THE Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) and the Continuity Army, Council (CAC) of the IRA were outlawed by the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, from midnight last night.
They join the list of prescribed organisations which includes the IRA, INLA, UVF, UDA - and its sister body, the Ulster Freedom Fighters - and the Red Hand Commando.
The decision announced yesterday evening did not come as a surprise as the British government had been threatening such action for some time following actions by the two organisations, including murder and bomb attacks. The order was issued under the Northern Ireland Emergency Provisions Act (1996).
The LVF is mainly comprised of loyalists from the Portadown and mid-Ulster area which does not accept the authority of the Combined Loyalist Military Command. Its members in the Maze Prison are under the command of Portadown loyalist, Billy Wright who was convicted of issuing a death threat against a Protestant woman.
The LVF - or the organisation in embryo - is believed to have murdered Michael McGoldrick during the Drumcree standoff, and it was also blamed for the equally sectarian killing of GAA administrator, Sean Brown, from Bellaghy, Co Derry, last month.
Recently, it planted a bomb in Dundalk and threatened that there would be further no-warning bomb attacks in the Republic.
The organisation is also understood to have carried out several arson attacks on church property in Northern Ireland. Some of these attacks were on Protestant churches and property. The intention, according to mainstream loyalist sources, was to try to inflame community tensions in the run-up to Drumcree.
It recently threatened prison officers and said visitors from the Republic should not assume they were would be free from attack.
The CAC has been mainly operational from around the period of the IRA ceasefire of August 1994, although it is believed to have been formed some time after Republican Sinn Fein broke away from Sinn Fein in 1986 over the latter body's decision to abandon its abstentionist policy on the Dail.
While Republican Sinn Fein (RSF) has insisted it does not have a military wing, gardai have equally insisted that it is linked with the CAC. Both RSF and CAC have acknowledged that they hold the same political ideology, and both believe in the continuation of the "armed struggle" against Britain.
The CAC was first noticed when three men fired a volley of shots over the grave of Comdt Gen Tom Maguire, a veteran of the War of Independence, at Cross Cemetery, Co Mayo, in January 1994.
It came to a greater degree of prominence during the ceasefire with actions designed to undermine the IRA cessation. Initially, it was involved in a number of minor actions such as the planting of incendiary bombs at shops in Enniskillen and Newry. One of its major operations was the bombing of the Killyhevlin Hotel in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, in July 1996.
It is understood that some dissident IRA members, disaffected with the peace process, joined the CAC and that they may have plundered some arms and explosives from the IRA. Last month, it was reported that a member of the CAC was abducted by the IRA in west Belfast, and that some arms were taken from him. He was released unharmed.
