Involvement With Loyalism
His older brother Billy Spence was a founding member of Ulster Protestant Action in 1956. Gusty Spence himself was frequently involved in street fights with republicans and garnered a reputation as a "hard man". He was also associated loosely with radical unionists such as Ian Paisley and Desmond Boal and was advised by both men in 1959 when he launched a protest against Gerry Fitt at Belfast City Hall after Fitt had described Spence's regiment as "murderers" over allegations that they had killed civilians in Cyprus. Spence, along with other Shankill Road loyalists, would break from Paisley in 1965 when they sided with Jim Kilfedder in a row that followed the latter's campaigns in Belfast West. Paisley had intimated that Kilfedder, a rival for the leadership of dissident unionism, was close to Fine Gael after learning that he had attended party meetings while a student at Trinity College, Dublin. The Shankill loyalists however supported Kilfedder and following his election as MP sent a letter to Paisley accusing him of treachery during the entire affair.
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“Not only do our wives need support, but our children need our deep involvement in their lives. If this period [the early years] of primitive needs and primitive caretaking passes without us, it is lost forever. We can be involved in other ways, but never again on this profoundly intimate level.”
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