PUP boss Billy Hutchinson indicates black flags bearing UVF slogan and UVF imagery were not put up by the UVF

The News Letter was made aware that black flags had appeared in the Rathcoole area of north Belfast/Newtownabbey, (pictured) with the message: “Prepared for peace, ready for war.”

The slogan originates from a giant UVF mural in Mount Vernon, north Belfast, which has been emblazoned on a wall for decades.

Above these words, the flags depict a pair of eyes staring out of a balaclava – an image which bears a striking similarity to a mural in Carrickfergus which celebrates the “1st East Antrim UVF”.

In recent times, and in common with many loyalist-dominated areas, new flags have gone up around Rathcoole condemning the Northern Ireland Protocol, including messages saying that the 1998 Agreement has been broken and that “the deal is off”.

The News Letter asked councillor Billy Hutchinson if there was a UVF connection to the new black flags.

While he had not seen them himself, he said his inquiries indicate that only a small handful have gone up.

“This is my understanding: they don’t belong to the UVF,” he said.

“The word on the ground was, not the UVF. Someone else put them up.

“Just residents who are p***ed off with the protocol and other things ... p***ed off with everything: Irish langauge, protocol, everything.

“But they’re people who just are angry. They never do anything.”

Councillor Hutchinson served about 15 years in jail for being the driver of a car used in the double killing of two random Catholics in the mid-70s, and later became a key figure in pushing the UVF towards a ceasefire and a political path in the 1990s.

In an interview with this newspaper last November he denied the UVF had sanctioned a spasm of anti-Protocol disorder, beginning with the gunpoint hijack and arson of a bus in a loyalist-controlled part of Newtownards, followed by street disturbances in west Belfast.

A group calling itself the Protestant Action Force (a covername for the UVF) claimed responsibility for the hijack.

Councillor Hutchinson said: “I’d say this right away – I’d argue now the leadership of the UVF wouldn’t have orchestrated that.

“They would not have okayed it. They haven’t okayed riots to happen or anything else.

“The UVF leadership are concerned around the Protocol, but the last thing they want is to create violence on the streets, because they know where that goes. Therefore they wouldn’t have done that.

“If they had’ve okayed something like that, why did it not happen in every area?

“When they okay things, it goes across each of their batallion areas.

“I’m talking to you from experience. If they wanted to make a song and dance about it, they’d have picked their strongholds to do it in.”

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