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party on a weekly basis. Replacing the earlier Ulster Army Council, it brought together representatives of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Red Hand Commando, Vanguard Service Corps/Ulster Volunteer Service Corps, Down Orange Welfare (DOW), Loyalist Association of Workers and Orange Volunteers. Barr was soon replaced as chairman by John McKeague and the ULCCC took on the wider aim of preparing for the establishment of a unified "Ulster army" in the event of a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, something that had become a leading fear in unionism in the mid-1970s.

Both Barr and McKeague were prominent supporters of Ulster nationalism and in McKeague's capacity of ULCCC chairman he spoke publicly in support of independence, despite the fact that such an idea had little support outside sections of the UDA. Somewhat ironically it was the UDA, along with DOW, that left the ULCCC in 1976 after it emerged that McKeague and other members of the groups were unilaterally holding meetings with members of the Provisional IRA and also discussing plans for an independent Northern Ireland with leading Catholic figures. With the departure of the largest loyalist paramilitary group, the ULCCC went into abeyance.

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