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Chapter Four continues from the second half of 1971, highlighting the increasing fear among journalists and politicians that the Tartan gangs were more than mere hooligans. As violence increased, the Tartans began to receive growing support among the adult population in Protestant working-class communities. In this chapter the oral histories describe the first experimentations by many of the young loyalists in paramilitary activity in late 1971 and early 1972 and how the loyalist paramilitary response related to the perceived defence of Protestant working-class communities.

Introduction provides information about the study chronological and geographical contexts; similarities and differences between broader European and Balkan phenomenon’s of paramilitarism after the First World War as well as most important features of Balkan paramilitarism in investigated period (1917-1924) such as: intensive political engagement, strong inclination towards guerrilla warfare, personal allegiances rather than organizational or institutional ones, active participation in armed conflicts, political crisis, coups, etc, arrival of ‘White’ Russians and ex Russian revolutionaries as the new bearers of paramilitarism and paramilitary violence in the Balkans, violence as an integral part of paramilitaries and reoccurring in identical or similar shapes despite the changes in ideological and political context. It also speaks of strong legacy of Balkan paramilitarism and how it continued to have strong influence in subsequent conflicts in the region—Second World War and Wars of Yugoslav Succession 1991–1999.

It summarises previous chapters and their conclusions about very alive legacies of paramilitarism in the Balkans, and how it is possible to invoke paramilitary traditions and embed them into contemporary context. By the rule these attempts proved to be simple misuse either by political or structures close to the secret services. Up to now modern paramilitarism and its relations with Balkan paramilitary traditions didn’t attract public attention apart of several journalists who published several works and one documentary on different Serbian paramilitary formations during the wars of Yugoslav succession. What is raising concerns and can be qualified as alarming is that paramilitaries were perpetrators of most horrible war crimes and different violent acts against civilian population especially during the latest wars in former Yugoslavia during the 1990’s, and that during that period some of them created strong ties with the world of international organized crime.

This chapter examines how the First World War transformed the leadership of the IPP. John Redmond’s unilateral declarations regarding the Irish Volunteer force – a nationalist alternative to the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force – caused tensions, specifically with John Dillon. Redmond’s pledge of the force to Home Defence and subsequently to full participation in the war effort signalled a radical realignment of policy. It builds upon a historiographical tradition that sees the First World War as the defining moment in modern Irish history. It examines the ways in which the Irish party were called upon to assist in wartime recruitment and how the war began a stagnation of the Home Rule movement which had appeared to achieve its goals in September of 1914 with the signing of the Home Rule Bill into law. By mid-1915, correspondence shows that Redmond and Dillon had patched up their differences, at least to the extent that they could find a modus vivendi.