Andy Tyrie, leader of the UDA who became a staunch supporter of the Ulster peace process

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20-05-2025

Andy Tyrie, who has died aged 85, was 'Supreme Leader' of the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), from 1973 until 1988, but he was always a more complex personality than his moustachioed, tinted-glasses-wearing hard man image suggested.
In later life Tyrie emerged as a supporter of the peace process, backing the Good Friday Agreement, and official papers released in 2005 showed that in 1974 Tyrie had initiated talks between the UDA and the IRA without the knowledge of many of his supporters.
The UDA evolved from vigilante groupings frustrated by what they saw as the Catholic political advance, and then consolidated into a single body which at the height of its power numbered more than 40,000; it was responsible, often under the cover name of the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) for more than 400 murders throughout the Troubles. The UFF was banned in the early 1970s, but the UDA was not proscribed until 1992.
The UDA's primary target was 'Taigs' (Catholics), though it also became involved in other criminality, including murders within Protestant communities. Tyrie was credited with restraining some of the worst violence and attempting to provide political leadership for loyalism.
The height of UDA success was its involvement in the Ulster Workers' Council strike of May 1974 which brought down the fledgling power-sharing government at Stormont set up under the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. Whether by intimidation, or what they called 'discouragement', along with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the UDA under Tyrie took an active role in marshalling support for the strike. By the second week of the dispute the UWC strikers were in de facto control of Northern Ireland.
Tyrie claimed the UDA was not opposed to sharing power with nationalists but was opposed to a Council of Ireland, which he saw as a step towards a united Ireland. In 1979 he published Beyond the Religious Divide (with Glenn Barr), in which he envisaged political co-operation between Protestant and Catholic communities within an independent Northern Ireland. His personal outlook was more class-based than sectarian. 'Ordinary Prods looking down on ordinary Taigs is like tuppence ha'penny looking down on tuppence,' he was quoted as saying.
The official papers released in 2005 showed that in 1974 Tyrie had been financed by a Catholic businessman to hold talks with the IRA. Merlyn Rees, the then Northern Ireland secretary, reported a 'certain amount of camaraderie' at the meetings. Though nothing came of the initiative at the time, the talks are thought to have provided a template for the ceasefire negotiations of early 1990s.
In an interview with The Observer in 1999, Tyrie claimed that many of the things he had pressed for at the time – 'power-sharing and sensible north-south co-operation under the control of a Belfast assembly' – had been realised in the Good Friday agreement.
One of seven children, Andrew Tyrie was born in the working-class Shankill area of west Belfast on February 4 1940; his father was a former soldier, his mother a seamstress. The family moved to a mixed Protestant and Catholic housing estate in Ballymurphy but returned to the Shankill after the Troubles broke out in 1969.
After leaving school aged 14, Tyrie became an apprentice council landscape gardener, subsequently working in a mill and later at the Rolls-Royce factory in east Belfast.
Tyrie originally joined the UVF but moved to the more militant Ulster Protestant Volunteers. He became a prominent member of the Shankill Defence Association, which became part of the UDA in 1971.
Tyrie took over as leader in 1973 following the death of Tommy Herron, who had been kidnapped and shot in a killing widely ascribed to other members of the UDA. He resigned in 1988 after narrowly escaping death himself as the result of a car bomb which he believed had also been planted by someone in the UDA.
Andy Tyrie is survived by his wife Agnes, née Mooney, and by their two daughters and a son.
Andy Tyrie, born February 4 1940, died May 16 2025
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