Gray murder - Loyalists must follow IRA’s lead

Although Jim Gray, former head of the Ulster Defence Association, was facing charges of money laundering, his murder should be unreservedly deplored.

For normality to develop in the North it is necessary for civilised society to reclaim the area from the gunmen and gangsters on both sides of the political divide. It is ironic that loyalists have been questioning the IRA’s recent decommissioning of arms, while making no effort to get rid of their own weapons. In fact, they have been waging a murderous conflict within their own ranks.

It is time the UDA decommissioned its weapons. They can no longer argue that these weapons are for defensive purposes - the IRA threat is removed and the Republic has long formally recognised the right of the people of the North to retain their existing status so long as that is the wish of the majority of the people.

In symbolic terms, there was a major advance this week with the visit of Ian Paisley to St Louis’s Roman Catholic School in Ballymena.

Back in the 1960s, Ian Paisley burst into the headlines as he opposed British Prime Minister Terence O’Neill’s visits to Catholic schools. This week he was forthright, for a change, in denouncing the paramilitary violence on his side of the sectarian divide.