Tara (Northern Ireland)

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Tara (named after the mythological seat of the Irish high kings on the hill of Tara ) was a loyalist Protestant paramilitary organization founded in 1966 , which represented a religiously based anti-Catholicism in the Northern Ireland conflict . The organization, which was temporarily infiltrated by members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) , collected weapons, but was rarely involved in violence.

Tara came from the same milieu as organizations around Ian Paisley , who turned against the reform policy of the Northern Irish Prime Minister Terence O'Neill in the 1960s and organized some violent protests against the Northern Irish civil rights movement . Tara was founded by William McGrath, a lay evangelical preacher and supporter of Anglo-Israelism . McGrath believed that the original residents of Ulster were one of the lost tribes of Israel . These were driven to Scotland by Celtic invaders before they returned to Northern Ireland in the 17th century as part of the Plantation of Ulster . McGrath opposed the appropriation of the Irish language and culture by the nationalist Catholics . He gave the Lodge of the Orange Order , which he founded, an Irish-language motto.

Tara was initially a covert action group within the Orange Order before it turned into a paramilitary group. McGrath and other leading Tara members believed that the union between Northern Ireland and Britain was being undermined by a conspiracy by liberal unionists , communists and Irish Republicans . Tara saw the use of force in a crisis situation as justified; until then it is the task of the organization to warn and to recruit. After defeating communism and Catholicism, Tara wanted to recapture Ireland for Protestantism . The Catholic Church should be banned and the upbringing of children should be placed in the hands of evangelicals.

Tara's members included people who would later become known as members of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Other Tara members were also members of the UVF, a paramilitary organization that was banned in 1966 after several murders of Catholics. According to information from UVF members, the UVF leadership wanted double memberships. At Tara meetings it was alleged that the organization was secretly supported by the leadership of the Orange Order. From the point of view of the UVF members, the cooperation with Tara was disappointing, as the organization did not offer access to weapons or military training despite martial rhetoric and claims to be ready to armed defense of loyalist interests. UVF members used the double membership to recruit potential UVF supporters. The UVF members left Tara in December 1971; in the same month the UVF bombed a Catholic bar in which 15 people died.

McGrath later worked as an educator at a children's home in Belfast and was charged with repeated sexual abuse of wards in 1980 and later sentenced to two years in prison. Rumors of McGrath's sexual excesses are said to have contributed to the separation of UVF and Tara as early as 1971. According to journalist and author Martin Dillon , McGrath had been an agent for the British foreign intelligence service MI6 since the mid-1950s .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Ed Moloney: Voices from the grave. Two men's was in Ireland. Faber, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-571-25168-1 , p. 338.
  2. ↑ a b Steve Bruce: The red hand. Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, ISBN 0-19-215961-5 , p. 23
  3. ↑ In interviews with Steve Bruce, see Bruce, red hand , p. 23.
  4. ↑ Moloney, Voices from the grave, p. 339. See also entry December 4, 1971 at CAIN - Conflict archive on the Internet (accessed January 5, 2012).
  5. ^ Moloney, Voices from the grave, p. 339.
  6. ^ Martin Dillon: God and the gun. The church and Irish terrorism. Orion, London 1997, ISBN 0-75281-037-5 , p. 235.