Former UVF leader Gusty Spence dies

pragmatic1 · 25-09-2011 01:12PM

A filthy scumbag is dead. Em. Boo hoo.

KeithAFC · 25-09-2011 01:14PM

And they'd be rightly told they're paying respects to murderers too.

Your faux innocent "I'm just giving my opinion" stuff doesn't fool people any more - a number of us know your presence on another website as an out and out sectarian bigot. Look at your triumphalist sig ffs...

Allow Republicans or Loyalists to have an opinion. Even people who I would assume are neither have said RIP. It really isn't a big deal. Everyone knows I am a Loyalist and a supporter of the Ulster Volunteers. Just like some people on here who are supporters of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Yeah, let them write RIP. You're my issue. You and people like you do nothing but wind up people who are as intellectually troubled as yourself, and push apart 2 groups of people who need little kindling to find reasons to hate each other further.

I think people are getting on just fine. I think you should respect the wishes of the some who have put RIP in this thread.

Dudess · 25-09-2011 01:20PM

KeithAFC wrote: »

Allow Republicans or Loyalists to have an opinion. Even people who I would assume are neither have said RIP. It really isn't a big deal. Everyone knows I am a Loyalist and a supporter of the Ulster Volunteers. Just like some people on here who are supporters of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

You can keep churning out the "There are republicans posting here too" line, it doesn't mitigate the fact that you back organised murder, as do they.

I think people are getting on just fine. I think you should respect the wishes of the some who have put RIP in this thread.

Call me fussy, but I don't think the wishes of people who wish to pay respects to a man who killed innocent people should be respected.

KeithAFC · 25-09-2011 01:26PM

Dudess wrote: »

You can keep churning out the "There are republicans posting here too" line, it doesn't mitigate the fact that you back organised murder, as do they.

Call me fussy, but I don't think the wishes of people who wish to pay respects to a man who killed innocent people should be respected.

Fair enough. I respect your view.

MagicSean · 25-09-2011 01:27PM

When's the spitting on the grave ceremony? I might attend.

MagicSean · 25-09-2011 01:28PM

KeithAFC wrote: »

Fair enough. I respect your view.

No you don't.

Mike 1972 · 25-09-2011 01:48PM

Dudess wrote: »

In fairness, AH's resident LVF murder squad supporter

Not that it matters a great deal to anyone (apart from him) but are you sure you have the right Judean faction ?

Sunnyisland · 25-09-2011 01:51PM

Dudess wrote: »

Explanation, but not an excuse for murdering.

I rarely use this little bastard, but... :rolleyes:

Cop on. Have some respect for his victims. I'm sure they would be only chuffed to see someone writing "Rest in peace" re Gusty Spence - ditto for IRA victims when Adams/McGuinness die.

I echo others: good to see Spence and all the others, on both sides, change tack, but you don't just "forget about the past" when it comes to orchestrated murder.

It's great to be forgiving/progressive, but no need to be THAT forgiving/progressive...

I have lots of respect for his victims my aunty being one of them, killed in the dublin bombings,so i don't need you to tell me about victims,The man seen his errors of his ways and did his own best to get more people in to the political system and away from violence,may he rest in peace and his victims.

Einhard · 25-09-2011 02:05PM

realies wrote: »

I have lots of respect for his victims my aunty being one of them, killed in the dublin bombings,so i don't need you to tell me about victims,The man seen his errors of his ways and did his own best to get more people in to the political system and away from violence,may he rest in peace and his victims.

According to your own opening post, he only renounced violence because he realised it was counter-productive. So, he didn't stop murdering people like your aunt because of any innate morality, but because he realised it wouldn't achieve his goals. RIP my fooking arse.

Wolfe Tone · 25-09-2011 02:17PM

We all would have been better off if he was never born.

And as for keith, well he supports the UVF and their murder campains. Sure, if pressed he will condemn the shankhill butchers, but it rings hollow. Even today he still supports them when they start riots or try to start a pogrom in east belfast against a nationalist community.

So the last thing he did was say that they wont give up their weapons... Yeah, I guess you never know when you might have to kill random catholics again.

The provos and their weapons are gone, these scumbags should do the same, everyone is trying to move on, descending en mass on a nationalist community with petrol bombs is the type of thing which can kick off the troubles again. Zero arrests over that, I wonder how many nationalists lost faith in the PSNI over that.

Peep O'Day · 25-09-2011 02:24PM

Richard Hillman wrote: »

I look forward to hearing Martin McGuinness's Presidential supporters compare this man to Nelson Mandela as well.

And thus the whataboutery begins... :rolleyes:

KeithAFC · 25-09-2011 02:28PM

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

We all would have been better off if he was never born.

