Member's statement: Ulster Resistance
Member's statement by Mrs Cathy Mason on .
- MLA
- Mrs Cathy Mason
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 14 September 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Ulster Resistance
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5685320
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I make this statement following contact from victims and victims' families after they watched the Westminster Northern Ireland Affairs Committee meeting on 9 September. They contacted me after hearing Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice challenge the DUP leader, Gavin Robinson, about his party's links to Ulster Resistance. What struck victims and victims' families was that direct questions about Ulster Resistance and senior DUP figures' role in it were simply not answered, so I will raise them here. Ulster Resistance was publicly launched in the Ulster Hall in November 1986. DUP figures were present. Ian Paisley publicly expressed support for the organisation, while Peter Robinson was associated with its formation. Rev Ivan Foster, himself a DUP Assembly Member and a Free Presbyterian minister at the time, subsequently described Ulster Resistance as, "a DUP-sponsored — parented — movement." Within a short period, Ulster Resistance was involved in procuring and importing a substantial consignment of weapons from South Africa in a strategic effort to arm the UDA and the UVF to mount a murderous campaign against the Catholic community, in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Police intelligence that the Police Ombudsman examined recorded that senior members of the UDA, the UVF and Ulster Resistance met to discuss the purchase and importation of arms, with the weapons subsequently being divided among the three organisations. For victims, that is not just history but part of a story of how loyalist paramilitaries acquired weapons that were subsequently used to murder their loved ones, including in notorious atrocities at the Thierafurth Inn in Kilcoo and the Heights Bar in Loughinisland. Those who were murdered are not simply names associated with the conflict but loved ones. Fundamental questions therefore remain. What did senior DUP figures know about Ulster Resistance, and when? What did they know about the procurement and distribution of the weapons? What information remains that could assist victims, families and the authorities in establishing the truth? There is another question, particularly for the PSNI, and it is this: where are those weapons now? The DUP speaks about challenging the glorification of terrorism, but the same standard must apply to everyone. It is not about collective guilt but about accountability and the right of victims to know what happened. The families who contacted me deserve to know why those questions were not answered. There must be one standard of truth, one standard of accountability, no protected history —
— and no hierarchy of victims. Victims deserve the truth.
412 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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