IT'S  remarkable how many people I speak to who have no idea that Ulster Resistance weapons are still swirling around out there. There’s a sort of vague sense that the armed wing of the DUP was somehow part of the exhausting decommissioning process of the early noughties and that the massive arms shipment brought in from Lebanon in 1988 was covered in concrete or dropped into Beaufort’s Dyke from a squadron of Chinooks.

But it wasn’t. It’s still out there. And if that comes a surprise to so many, how much more of a surprise is it that nobody seems to give a monkey’s about it?

That crack I just made about Ulster Resistance being the armed wing of the DUP will go down like a fart in a spacesuit in Loyal Ulster, where DUP elected reps balk at the very suggestion that they might inhabit the same moral universe as republicans. After all, didn’t the DUP cut ties with Ulster Resistance just before the shitload of VZ.58 assault rifles, Browning handguns, RPGs and grenades arrived in the Ulster Resistance warehouse? But here’s my question to them, one that I’ve asked many times without answer: Where’s the proof that the DUP ever left Ulster Resistance?

I think it’s safe to say that the question of who dreamt up and produced Ulster Resistance is a settled matter. Unless those images of the DUP leadership dressed up as extras from a war movie at the Ulster Hall and telling us Ulster Resistance is magic are not enough.

Which only leaves the question of when they left to be dealt with. In late 1988 as the full extent of the Ulster Resistance arms important became worrying clear, the DUP whacked out a weird statement in which they claimed that the red berets, the swagger sticks and the posturing at the Ulster Hall had all been a bit of harmless cosplaying.
“While not members of the organisation, we openly and publicly encouraged recruitment and canvassed support for the organisation and its aims,” the party statement said. “Some time later we were informed the organisation was put on ice and our association and contact was terminated. At no time during our association was anything done outside the law and no member was ever charged with any offence.”

So what are we left with? Well, we have the DUP telling us that after it launched Ulster Resistance in a blaze of army surplus glory and pizazz, it cut ties with the organisation “some time later”.
Some.
Time.
Later.

What does this mean? It means nothing, and yet it means everything because the people that matter – the British government and the media – took the DUP at their word. They took them at their word with not a scintilla of evidence and without a word of corroboration. All we have to go on is a panicked and meaningless statement issued just as the Ulster Resistance arms were beginning to become a critical problem. We left Ulster Resistance “some time later”. That is the sum total of the proof on which the DUP was given a pass from the decommissioning process.

The timescale from Ulster Resistance formation to arms importation is just one year. The organisation was formed by the DUP at that Ulster Hall do in November 1986. Two months later Noel Little of Ulster Resistance travelled to Geneva and Paris to discuss the purchase of arms with a shadowy South African. Fast forward just six months and the money for the weapons was obtained in a Portadown bank raid. The shipment arrived in Belfast at Christmas 1987.

At what time in that year, while plans were being hatched, while people were being sent abroad and funds were being secured did the DUP get its P45? The answer is we don’t know. All we have is a self-serving ‘Trust Me, Bro’ statement from the party which contains precisely nothing in the way of useable information.  

I suppose the best way to conjure up the ineffable ridiculousness of it all is to imagine what the DUP defence might sound like if – perish the thought – a party member was ever compelled to explain it all at a committee hearing or – gulp – in a court case.

– Says here in your written statement that you had ‘No hand, act or part’ in the importation of Ulster Resistance weapons, is that right?
– It is. We had cut ties with Ulster Resistance by that stage.
– By what stage?
– The bringing-in-the-gear stage.
– Were you still wearing your red beret when Noel Little got on the plane to Geneva and Paris?
– That would have been…?
– Ten weeks later.
– Probably.
– And by the summer of ’87 when the bank robbery took place, you were still parading around with your swagger stick?
– Summer ’87… let me think… hmmm. Not sure about that one.
– But you had definitely had your leaving do by the time the weapons arrived at Christmas ’87.
– No doubt about it.
– Did the DUP leave Ulster Resistance between the Little flights abroad and the Portadown job, or between the Portadown job and the arms arriving, do you think?
– If you were to twist my arm I’d say we packed it in after the bank job.
– So you knew about the robbery to get funds to obtain weapons?
– We might have left after Noel got the plane, come to think of it.
– So you knew one of your chaps was in Europe trying to buy weapons.
– When you say ‘knew’…?
– You were aware of the plan to obtain guns and rockets.
– Well, you see, as we made clear in our statement in late ’88, we were never really in Ulster Resistance.
– You just helped form it, is that what you’re telling us?
– A wee leg-up, you might say.
– Let’s see now. You all dressed up in Ulster Resistance gear to launch Ulster Resistance, and you left Ulster Resistance at some unspecified time before the Ulster Resistance weapons came in, but none of you were members of Ulster Resistance? You honestly expect us to swallow that?
– Yiz have for 38 years, mate.