From soldiers to vigilantes: the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association in Northern Ireland on the brink of civil war

This article assesses the importance of an often-ignored vigilante group; the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association. 1969 saw the mobilisation of Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland who had served in the British Army as part of ad-hoc vigilante groups defending nationalist areas. These groups protected Catholic neighbourhoods from loyalist assault and from incursion by the security forces who were increasingly seen as a hostile force. In 1971, this ex-service personnel formed an all-Ireland organisation: the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association. At their peak in the early 1970s, they claimed a membership of 17,000 and an ability to mobilise a further 20,000 in a ‘doomsday scenario’. CESA’s prominence waned by the late 1970s. CESA has received very little academic attention. This article aims to ameliorate that, supplementing the scant secondary literature with newspaper and archival material to account for the emergence of the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association, analysing their importance in shaping the trajectory of the Troubles and saying something of the complexities of identity in the nationalist community in the early period of the conflict.