THE leaderships of the main loyalist organisations, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), were already in a militant mood before last night's killing.
In recent weeks the IRA has been targeting senior loyalist figures. The targeting was detected by both the loyalists themselves and the RUC. As a result, prominent figures in the loyalist political parties had security equipment installed in their homes and cars and their offices were fortified.
Paradoxically, in the previous month the loyalists had begun to express hope about consolidating their ceasefires as RUC successes against the IRA mounted. Despite more than two months of offensive action against the security forces, the IRA had not caused any fatalities. The RUC had made repeated finds of IRA arms as well as many arrests.
The IRA gunmen and bombers were also showing themselves almost incapable of carrying through operations which, before the August 1994 ceasefire, would have been expected to kill.
The RUC successes had encouraged loyalists from two points, a senior loyalist paramilitary figure said. They could sit back and watch while considerable numbers of IRA members were caught and imprisoned and, simultaneously, it was clear that if the loyalists started offensive action they too, could expect similar RUC attention.
But in the past two weeks the mood changed. A senior UVF source in Belfast said that while the organisation was abiding by its ceasefire, this was conditional on how events unfolded in the coming months.
Senior loyalists were counselling that while the guarantee to the Union was in place, loyalists should be slow to return to violence which would only divert police attention from the IRA.
This position, however, is not held by the more extreme loyalist elements, the UVF figure said.
These elements were constantly "snapping at the heels" of the leadership and a point would probably be reached where there would be a return to violence, he conceded.
The UDA has already carried out at least two under car booby trap bomb attacks on two republicans. An unknown loyalist figure was also probably responsible for the booby trap grenade attack on a Co Antrim couple in their van two weeks ago. The UVF denied it carried out or sanctioned the Co Ant rim attack.
There is concern among senior loyalists that some sections of the UDA might decide to embark on further attacks regardless of the official agreed loyalist paramilitary position on holding on to a ceasefire.
Senior loyalists dismissed speculation in a Sunday newspaper that loyalist elements, including some figures in Portadown, Co Armagh, and in the Co Antrim area, may be in the process of forming a new loyalist organisation, provisionally entitled the Loyalist Volunteer Force.