Red Hand Defenders - Links With The Wider Loyalist Movement

Links With The Wider Loyalist Movement

It has been alleged that the name "Red Hand Defenders" is merely a covername for members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) so the organizations can claim on the surface to have honored their ceasefire agreements. Similar accusations have been made regarding the name "Orange Volunteers", another loyalist paramilitary group that emerged in 1998. Interestingly, claims of responsibility by the RHD for certain attacks have overlapped with the Orange Volunteers. The Council on Foreign Relations indicates the membership of the RHD, LVF and Orange Volunteers likely overlap. These organizations are generally composed of young Protestant males from Northern Ireland.

McDonald (2001) characterizes the LVF and UDA ceasefire agreements as "official fiction". The LVF denies these claims, stating that its armed campaign has ended. LVF members were aware that any breach of the ceasefire could result in the return to jail for those paramilitary prisoners freed as part of the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998. This essentially served as an incentive for the groups to create a cover name. As a result, the actual existence of the RHD has consistently been called into question. Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald have argued that the RHC and the Orange Volunteers are both overseen by a Protestant fundamentalist preacher they identify only as the Pastor. The Pastor, a former associate of William McGrath, John McKeague and George Seawright and a long established British intelligence agent, is said by the authors to provide his own form of fundamentalist, Anti-Catholic Protestantism to the two groups fluid membership of young men, most of whom are also UDA or LVF members.