Tara (Northern Ireland)
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Tara was an Ulster loyalist movement in Northern Ireland that espoused a brand of evangelical Protestantism. Preaching a hard-line and somewhat esoteric brand of loyalism, Tara enjoyed some influence in the late 1960s before declining amid a high-profile sex abuse scandal involving its leader William McGrath.
The roots of Tara lay in a group known as "The Cell". This shadowy group, headed by the evangelist William McGrath, was made up of a mixture of his youthful followers and senior Orangemen who met at 15 Wellington Park, McGrath's Malone Road, Belfast base for his mission.[1] Young men such as Fraser Agnew, Roy Garland and Clifford Smyth, became part of this growing but mainly clandestine group.[2] The Cell spearheaded a campaign of speeches to Protestant audiences, more political than religious in tone, encouraging unionists to turn away from the relatively moderate Terence O'Neill and to lend their support to his most vocal political opponent, the hardline Ian Paisley.[3]
Development
In November 1966 McGrath reconstituted The Cell as Tara, choosing the name to reflect his belief in the Irish heritage of his politico-religious mission.[4][5] It was intended as an outlet for virulent anti-Catholicism. The group endorsed British Israelism as it sometimes claimed that Ulster Protestants were descendants of the Lost tribe of Israel.[5][6] The group espoused a form of historical revisionism, arguing that the early inhabitants of Ireland had come from modern Scotland before being displaced by the Irish, whilst also utilising Gaelic terms and symbols.[7] An Orange Order lodge attached to Tara and founded by McGrath was named "Ireland's Heritage" as a consequence of these views.[6] Tara adopted as its motto "we hold Ulster that Ireland might be saved and Britain reborn".[8] As a movement Tara sought to establish a Protestant Northern Ireland in which law and order would be paramount and the Roman Catholic Church would be outlawed.[5] Tara viewed Catholics as being in a grand conspiracy with moderate unionists and left-wing groups and felt that a conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism was inevitable. As a result, members of Tara were expected to be proficient in weapon use and were encouraged to join the security forces.[7]
A short-lived alliance with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was attempted and Roy Garland, a leading Orangeman in the 60s and 70s, and now an author, was one of Tara's members who worked closely with the UVF for a time.[9] The leaders of the UVF initially encouraged their members to also become involved in Tara.[6] With the UVF under the command of Samuel McClelland in the late 1960s, McGrath felt that an alliance with the better-armed group could help advance Tara's aims.[10]
Tara enjoyed a rush of members around 1969 as McGrath's prophecy of a doomsday scenario in Northern Ireland looked like it might come true with the advent of the Troubles and a UVF bombing campaign, which McGrath suggested in a whispering campaign was the work of the Irish Army.[11] Tara soon established their regular meeting place as Clifton Street Orange Hall, one of the most important centres of Belfast Orangeism, although McGrath did not openly tell the Orange Order leadership that he was using the rooms for Tara meetings, rather simply stating that he need them for generic meetings.[12] A more formalised structure was adopted with Garland as deputy leader, Clifford Smyth as Intelligence Officer and leading roles for Frank Millar Jr and Protestant Telegraph journalist David Browne, whilst Davy Payne was also associate with the group, albeit at a lower level.[13][14][15]
Although initially Tara and the UVF co-operated closely, a number of people contacted McClelland to tell him that McGrath, who secretly pursued homosexual and pederastic relationships, was using the link-up with the UVF as a way to pick up young men who were members of the organisation. McClelland confronted McGrath who fiercely denied the allegations, but following a fiery argument the relationship between the UVF and Tara was ended and McClelland burnt the Tara ledger in which the names of his UVF men had been entered.[16] From that point on the UVF proscribed Tara membership for its volunteers and sought to hamper the work of Tara.[17] On a more practical level a number of UVF members who had become involved in Tara also informed their UVF superiors that Tara did not possess much in the way of weaponry or military know-how and according to Steve Bruce "Tara had a good line in martial rhetoric but even its claims to be ready for martial defence rang hollow".[6] Bruce further adds that, for the most part, UVF members had simply used their attendance at Tara meetings as an opportunity to identify new recruits for their own group.[6]