The Ulster Protestant Association (UPA) were a loyalist paramilitary group organised in Belfast in August 1920 to prevent Ulster (or that region which would later become Northern Ireland) being included in an independent Irish Free State.
[4] In 1923 a police report described the Association as dominated by "the Protestant hooligan element [whose] whole aim and object was simply the extermination of Catholics by any and every means."
[5] Their headquarters was in an East Belfast pub, with a flogging-horse upstairs to punish members who violated UPA rules.
Other Protestant gangs active at that time went by names like the Imperial Guards, Crawford's Tigers and the Cromwell Clubs.
[4] The UPA fought side-by-side with the IRA during the 1932 Outdoor Relief riots, swapping places in order to confuse Royal Ulster Constabulary policemen.