Saor Uladh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Saor Uladh - (Irish for Free Ulster) were a short lived paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland in the 1950s.
Seen as a splinter group of the Irish Republican Army, they were formed in County Tyrone by Liam Kelly in 1953. Kelly had been dismissed from the Irish Republican Army in 1951, for planning an operation without Army Council consent. Kelly was later elected to the Seanad in 1954, due mainly to the efforts of Seán MacBride.
Saor Uladh was involved in 1955 in an attack on the RUC barracks in Rosslea, County Fermanagh, and in May 1957 in blowing up the canal lock in Newry.
Saor Uladh were closely associated with the revisionist, leftist, Irish republicanism of the Clann na Poblachta party - then in government - though no formal link was ever established or admitted and their central political demand was the replacement of the Parliament of Northern Ireland with a nine county Dail Uladh to determine the future of the "North of Ireland".
Their military campaign saw the destruction of several customs posts. They faded away and 1950s physical force republicanism is chiefly remembered for the IRA's Border Campaign and not the actions of Saor Uladh.
