Imagined Communities: The RUC and Loyalism

Stray Bullets

Since the establishment of Northern Ireland in 1921, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary a year later, it has been acknowledged that the RUC was overwhelmingly comprised of those from the protestant community within Northern Ireland. This factor led, in small part, to a lineage of 'police families'; fathers, mothers, sons and daughters continuing the tradition of their forbearers by enlisting as RUC officers. When the Troubles ignited in 1969 it saw the RUC become over-stretched and constantly having to adapt and counter an increasingly hostile landscape of terrorism which took a heavy toll on mundane policing practices. It wasn't long before Loyalist paramilitaries assumed a role by which they envisaged themselves as having to protect their own communities given a, perceived, growing absence of police from those areas. But just how did Loyalist terrorists see themselves in relation to the RUC and how did that relationship crumble over the period of the Troubles? This is what I hope to discuss in the episode. However, I have not been able to include all I wished and therefore there may be a further episode considering Loyalism and the RUC.

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