And as for keith, well he supports the UVF and their murder campains. Sure, if pressed he will condemn the shankhill butchers, but it rings hollow. Even today he still supports them when they start riots or try to start a pogrom in east belfast against a nationalist community.

So the last thing he did was say that they wont give up their weapons... Yeah, I guess you never know when you might have to kill random catholics again.

The provos and their weapons are gone, these scumbags should do the same, everyone is trying to move on, descending en mass on a nationalist community with petrol bombs is the type of thing which can kick off the troubles again. Zero arrests over that, I wonder how many nationalists lost faith in the PSNI over that.

I think many would disagree that the Provo weapons are gone. The dissidents who left them seem to have picked up a good lot of weapons from them. They haven't gone away either.

Wolfe Tone · 25-09-2011 02:30PM

Well keith, the aul independant monitoring comission says the weapons are all gone.

KeithAFC · 25-09-2011 02:33PM

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

Well keith, the aul independant monitoring comission says the weapons are all gone.

Do you really think the PIRA and UVF and UDA give all the weapons away? Even I am sceptical of that.

Mardy Bum · 25-09-2011 03:08PM

The words of DeAngelo Barksdale comes to mind for a lad like this and rings through for McGuiness' present situation as well.

'He's saying that the past is always with us. Where we come from, what we go through, how we go thought it all this **** matters. Like at the end of the book, ya know, boats and tides and all. It's like you can change up, right, you can say your somebody new, you can give yourself a whole new story. But, what came first is who you really are and what happened before is what really happened. It don't matter that some fool say he different cuz the things that make you different is what you really do, what u really go through.'

They can both try all the revisionism they want but what it comes down to is the past is always the past and those moments cannot be re-written.

steddyeddy · 25-09-2011 04:04PM

stovelid wrote: »

I'll be completely honest here too: the provos are hard enough to stomach but the valedictory nonsense that emenates from loyalism on occasions such as this - po-faced rhetoric about ending military campaigns as if they actually dared to face troops instead of largely confining themselves to butchering innocent people.

Thats actually a good point over 1000 catholics were killed based on religion. Slightly over a hundred of them were Ira. They didnt protect the communites from the ira, strengthen the union or any other ideal. They simply expressed their bigotry in terms of violence.

Sunnyisland · 25-09-2011 04:58PM

The reason I posted this thread was there was a war going on in N Ireland,maybe not a conventional war but a war never the less and this man played a huge part in it, at first prolonging it and then by helping ending it.He might not be everyone's cup of tea & certainly not mine but he was a huge influence and icon to the loyalist community,Also I would be watching who attends the funeral from the political divide.

fonecrusher1 · 25-09-2011 04:59PM

Yawn...

Killer Pigeon · 25-09-2011 05:05PM

May he rest in peace...
... in a graveyard that will, at some point, be inside an all-Ireland republic.

Penfailed · 25-09-2011 05:48PM

For those that don't know the history - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-15051927
"When Gusty Spence was given the task of announcing the loyalist ceasefires in 1994, there was a symmetry to his role.
In the 1960s, he had been a founding father of the modern UVF, an organisation which would subsequently murder hundreds of people, mainly innocent Catholic civilians.
Almost three decades later, he sat before the world's media, telling them that the UVF and another loyalist organisation, the Ulster Defence Association, were going on ceasefire in response to the IRA's cessation.
In his statement, he said that loyalists wished to express their "abject and true remorse" for their role in the Troubles.
A man who shared responsibility for starting the conflict was now taking a lead role in the first steps towards its conclusion.

Gusty Spence was born in 1933 in the loyalist heartland of the Shankill Road.
His father had been a member of the first incarnation of the UVF, who were formed to fight Home Rule and whose members would subsequently make an enormous contribution in the First World War.
Spence himself joined the military police before leaving due to ill-health in 1961.

His account of how he became involved with the UVF begins in 1965 when he claimed to have been approached by two men, one of whom was an Ulster Unionist Party member of the Stormont parliament.
He said they told him the UVF was to be re-established and that they wanted him, because of his military experience, to play a role in it.
Despite the organisation's claims of having declared war on the IRA, it was Catholic civilians who bore the brunt of its violence.
In June 1966, 28-year-old John Scullion became the first victim of the modern Troubles, when he was shot by the UVF in the Falls Road area.
Spence was one of three men arrested in connection with the killing but the charges were dropped

