Sammy Smyth

Samuel Smyth ( – 10 March 1976) was a Northern Irish loyalist activist. A founder member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) he was the early public face of the movement as the organisation's spokesman, and he later became involved in the group's attempts to politicise. He was assassinated by the Provisional IRA during the Troubles. Author Steve Bruce described Smyth as the "sometime editor of the Ulster Militant and a loose cannon who enjoyed an exciting and erratic relationship with the UDA".

Development of the UDA Smyth was a native of Louisa Street in Belfast, a loyalist interface area street which linked the Crumlin Road to the Oldpark Road and which faced "the Bone", a Catholic area at the bottom of Ardoyne. According to Smyth the area was regularly attacked by republicans from Ardoyne throwing nail bombs and shooting, and that in response he organised local men into a vigilante group. The group erected barriers on Louisa Street although these were removed by the British Army, which had a base in the area. In his youth he had worked at Harland & Wolff shipyard. Smyth, who was a community worker in the Lower Oldpark area and who was considered articulate, was the first public spokesman for the new movement. His first engagement came in 1972 when he appeared, wearing a mask, on a television debate with John Hume, warning him of a "Protestant backlash" against the recent formation of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).

Smyth's rhetoric at this time was noted for its extremism. He reacted to an interview with Dáithí Ó Conaill published in the press by stating "at that moment in time I could have, without a twinge of conscience, bombed every well-filled chapel in Belfast". He also edited a news sheet entitled Ulster Militant which urged war on republicans and their "passive sympathisers" by the emerging UDA.

All of this was despite the fact that Smyth's previous community work had seen him participate in a number of projects involving Catholics and Protestants, particularly with regards to housing.

As the UDA's public spokesman, Smyth was a prominent figure in the May 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike and he produced the daily bulletin of the Ulster Workers' Council (UWC) for the duration of the strike with Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party politician David Trimble. Following the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which were carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) during the strike, Smyth told the media "I am very happy about the bombings in Dublin. There is a war with the Free State and now we are laughing at them". The outcry which followed Smyth's statements on the bombings saw him disciplined by the UDA – in the form of a punishment beating – before being formally removed as UDA spokesman.

Political activity In the aftermath of the strike, Andy Tyrie added Smyth to his new political initiative, the New Ulster Political Research Group (NUPRG), reasoning that the articulate Smyth could be of use in raising the profile of the UDA and helping to secure funding from overseas. Smyth emphasised the working class nature of the UDA and was highly critical of the mainstream unionist politicians, adopting a siege mentality populism similar to that endorsed by some White nationalist populists in the southern United States, albeit with a Protestant rather than a white identity as the basis and Catholics rather than African-Americans as the out-group.

As part of his taste for populism and community politics, Smyth advocated the establishment of a Community Convention to be made of delegates from interested parties such as community groups, trade unions and paramilitaries although he did not reveal what purpose he had in mind for this body and in the event it was not adopted as an official UDA or NUPRG policy.

In 1974, Smyth appeared on an edition of Weekend World alongside William Craig and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh debating the future of Northern Ireland. On air the two paramilitaries agreed that they both felt alienation from mainstream politics, whilst in a discussion off air Smyth intimated to Ó Brádaigh that he might be amenable to the notion of a federal Ireland, something that was central to Ó Brádaigh's own Éire Nua policy.

In the late summer of 1975, a group of American academics and businesspeople with Irish links organised a conference in Amherst, Massachusetts to discuss the future of Northern Ireland. Although they sent out invitations to several leading political and paramilitary figures few chose to attend, with the exception of Irish Republican Socialist Party leader Seamus Costello and the Reverend Martin Smyth, the Grand Master of the Orange Institution. The invitation was refused by the Ulster Volunteer Force whilst Provisional IRA representatives who accepted were refused entry visas; however, the UDA sent a delegation made up of Andy Tyrie, Glenn Barr and Sammy Smyth. Whilst the delegation pushed the ideals of Ulster nationalism, which was found favour with the UDA at that point, during the debates Smyth's main contribution was to argue that the civil rights that had dominated nationalist rhetoric was as applicable to Protestants as it was to Catholics.

Later activity Smyth was interviewed by The News Letter in 1976 and he discussed the formation and development of the then legal UDA in some detail with the paper. Around the same time he gave an interview to The Gown in which he endorsed sectarian killings, arguing that "war exists in Northern Ireland and in a war situation there are no innocent people" before adding that "there will be no room for R.C.s [Roman Catholics] in a new state". Despite these pronouncements Smyth had returned to his earlier interests in housing advocacy and was again working on behalf of some Catholics. For his own part Smyth had moved to Downshire Park East in the Cregagh area of east Belfast.

On 10 March 1976, Smyth was shot and killed by the Provisional IRA whilst he visited his sister on Alliance Avenue in Ardoyne. He was 46 years old.