Love Ulster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since June 2006.

Love Ulster is an umbrella Northern Ireland unionist victims' group. It is composed of a number of victims' organisations, such as Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR), Women Raising Unionist Concerns, and the Orange Order.

Love Ulster's first public manifestation was in August 2005 when its members symbolically reenacted the Ulster Volunteer Force's Larne Gun Running of 1914. Love Ulster members brought 200,000 copies of a special edition of the Shankill Mirror newspaper into the port of Larne, bearing the banner headline, "Ulster At Crisis Point". Love Ulster warns that Ulster is at "crisis point" and on the verge of being "sold out" into a united Ireland.

One of its leading figures is Willie Frazer of the south Armagh Protestant victims' group FAIR, who lost five of his relatives, including his father, to Provisional Irish Republican Army violence.

[edit] Criticism

Critics of Love Ulster and FAIR claim that the organisation is sectarian^{[citation needed]} (by virtue of alleged associations with groups like the Orange Order) and one sided in its definition of victim, i.e. it downplays and ignores Roman Catholic victims of paramilitary violence or mistreatment by the Security forces^{[citation needed]}. Love Ulster and FAIR naturally dispute these allegations and dismiss them as Irish Republican Propaganda.

On 25 February 2006, a planned Love Ulster march in Dublin, Republic of Ireland was prevented from taking place due to violent protests against the march, in the 2006 Dublin riots.