Later the same year, 18-year Peter Ward, a Catholic barman, went for a drink in a pub on the Shankill Road - not an unusual course of action in the days before the Troubles fully flared.
Spence, who was in the bar and overheard Peter Ward's conversation, was sentenced to life for shooting him dead as he left.
He spent the next 18 years in prison, apart from a brief hiatus in 1972 when he escaped after being given parole to attend his daughter's wedding.
During his four months on the run, he donned dark sunglasses to give a statement to the media as the UVF's commanding officer.
Once recaptured and back in prison, Spence is described as having realised that the Troubles would eventually have to end with a political settlement.
He encouraged his fellow UVF prisoners to think similarly and following his release from prison due to ill-health in 1984, he was credited with having a significant influence on the nascent political wing of the UVF, the Progressive Unionist Party.
Its charismatic leader David Ervine would later hold Spence up as his role model, as someone who was capable of having a more strategic vision of where loyalism was headed.
As part of that process, he re-examined his own identity, learning the Irish language and defining himself as an Ulster Irishman who was also British

Despite the dialogue within loyalism, the UVF continued its campaign of sectarian violence until 1994 when Spence issued the historic statement on behalf of the so-called Combined Loyalist Military Command.
Members of the UVF continued to be involved in sporadic violence in subsequent years but Spence's support of the peace process was unwavering.
When the organisation announced in 2007 that it was decommissioning its weapons and would exist only as a civilianised organisation, Spence was again called upon to make the landmark statement.
As late as 2010, when members of the UVF were blamed for murdering a man near Spence's childhood home on the Shankill Road, he again intervened, telling the BBC that the organisation should disband once and for all.
It was his last contribution in an era which he had helped to define."

Celly Smunt · 25-09-2011 05:52PM

Killer Pigeon wrote: »

May he rest in peace...
... in a graveyard that will, at some point, be inside an all-Ireland republic.

...which will then turn into a giant graveyard..

PomBear · 25-09-2011 06:06PM

R.I.P.

Dudess · 25-09-2011 06:26PM

KeithAFC wrote: »

Fair enough. I respect your view.

Doubt it. I'm a taig - you're conditioned not to respect anything about me.

realies wrote: »

I have lots of respect for his victims my aunty being one of them, killed in the dublin bombings,so i don't need you to tell me about victims,The man seen his errors of his ways and did his own best to get more people in to the political system and away from violence,may he rest in peace and his victims.

I am very, very sorry to read about your aunt - that is horrible. I admire very much how forgiving you are, but... certainly not meaning to take from your admirable stance, and I am lucky not to have lost anyone to paramilitary violence, but from my perspective, Spence doesn't deserve to have respects paid to him, even if his embracing of a more peaceful way was laudable.

Richard · 25-09-2011 06:57PM

Dudess wrote: »

Doubt it. I'm a taig - you're conditioned not to respect anything about me.

Quite a sweeping statement, don't you think?

Spence doesn't deserve to have respects paid to him, even if his embracing of a more peaceful way was laudable.

I feel the same about him as I feel about Martin McGuinness. Both with bad pasts, both reformed characters.

As to whether you can pay respects to either of them depends on how you feel about their pasts and whether you were affected by them.

Son Of A Vidic · 25-09-2011 06:57PM

Richard Hillman wrote: »

I look forward to hearing Martin McGuinness's Presidential supporters compare this man to Nelson Mandela as well.

Tell you what, take a deep breath and hold it until you see a pig flying past you.

Dudess · 25-09-2011 07:04PM

Richard wrote: »

Quite a sweeping statement, don't you think?

In relation to hardline loyalists (as opposed to reasonable, moderate unionists whose position and traditions I would respect)? Nope.

I feel the same about him as I feel about Martin McGuinness.

So do I.

As to whether you can pay respects to either of them depends on how you feel about their pasts and whether you were affected by them.

In my opinion, it's never acceptable to pay respects to those who orchestrated killings, no matter how much they changed subsequently.

KeithAFC · 25-09-2011 07:06PM

Dudess wrote: »

Doubt it. I'm a taig - you're conditioned not to respect anything about me.

I am very, very sorry to read about your aunt - that is horrible. I admire very much how forgiving you are, but... certainly not meaning to take from your admirable stance, and I am lucky not to have lost anyone to paramilitary violence, but from my perspective, Spence doesn't deserve to have respects paid to him, even if his embracing of a more peaceful way was laudable.

You are entitled to that view. I think a RIP was OK as some others did it.

Wolfe Tone · 25-09-2011 07:10PM

Someone take a look on PULSE and see what that lot are saying about him, Im banned myself.

Chuck Stone · 25-09-2011 07:16PM

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

PULSE

?

Wolfe Tone · 25-09-2011 07:20PM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

PULSE

?

loyalist site/forum.

Former UVF leader Gusty Spence dies

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