Arms
The group collaborated with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) to procure arms. In June 1987 the UVF stole more than £300,000 from the Northern Bank in Portadown. The money was used to buy 206 Vz. 58 assault rifles, 94 Browning 9mm pistols, 4 RPG-7 rocket launchers and 62 warheads, 450 RGD-5 grenades and 30,000 rounds of ammunition which arrived at Belfast docks from Lebanon in December 1987. The weapons were then transported to a farm between Armagh and Portadown, to await collection by the three groups.
On 8 January 1988 as they attempted to transport their share of the weapons from Portadown to Belfast in a convoy of three cars, the UDA's share was intercepted at a Royal Ulster Constabulary checkpoint. 61 assault rifles, 30 Brownings, 150 grenades and over 11,000 rounds of ammunition were seized and three UDA men arrested. Davy Payne, the UDA's North Belfast Brigadier was sentenced to 19 years in prison and the two others to 14 years each. A UR member, Noel Little, a former Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier and the Armagh chairman of the Ulster Clubs was arrested in connection with the find under the Prevention of Terrorism Act but released without charge.
Part of the UVF's share of the weapons was among weapons recovered in February 1988. A RPG7 rocket launcher with 26 warheads, 38 assault rifles, 15 Brownings, 100 grenades and 40,000 rounds of ammunition were found following searches in the Upper Crumlin Road area of North Belfast.
In November 1988 part of the Ulster Resistance share of the weapons was uncovered in police searches at a number of locations in County Armagh around Markethill, Hamiltonsbawn and in Armagh itself. Among the items recovered was a RPG7 rocket launcher and 5 warheads, 3 assault rifles, a Browning pistol, 10 grenades, 12,000 rounds of ammunition and combat equipment. Also discovered in the arms caches were parts of a Javelin surface-to-air missile and a number of Ulster Resistance red berets.
In September 1989 a 33 year old man from Poyntzpass and a 35 year old man from Tandragee were jailed to 9 years and 6 years respectively for storing and moving weapons and explosives on behalf of UR. In January 1990 a 32 year old former member of the UDR from Richill was jailed for 12 years for possessing UR arms and explosives.
The DUP subsequently claimed that they had severed links with the group in 1987.
Read more about this topic: Ulster Resistance
Famous quotes containing the word arms:
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands;
They take a serpentine course—their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical clank;”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)