Professor Henry Patterson of Ulster University in Belfast has contested a published view that unionists showed little hostility to the Republic of Ireland during the Troubles. He focused on unionists in border counties who faced an IRA campaign targeting part-time UDR and RUC members.

Patterson cited a 1980 report by journalist David McKittrick describing those members as vulnerable to attacks despite carrying legally issued weapons. In June of that year, 38-year-old UDR part-timer Richard Latimer was killed by gunfire in his hardware shop in Newtownbutler, Fermanagh, in front of his son. The Latimer family had relocated there after IRA attacks forced them from their border farm.

Bonnie Latimer, Richard's widow, joined three other Fermanagh security force widows in meeting Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street. They described the Republic as a safe haven where IRA murders were planned and perpetrators returned. They noted Garda members who drank publicly with IRA figures but lacked authority from Dublin to arrest them.

By the Anglo-Irish Agreement, 75 lives had been lost to the Provisional IRA campaign in Fermanagh, with only one conviction. Killings persisted into the 1990s. Border unionists blamed the IRA primarily and criticised the Irish state for not acting against use of its territory. Their frustration with the UK government stemmed from granting Ireland a governance role in Northern Ireland.