Loyalist Paramilitaries and the Peace Process

Abstract

The Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), who represented paramilitary loyalism in the talks which led to the Belfast Agreement of April 1998 were, arguably, not decisive in their contribution to that historic outcome. They did, however, as Senator George Mitchell accepted, help to shape a positive and purposeful atmosphere (Mitchell, 1999, p. 136), one into which an element of trust began to filter through. What determined ultimate success was, of course, the Sinn Féin leadership’s readiness to agree to an essentially partitionist settlement, but one which gave them the prospect of some guaranteed power in the northern state and in cross-border bodies to be set up under the Agreement.