PUP to keep links with UVF

The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) tonight ruled out severing its links with the Ulster Volunteer Force despite the group’s role in a bloody loyalist feud.

The party said it would instead work in partnership with all those committed to transforming loyalist communities, including the UVF.

“The Progressive Unionist Party is committed to conflict transformation and the processes that empower and build a strong, confident and vibrant loyalist community,” it said in a statement.

There had been speculation that the party would distance itself from the UVF, which has been linked to at least four deaths in its feud with the Loyalist Volunteer Force.

The PUP’s allowances for the Northern Ireland assembly have been suspended because the British government has decided it is not doing enough to curb paramilitary violence by the UVF.

PUP chairman Dawn Purvis said that many people thought the annual conference would be the end of the PUP but added that the members had come out confident, re-invigorated and unified.

She said the focus of the conference had not been on IRA decommissioning.

“It didn’t feature heavily. The focus of the conference was ourselves,” she said.

The PUP is to concentrate on rebuilding confidence and stability in the loyalist community after the devastating riots and arson attacks of last month.

“This requires transformation in the communities most affected by conflict and, importantly, transformation in the political arena and in particular amongst those powerful influences that seek to destabilise Loyalism – the same influences that opposed the calling of the ceasefires in 1994,” it said.

Around 100 PUP members attended the conference, which was held in the Park Avenue Hotel in East Belfast.

Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Hain is still deciding whether to continue the suspension of the party’s Assembly allowance.