In the early 1970s many young men from both the Protestant and Catholic working class in Belfast found themselves thrust to the forefront of an increasingly vicious sectarian war. While republicans had always fostered a culture of rebellion and struggle in their quest for a united Ireland, loyalists had sought to preserve the broad status quo. They wished to remain part of the UK, and shared similar experiences to their working-class neighbours in the industrial heartlands of England, Scotland and Wales. In the same manner, street gangs in working-class Protestant areas of Belfast mirrored the experiences and subcultural rituals of similar gangs in those countries and their major cities.

When faced with constitutional uncertainty and IRA violence directed at the communities from which they came, the Protestant youth gangs evolved into the more militant Tartans. In May 1972 they were described by one woman in East Belfast as ‘Our boys of tomorrow’. What did she mean by this? That became abundantly clear only a matter of weeks later, when numbers of the Woodstock Tartan were recruited into the RHC, UVF and UDA.