Tara was a
loyalistUlster loyalism is a militant unionist ideology held mostly by Protestants in Northern Ireland. Some individuals claim that Ulster loyalists are working-class unionists willing to use violence in order to achieve their aims...
movement in
Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
that espoused a brand of
evangelicalEvangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s.Most adherents consider its key characteristics to be: a belief in the need for personal conversion ; some expression of the gospel in effort; a high regard for biblical authority; and an emphasis on the...
ProtestantismProtestantism is a branch within Christianity, containing many denominations with some differing practices and doctrines, that principally originated in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It is considered to be one of the major divisions within Christianity, together with the Roman...
.
The group was first formed in 1966 by William McGrath from an independent Orange Lodge that he controlled. It was intended as an outlet for virulent
anti-CatholicismAnti-Catholicism is a generic term for discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed at the Catholic Church and/or its clergy or its members, often rooted in hatred or misunderstanding of their religion or culture...
, with it claimed that the group endorsed
British IsraelismBritish Israelism is the belief that people of Western European descent are also the direct lineal descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and it is often accompanied by the belief that the British Royal Family is directly descended from the line of King David...
as it sometimes claimed that Ulster Protestant were descendants of the Lost tribe of Israel. The group espoused a form of
historical revisionismWithin historiography, that is part of the academic field of history, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event...
, arguing that the early inhabitants of
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
were
ScotsThe Scots people and an ethnic group indigenous to Scotland.An ethnic group, historically they emerged from an amalgamation of Picts, Gaels and Brythons....
or
PictsThe Picts were a confederation of tribes living in what was later to become eastern and northern Scotland from before the Roman conquest of Britain until the 10th century. They lived to the north of the Forth and Clyde rivers, and spoke the extinct Pictish language, thought to have been related to...
, whilst also utilisng
GaelicIrish is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now only spoken natively by a small minority of the Irish population but also plays an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is used...
terms and symbols.
A short-lived alliance with the
Ulster Volunteer ForceThe Ulster Volunteer Force is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. The current incarnation was formed in May 1966 and named after the Ulster Volunteers of 1912, although there is no direct connection between the two....
was attempted and
Roy GarlandRoy Garland is a newspaper columnist for the nationalist Irish News and a member of the Ulster Unionist Party.-Early life:In the 1960s, Roy Garland became convinced that the Northern Ireland civil rights movement was a front for the Irish Republican Army and Catholic Church which would lead to the...
, a leading Orangeman in the 60s and 70s, and now an author, was one of Tara's members who worked closely with the UVF for a time.
Tara was a
loyalistUlster loyalism is a militant unionist ideology held mostly by Protestants in Northern Ireland. Some individuals claim that Ulster loyalists are working-class unionists willing to use violence in order to achieve their aims...
movement in
Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
that espoused a brand of
evangelicalEvangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s.Most adherents consider its key characteristics to be: a belief in the need for personal conversion ; some expression of the gospel in effort; a high regard for biblical authority; and an emphasis on the...
ProtestantismProtestantism is a branch within Christianity, containing many denominations with some differing practices and doctrines, that principally originated in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It is considered to be one of the major divisions within Christianity, together with the Roman...
.
The group was first formed in 1966 by William McGrath from an independent Orange Lodge that he controlled. It was intended as an outlet for virulent
anti-CatholicismAnti-Catholicism is a generic term for discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed at the Catholic Church and/or its clergy or its members, often rooted in hatred or misunderstanding of their religion or culture...
, with it claimed that the group endorsed
British IsraelismBritish Israelism is the belief that people of Western European descent are also the direct lineal descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and it is often accompanied by the belief that the British Royal Family is directly descended from the line of King David...
as it sometimes claimed that Ulster Protestant were descendants of the Lost tribe of Israel. The group espoused a form of
historical revisionismWithin historiography, that is part of the academic field of history, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event...
, arguing that the early inhabitants of
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
were
ScotsThe Scots people and an ethnic group indigenous to Scotland.An ethnic group, historically they emerged from an amalgamation of Picts, Gaels and Brythons....
or
PictsThe Picts were a confederation of tribes living in what was later to become eastern and northern Scotland from before the Roman conquest of Britain until the 10th century. They lived to the north of the Forth and Clyde rivers, and spoke the extinct Pictish language, thought to have been related to...
, whilst also utilisng
GaelicIrish is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now only spoken natively by a small minority of the Irish population but also plays an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is used...
terms and symbols.
A short-lived alliance with the
Ulster Volunteer ForceThe Ulster Volunteer Force is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. The current incarnation was formed in May 1966 and named after the Ulster Volunteers of 1912, although there is no direct connection between the two....
was attempted and
Roy GarlandRoy Garland is a newspaper columnist for the nationalist Irish News and a member of the Ulster Unionist Party.-Early life:In the 1960s, Roy Garland became convinced that the Northern Ireland civil rights movement was a front for the Irish Republican Army and Catholic Church which would lead to the...
, a leading Orangeman in the 60s and 70s, and now an author, was one of Tara's members who worked closely with the UVF for a time. As a movement Tara sought to establish a Protestant Northern Ireland in which law and order would be paramount and
CatholicismThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
would be outlawed. Tara viewed Catholics as being in a grand conspiracy with
communismCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
and felt that a conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism was inevitable. As a result members of Tara were expected to be proficient in weapon use and were encouraged to join the security forces.
Tara failed to attract much interest as its ideas were too esoteric for most loyalists. McGrath and his deputy
John McKeagueJohn McKeague was an Ulster loyalist figure.McKeague joined the Free Presbyterian Church, led by Ian Paisley. He also supported the Ulster Protestant Volunteers. Later, he joined Tara, an evangelical Protestant group which called for the outlawing of Roman Catholicism in Northern Ireland and...
(also a leading member of the
Red Hand CommandosThe Red Hand Commando is a loyalist paramilitary group closely linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force in Northern Ireland.The RHC was formed in 1972 in the Shankill area of west Belfast by John McKeague . Membership was strong in the Sandy Row and Shankill Road areas of Belfast, as well as east...
) were both members of the
Free Presbyterian ChurchThe Free Presbyterian Church is a Presbyterian denomination founded by the cleric and politician, Ian Paisley in 1951. Most of its members live in Northern Ireland...
, although the influence of Tara did not spread far beyond sections of this church. Indeed the group was known to spread rumours about senior unionist figures whom it felt were too moderate. A 1981 arms find damaged the group whilst McGrath had already been caught up in the
Kincora HouseThe Kincora Boys' Home was a home for working boys in Belfast that was the scene of a notorious child sex abuse scandal.The scandal first came to public attention in January 1980 after a news report in the Irish Independent...
scandal. The movement faded soon afterwards.
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