Twenty years ago this week, I was a researcher on the controversial Channel 4 Dispatches programme, The Committee, which probed collusion allegations between the police and loyalist paramilitaries.
In the political storm which erupted, I had a private 'not to be quoted' meeting in Belfast with influential loyalist Gusty Spence.
UVF founder Spence had a handshake like an iron vice, which always left me wondering, did he have the same iron grip on the terrorist organisation he helped set up in 1966?
The purpose of that Belfast meeting in October 1991 was to get the UVF's reaction to the programme and to ascertain if the UVF would shoot me in revenge for the show. A UDA contact had already told me I was to be shot for my part in the show.
The collusion allegations exposure had sparked a tidal wave of criticism from the Unionist community – and as someone from that community, I was branded a traitor for helping to make The Committee.
While Spence's father had been a member of Edward Carson's original anti-Home Rule UVF, I'd put heavy dosh that Carson would be spinning in his grave with rage if he witnessed the sectarian slaughter, criminality, and infighting being done in the name of his beloved Ulster Volunteers.
The original UVF showed their true courage by becoming the 36th Ulster Division, which suffered horrific losses at the Somme in 1916.
Carson did not envisage his Volunteers would randomly hunt down Catholics walking home from a pub, abduct them, and inflict sadistic deaths on them as done by Shankill UVF psycho Lennie Murphy and his gang of butchers.
Perhaps Spence picked a good time to die. Generally, he is being hailed as the paramilitary turned peacemaker – the same spin being used by Shinner Irish Presidential candidate Marty McGuinness.
While Spence spent a considerable time in jail for his role in the brutal sectarian killing of teenage barman Peter Ward in the late Sixties, the UVF founder was given a prime role in announcing the 1994 mainstream loyalist ceasefire.
Last November, Spence publicly called on the UVF to disband in the wake of the Shankill killing of Protestant Bobby Moffett.
But is Spence's real legacy that he did not make that speech in 1966 when he was egged on by Right-wing Unionists to reform the UVF? How many lives, Catholic and Protestant, would have been saved if Spence had said an emphatic 'No' to the request.
The key question of his legacy is – why did Spence feel the need to form a terrorist group and hijack the name of the Ulster Volunteers in the first place.
Right-wing Unionists in the late Sixties were not only afraid of the liberal Unionist policies of Terence O'Neill, they were also looking over their shoulders at the rise of fundamentalist cleric Ian Paisley, now Lord Bannside.
A Paisley-supporting militia had already been formed, the Ulster Protestant Volunteers. So did elements within the ruling Unionist Party also want their own working class Protestant militia – not to protect 'Loyal Ulster', but to rival the UPV?
After all, when Spence decided to opt for a political solution rather than a terror war, the UVF's political wing – the Progressive Unionist Party – was seen as an extreme Left-wing, even a communist party under another name.
Paisley-supporting fundamentalists dubbed Spence's PUP as 'the Shankill Soviet'. Were Spence and his political protégé, the MLA and PUP boss David Ervine really loyalist communists?
Okay, Spence could not stop the Shankill Butchers' reign of terror.
But was Spence's real legacy that he pointed numerous young loyalists into political activity – albeit godless socialism – rather than murdering Catholics.
Maybe Spence reached the conclusion that many of the Protestant fundamentalists advocating a war on republicans were only using the loyalist working class as cannon fodder?
