PUP campaigns to drive racists out of Ballymena

They chant 'No surrender to the IRA' at England internationals and fly the Ulster flag, the symbol of Protestant loyalism, alongside the Cross of St George.

They even come on 'solidarity tours' during the Northern Ireland marching season, hoping to meet idols such as the loyalist terrorist Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair.

But now the far-right neo-Nazis of Britain are being told they are not welcome in the staunchest loyalist town in Ulster and capital of Ian Paisley's Bible belt - Ballymena.

The man leading the campaign to stop English-based far-right groups establishing a base in the province is a former loyalist killer who now supports the peace process.

Over the past three months there have been attacks on houses rented by nurses from the Philippines and Romanian economic migrants in the Co Antrim town.

In response, the ex-Ulster Volunteer Force prisoner Billy McCaughey, and colleagues in the Progressive Unionist Party, PUP, have come on to the streets to drive the neo-Nazis out.

Standing under a street sign covered in race hate leaflets, McCaughey points to a slogan from the National Front. It reads: 'Proud to be British and white.'

'I'm proud to be British too,' he says, 'but you don't have to be white to be British. Even in my most sectarian days I was never a racist.'

His 'sectarian days' began while he was a serving Special Branch officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary by day and a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force at night. He was sentenced to a life sentence for the 1977 murder of Catholic chemist William Strathhearn. In the Maze prison he met Gusty Spence, David Ervine and other UVF leaders who were to push the loyalist movement towards a ceasefire and a compromise with the republicans.

Since the neo-Nazi presence emerged in his home town, McCaughey has been concerned to stop young loyalists joining organisations such as the National Front and the White National Party, a more extreme offshoot of the British National Party.

'These groups can sound attractive to young loyalists because their rhetoric is so pro-British and pro-unionist,' he says. 'But these people are no friends of Ulster loyalists. The PUP believes in a pluralist United Kingdom.

'What's more, the UVF centres its history on the Somme and the sacrifice of Ulster people in two world wars. In the Second World War, Ulster people fought against Hitler and the Nazis, and now these neo-Nazis want to make common cause with us.'

McCaughey said he and fellow PUP members have held meetings in Ballymena to persuade UVF members to have nothing to do with the neo-fascist groups that have descended on the town.

Since the PUP door-to-door campaign against the Far Right began around Easter, there have been no further attacks on immigrant workers in the town.

Not all loyalist terror groups and their political allies are as hostile towards the English Far Right as the UVF and PUP. The Loyalist Volunteer Force maintains connections with the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation Combat 18. Until recently sections of the UDA also had links with C18.