Days prior to its signing, DUP Chief Whip at the Assembly Jim Allister laid out the "carefully planned" Unionist response to the imminent Anglo-Irish Agreement.

[12] The rally was chaired by DUP Press Officer Sammy Wilson and addressed by party colleagues Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Ivan Foster.

Journalists who arrived at Ulster Hall to investigate the event were denied entry, DUP press officer Nigel Dodds instead appeared and handed out leaflets stating the goals of the new paramilitary grouping.

[21] Walker later claimed he was unaware before the meeting that its purpose was to declare the founding of a paramilitary grouping, while Agnew stated he would not be opposed to a "citizen's army" that came into conflict with the law.

[19] Alan Chamber, chairman of the Greater Belfast Young Unionist Association, accused the DUP of being "increasingly intent on breaking all links with the mainland so they can set up a fourth rate nation independent Paisleyland".

Wright asserted that UR would fight the British Army and RUC if the Anglo-Irish Agreement wasn't scrapped and could carry out armed incursions into the Republic of Ireland.

[21] A mass membership failed to materialise, but active groups were established in country areas such as County Armagh, attracting support from rural conservative Protestants.

[citation needed] An internal memo presented for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in March 1987 reported that UR had carried out further recruiting and the organisation was acquiring more paramilitary uniforms.

The report expressed concern that UR, described as a "DUP creation", would be used by the party as "shock troops" at the forefront of action against incoming public order legislation introduced in response to increasingly militant unionist anti-Agreement protests.

Loyalist Family Welfare adverts seeking donations were regularly published in the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) magazine Combat in the early 1990s, with the address provided being in Portadown, County Armagh.

[21] In December 1986, Ulster Resistance representatives met with other loyalist paramilitary groups to discuss smuggling weapons into Northern Ireland, according to police intelligence.

[12] In early 1987 senior UR member Noel Little, using an alias, travelled to Geneva and Paris to meet a representative of South African arms exporter Armscor named Douglas Bernhardt.

[36] The presiding judge, Justice Nicholson, appealed to the Protestant community to reject the UDA because they distracted the RUC from "dealing with terrorists in the shape of the PIRA and INLA."

An RPG-7 rocket launcher with 26 warheads, 38 assault rifles, 15 Brownings, 100 grenades and 40,000 rounds of ammunition were found following searches in the Upper Crumlin Road area of North Belfast.

[40] One of the men convicted of arms possession in connection with the find was Mervyn Spratt, a long-serving DUP member from Markethill who had contested a council seat on three occasions.

[50] Three members of Ulster Resistance — Noel Little, a former UDR soldier, senior member of the Ulster Clubs,[51] and DUP activist[42] previously arrested in connection with the 1987 importation of arms, James King, a Free Presbyterian and DUP activist[42] from Killyleagh, County Down and Samuel Quinn, a sergeant in the Territorial Army from Newtownards — were arrested at the Hilton Hotel, Paris on 21 April 1989.

[50] Three of Quinn's colleagues were expelled from the Territorial Army in the aftermath of the missile theft; one, Corporal James Shannon, was a leading DUP councillor and was later elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Strangford.

[57] In Stone Cold Dillon alleges that UR members provided intelligence on potential targets in rural areas and also safehouses for loyalist hit squads.

[57] The following day in a further act of retaliation, an RUC officer who had just attended Charles Watson's wake fired several shots into a restaurant in Castlewellan, County Down, with a Third Force armband on his person.

[60] Ulster Resistance members were also allegedly involved in the attempted assassination of Sinn Féin councillor John Davey near his home in Gulladuff, County Londonderry in February 1988.

The UR representative gave Stone free access to a large arms cache consisting of pistols, revolvers, rifles and hand grenades and told him to "use it well".

[64] In the 1990s Willie Frazer, a former UDR soldier and "key figure" in the organisation living in Markethill, distributed assault rifles and rocket launchers from UR to the UDA.

[65] In the early 1990s Johnny Adair leader of the UDA's "C Company", 2nd Battalion Shankill Road, West Belfast Brigade made contact with Frazer through mid-Ulster based loyalists.

[68] Dillon wrote in 1997 that UR "remains an armed grouping, waiting in the wings for the call to violence" and "it shares views expressed by men like Billy Wright" that a civil war may be necessary to defend the position of Ulster Protestants.

A spokesman purporting to represent the organisation claimed it had the "capability and resources to strike with deadly force" and also that the group had members in Armagh, Fermanagh, south Londonderry and Tyrone and "a presence" in Belfast.

[79] When the DUP were asked to condemn Ulster Resistance in 2016 they stated "the party's stance is consistent, that anyone involved in illegal activity should be investigated and face the full weight of the law.

"[20] In August 2017 Peter Robinson, represented by defamation lawyer Paul Tweed, secured an apology, retraction and undisclosed damages from the Metro newspaper for an article alleging he had been a member of Ulster Resistance.

The plot involved "hand-picked" members of various loyalist paramilitary groupings attacking Trimble's car with an Ulster Resistance-sourced RPG-7 rocket launcher as he exited onto the Belfast motorway from Lisburn.

[57] The Sutton Index of Deaths states that Robert Metcalfe, the 40-year-old owner of an army surplus store in Lurgan shot dead by the Provisional IRA at his home in Magheralin, County Down, in October 1989, was a member of Ulster Resistance.

[58] The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) alleged that Thomas Douglas, a Protestant man they shot dead outside his Belfast workplace in May 1994, was a member of Ulster Resistance but this was strenuously denied by both his family and the RUC.