The organisers of a new campaign opposing a united Ireland have insisted the initiative is peaceful despite the presence of loyalist paramilitaries at the event launch in Larne, Co Antrim yesterday.
In a symbolic revisiting of the anti-Home Rule importation of UVF guns into Larne in 1914, the Love Ulster campaign brought 200,000 copies of a special edition of the Shankill Mirror into the port yesterday bearing the banner headline, "Ulster At Crisis Point".
The campaigners, comprising Protestant victims' groups, the Orange Order, other loyal order members, and loyalist activists, plan to highlight what they contend are a diminution of the North's union with Britain and a list of "unremitting concessions to republicanism".
The initiative comes against a growing expectation of the IRA imminently decommissioning its huge arsenals, ahead of a renewed attempt to achieve a comprehensive power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland.
This campaign if it develops momentum could have a bearing on any such potential agreement, as the organisers are likely to put pressure on the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party not to concede what they would perceive as political ground to nationalism.
It was noticeable yesterday that no senior DUP or UUP members attended the launch. It was reported by the News Letter that the mainstream unionist parties were deliberately excluded from the launch in order to reinforce the notion of "people power" running the campaign.
The Love Ulster campaign is distributing 200,000 copies of the Shankill Mirror to unionist homes throughout Northern Ireland. A poster for the campaign states that unionists lost the B Specials in the 1970s, the UDR in the 1980s, the RUC in the 1990s and this year "they've come for the RIR [Royal Irish Regiment]".
The Shankill Mirror paper, which normally just circulates in the Shankill area, also states: "We will not accept being forced into a Republic - either by decades of republican terrorism, or years of cowardly British policy."
While the campaign's press officer, William Wilkinson of the Protestant victims' group Fair, Families Acting for Innocent Relatives, said the initiative was purely peaceful, senior members of the UDA and UVF were in Larne yesterday to assist in receiving and distributing the paper.
The Grand Master of the Orange Order, Robert Saulters, also attended the launch. He said he did not know whether some of those present in Larne were or were not members of loyalist paramilitary groups. He hoped Orange Order members would support the campaign because unionist unity was essential.
SDLP deputy leader Alasdair McDonnell deplored the initiative. "It is deeply irresponsible at a time when extremists are trying to ratchet up tensions in the community that leaflets are being delivered claiming that 'Ulster is at Crisis Point'. This type of inflammatory and alarmist action plays right into the hands of extremists," he said.
