My Life in Loyalism

Product Information

Billy "Hutchie" Hutchinson (born 1955) is a Northern Irish Ulster Loyalist politician and activist who served as leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) from 2011 to 2023, now serving as party president.

Finally, I want to emphasise this article is written as a personal effort to use whatever influence I have or credibility which my voice carries to urge people to listen and take the concerns being raised seriously. In 2000 Hutchinson was caught up in a loyalist feud that broke out between the UVF and the West Belfast Brigade of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). I always say I was born into a mixed marriage because my father was a socialist and my mother was a unionist”; as a child, his father took him to the Falls to play in the park, and to the cinema. People look down their noses at me because of what I’ve done but they were the people that were talking out of the side of their hands, [saying ‘good job’]. At time of interview in 2011 he was Councillor on Belfast City Council and worked as Co-ordinator for the Mount Vernon Community Development Forum.When you go to the Assembly you don’t make decisions as an MLA, what you do is scrutinise, and what do you change? As an authentic link between the UVF and the PUP, he was at the forefront of negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement and was the UVF’s point of contact during the weapons decommissioning programme. Both men were influenced by the example of Sinn Féin, who had demonstrated that an articulate media presence could ensure that paramilitary groups' demands might be heard. This acknowledged the hurt suffered by victims of Loyalist violence, something the IRA has yet to do fully. Last week, Assistant Chief Constable Mark McEwan told a Westminster committee that loyalist paramilitaries were likely to have played a role in organising peaceful anti-protocol rallies which took place on a regular basis until the summer.

Love, loathe, admire or condemn him, there is no escaping Hutchinson's place in the loyalist history of Northern Ireland. These young loyalists formed the basis of the reformed YCV, which Hutchinson played a leading role in re-establishing in the early 1970s. William Hutchinson (July 1870 – July 1943) was an English footballer who played in the Football League for Stoke.Progressive Unionist Party leader, Billy Hutchinson: Spent 15 years in prison, but encouraged loyalists away from violence. A protest followed outside the police station in which he was being held although ultimately Hutchinson was released without charge.

Everybody just needs to wait to see what happens and then after that, allow the politics to take over. In my mind, that means no unionist should or could put their hand to accepting or implementing the Protocol, in any guise.

He may not have won a large number of votes in recent elections, but Hutchinson represents a strand of Unionism that is open to change. Wright had been close to the West Belfast UDA and as a result their leading hitman Stephen McKeag shot up a Catholic bar in the Cliftonville Road in retaliation. Over the weekend, the Sunday Life reported that senior UVF figures have warned that loyalists will “wreck the place” and “the streets will be in flames” if any Brexit deal between the UK and EU does not meet their demands.