There are six men who are leaders of the UDA, and they are referred to as the
brigadiers. Each brigadier controls areas that mark rough boundaries of the original
loyalist organizations that came together to form the UDA in 1971 ("Cusack" 19). The
Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was originally the armed organization founded by Edward
Carson who opposed home rule and then to defend partition. A group that took this
name had emerged in the mid 1960's to kill catholics at random. This became a full-
fledged loyalist death squad in the 1972-1973 time frame ("Kelley" XIV).
The groups that were just previously mentioned were some of the protestant groups,
now from the other side we also had catholic organizations. The Fenian Brotherhood
was a Revolutionary Republican group that lauched a rising in 1867. It was more or less
the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), which survived underground and re-emerged
in the 20th century as a group plotting the Easter Rising ("Kelley" X). Sinn Fein was a
political group founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. It was not quite functional at the time
of the Easter Rising in 1916 ("Kelley" XIII). Oglaigh na hEIREANN was the
underground guerrilla movement that has fought for a 32 county Irish Republic since
1919. This group is also known as the IRA. It is the armed wing of Sinn Fein. Cumman
na mBAN is the female branch of the IRA, this group carried out basically the same
operations as the Official IRA did ("Kelley" X). Fianna Fail was the dominant political
party located in the South of Ireland from 1932 until at least 1973, this group formed by
Eamon De Valera after a split with Sinn Fein/IRA in 1926 ("Kelley" X).