Loyalist Volunteer Force

The Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) split from the mid-Ulster Brigade of the UVF. Billy Wright created the LVF in 1996 together with Alex Kerr, a former UDA brigadier from South Belfast. Like other established paramilitary organizations, the LVF was given its own prison wing and used this as a vehicle for recruitment. The LVF went on to become one of the most violent and volatile paramilitary organization of the post-ceasefire period, killing 18 people (both catholics and protestants). In further defiance of the Belfast UVF leadership, the LVF collaborated with Johnny Adair’s C Company Battalion of the UDA during the loyalist feuds. Together, members of the LVF and Adair’s C Company used a variety of cover names for violence they carried out in the early 2000’s: Red Hand Defenders, Loyalist Freedom Fighters, and Orange Volunteers. Wright was killed in prison by the INLA in 1997, and the UVF leadership declared that it had ended its arms campaign in 2005.