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In the East Belfast Mission hall, the UVF, UDA and Red Hand Commando announced they had put weapons “beyond use”
Henry McDonald
At precisely two minutes past 10 yesterday morning, an ordinary-looking middle-aged man with grey hair walked up to the podium inside a church hall usually used for religious services and a mother-and-toddlers’ group. Shorn of the usual trappings associated with a member of the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force – black commando-style jumper, monkey hat, military-style white belt and woollen mask – this nondescript figure was about to deliver a historic message.
Reading from a single white page, the man announced: “The leadership of the UVF and Red Hand Commando today confirms it has completed the process of rendering ordnance totally, and irreversibly, beyond use.”
The oldest loyalist terrorist groups in Northern Ireland had put their weapons arsenal beyond use.
The building chosen by the UVF leadership to make its announcement was apposite. The Methodist East Belfast Mission hall is only several hundred metres away from one of the city’s many sectarian interfaces. It was there in 1970, where the Newtownards Road meets the Catholic Short Strand, that a gun battle raged following an Orange march. This confrontation marked the birth of the Provisional IRA and, given the large number of casualties inflicted on the loyalist side, was also instrumental in driving many working-class loyalists into the arms of the UVF.
The UVF was formed in 1966 and has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Troubles.
The other main loyalist association, the Ulster Defence Association, grew from the street militias formed to defend loyalist areas of Belfast in the early 1970s and became so large that it helped topple the 1974 power-sharing executive through a combination of mass intimidation and a general strike. A year before the 1994 ceasefire, its killing machine, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, helped push Northern Ireland close to civil war with indiscriminate gun attacks on Catholic bars and betting shops. Like the UVF, the UDA has attempted to politicise through the conflict and has now reached the point where it recognises it has nowhere else to go other than to disarm and eventually dissolve.
Both announcements were made in the constituency of Northern Ireland’s first minister, Peter Robinson. The news that the main loyalist organisations have either fully disarmed, or are about to, is a significant boost for the Democratic Unionist MP for East Belfast. Robinson and his party suffered a major electoral setback this month in the European elections, when the DUP lost thousands of votes to the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice leader, Jim Alliste.
The Observer, June 28, 2009
Task 2. Answer the questions.
1. What do the realia Ulster Volunteer Force; Red Hand Commando; an Orange march; the Ulster Defence Association; Northern Ireland First Minister mean? Find more realia in the material.
2. What is the role of descriptive adjectives an ordinary-looking middle-aged man with grey hair; a black commando-style jumper; a monkey hat; a military-style white belt and woollen mask; a nondescript figure; a single white page found in the introductory part of the article?
3. What is the synonym of the idiom to put sth beyond use? Identify it in the article.
4. What sentence reveals the main idea of the article?
5. Find the sentence which concludes the article.
6. Why do you think a comma is used in the headline?
Task 3. Read Article B and get its idea.
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