The Ulster Volunteers was an Irish unionist, loyalist paramilitary organisation founded in 1912 to block domestic self-government ("Home Rule") for Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom.

Many Ulster Protestants and Irish unionists feared being governed by a nationalist Catholic-majority parliament in Dublin and losing their links with Great Britain.

However, this revival was largely unsuccessful and the UVF was absorbed into the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), the new reserve police force of Northern Ireland.

Many Ulster Protestants feared being governed by a Catholic-dominated parliament in Dublin and losing their local supremacy and strong links with Britain.

At the start of 1912, leading unionists and members of the Orange Order (a Protestant fraternity) began forming small local militias and drilling.

On 9 April Carson and Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party, reviewed 100,000 Ulster Volunteers marching in columns.

[3] On 28 September, 218,206[4] men signed the Ulster Covenant, vowing to use "all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland", with the support of 234,046 women.

[6] Recruitment was to be limited to 100,000 men aged from 17 to 65 who had signed the Covenant, under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir George Richardson KCB.

[10] In March 1914, the British Army's Commander-in-Chief in Ireland was ordered to move troops into Ulster to protect arms depots from the UVF.

[11] The third Home Rule Bill was eventually passed despite the objections of the House of Lords, whose power of veto had been abolished under the Parliament Act 1911.

Both of the remaining divisions suffered heavy casualties in July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme and were largely wiped out in 1918 during the German spring offensive.

[17]In the December 1918 general election, Sinn Féin—an Irish republican party who sought full independence for Ireland—won an overwhelming majority of the seats in Ireland.

[19] There were also a number of small loyalist paramilitary groups, the most notable of which was the Ulster Imperial Guards, who may have overreached the UVF in terms of membership.

[19] Historian Peter Hart wrote the following of these groups:Also occasionally targeted [by the IRA] were Ulster Protestants who saw the republican guerrilla campaign as an invasion of their territory, where they formed the majority.

Loyalist activists responded by forming vigilante groups, which soon acquired official status as part of the Ulster Special Constabulary.

[24] That October, armed UVF members drove off an IRA unit that had attacked the RIC barracks in Tempo, County Fermanagh.

[25] The sluggish recruitment to the UVF and its failure to stop IRA activities in Ulster prompted Sir James Craig to call for the formation of a new special constabulary.

[26] In October 1920, the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) formed, intended to serve as an armed reserve force to bolster the RIC and fight the IRA.