The new UVF was a long way from the force which in Carson’s day was supported by earl, general and mill-owner. Its predominantly working-class membership consisted, in Michael Farrell’s description, of ‘…a small group of Paisley supporters who, alarmed by his denunciations of the Unionist sell-out, had set up an armed organisation’.44 It was an inefficient, confused, but deadly organisation which, apart from the fears of the sell-out trumpeted by Paisley, wanted to strike in some way at Republicans in the year of the rising’s commemoration.
