DUP at loyalist rally
by Laura Friel
``The only good IRA man is a dead one and they should be
exterminated,'' Ian Paisley jnr told a thousand strong
loyalist rally in Portadown last week.
Brandishing a copy of the Irish News, DUP colleague
Sammy Wilson denounced the ``republican broadsheet'' to
cheers from the crowd. A few hours earlier and just ten
miles away the scene had been so very different, as the
grief-stricken families of Damien Trainor and Philip
Allen buried the two victims of loyalist terror with
quiet dignity.
In Portadown's Brownstown Park the DUP slipped
inevitably towards the role of political cheerleaders
for the LVF, the group linked to the double sectarian
murder in the village of Poyntzpass. At the same venue
eighteen months ago, the DUP's former Mid Ulster MP
William McCrea demonstrated his support for LVF leader
Billy Wright by sharing a platform at a rally organised
as a show of strength by the sectarian killer. Now it
was the turn of the DUP's senior spokesperson Ian
Paisley jnr and Belfast Councillor Sammy Wilson.
This time the rally had been organised by a thinly
disguised support group for the LVF, the Concerned
Protestants Committee. In a telling comment during a
television interview a spokesperson for the CPC said
the world had lost ``two good people last year, Princess
Diana and Billy Wright''.
Flaunting their loyalist credentials, members of the
crowd were wearing LVF T-shirts. At the platform, the
two DUP members were warmly greeted by Mark `Swinger'
Fulton, a close associate of Billy Wright and a central
figure during the Drumcree standoff last year. On the
platform, Paisley jnr denounced local Ulster Unionist
MP David Trimble and David Ervine (PUP) for ``consorting
with the British government, Sinn Fein/IRA and the
Irish government to sell Ulster down the river to
Dublin''. Formed from a dissident UVF grouping in
Portadown, the LVF are bitter rivals of the PUP.
Rapturous applause followed Sammy Wilson's call for a
public inquiry into the death of Billy Wright. ``How can
a man be murdered inside a British prison?'' says
Wilson. ``There's something not right about what
happened there. I want to go on the record in calling
for this inquiry.'' For members of a party which would
later claim they had ``no formal or informal links'' with
the LVF, Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley jnr certainly
knew their audience that Friday night. ``In the eyes of
the LVF,'' said a LVF spokesperson, ``Ian Paisley has got
it absolutely right.''
The DUP's participation in the Portadown rally came
just days before fresh threats from the LVF. In a ten
page document attacking the peace process, the LVF
threatened Protestant leaders in the church, politics
and industry, accusing them of ``colluding in a
surrender process'' and promising retribution. Those
guilty of selling out, the LVF warned, would not be
forgotten. Interviewed by the Sunday Times, an LVF
`contact' claimed the group possessed commercial
detonators and were preparing to mount large scale bomb
attacks in the 26 Counties.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)