Republican News · Thursday 3 October 2002

Surviving Adair

BY JIM GIBNEY

So, after 30 years, Johnny Adair is persona non grata to the UDA. What, you may be wondering, has brought about this dramatic outcome, perhaps one of the biggest developments in loyalism since the UVF and UDA ceasefires in late 1994?

Was he expelled because he was leading a peace faction inside the UDA? Every time he has been interviewed by the media, in gaol and since he was recently released, the words 'peace' and 'man of peace' have tripped lightly off his lips.

Was he expelled because of his ambitions to channel his energy in a political direction and join other loyalists like David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson in the northern Assembly after next year's Assembly elections?

Was he expelled because the UDA's 'Inner Council' wants the UDA back on the peace rails and Adair is opposing this? Or perhaps the same 'Council' wants to rein in the loyalist killer gang in Adair's Lower Shankill base and he has to be isolated to make this happen.

Is the UDA leadership trying to stop the attacks on nationalist areas in north Belfast and Short Strand and the bombing campaign against Catholics along the north Antrim coastline by loyalists who support Adair, and Adair's expulsion is needed to publicly signal their disapproval?

Is he a pariah because he is a leading UDA man and the UDA is building a drugs empire that is destroying the lives of working class loyalist teenagers?

Was he expelled because the PSNI's Special Branch, which runs the UDA, thinks he is too dangerous even for them to handle?

Or was he expelled because his associates could no longer bear his fumbling television appearances, with his bulging muscles, tattoo covered arms, dangling ear rings, and reversed baseball cap - in other words, because he is a public embarrassment for loyalism?

If you answered 'No' to all of the above then pat yourself on the back.

Adair's expulsion doesn't signal a 'road to Damascus' conversion by the sectarian leadership and membership of the UDA.

He was ousted because he has been plotting and scheming to take over as 'Supreme Commander' of the UDA. In order for this to happen, he had either to 'persuade', 'cajole' or 'intimidate', Adair-style, the six brigadiers on the UDA's 'Inner Council'. They were having none of that.

He was thrown out because he was establishing links with the Loyalist Volunteer Force, LVF, set up by the notorious Catholic killer, Billy Wright.

He was thrown out because senior UDA men, one a 'brigadier' in East Belfast, Jim Grey, and Bobby Mahood from north Belfast, were recently shot by loyalists. In both shootings, there is a paper trial to Adair's stronghold in the Lower Shankill.

So there is no noble reason for jettisoning Adair. Baser motives are at work, like 'survival'.

Coming as I do from a republican tradition of militarism, which has had its fair share of feuds and personalities whose ego drives them to think they are indispensable to the struggle for freedom and damage it in the process, I can understand why Adair has been removed from his position.

He is a threat to the status quo and the status quo has no intention of rolling over in the face of Adair. Being a member of the UDA's 'Inner Council' brings with it a very comfortable lifestyle.

But of course that is not the whole story. And it would be wrong to dismiss the UDA as nothing more than a mafia type organisation, although it is that as well. In time it might well end up exclusively a criminal group. But it is not that at this moment.

It is important to realise, and this is not a conspiracy theory gone mad, that the UDA, since it was set up in the early '70s, is a puppet of the Crown forces, particularly the RUC/PSNI Special Branch and MI6. It serves their political interests.

There is an abundance of documentary evidence in the public domain to support this view. The most pertinent example is the killing of Pat Finucane. Most of the loyalists involved in this killing were agents of the RUC Special Branch.

It is also important to realise that the political interests of the Special Branch and MI6 doesn't always neatly fit into the British government's interests.

How else can you explain the contradiction between the efforts that John Reid, the British Secretary of State, is putting into pushing the UDA in a political direction while they are involved in widespread sectarian violence which has left many people dead?

How else can you explain the fact that loyalists can kill Catholics with impunity, can wage a three-year-long pogrom using bombs and guns against them and no one is arrested and no houses are raided looking for the pipe bomb factories which are mass producing these lethal devices?

How else can you explain the freedom given by the PSNI to the UDA as their drug empire steadily grows.

The British government need the UDA for a whole series of reasons but perhaps Johnny Adair has outlived his usefulness to them.

A UDA controlled by Adair would be an altogether different animal than the one we have at the moment. So perhaps the military mandarins inside British intelligence circles have called it a day for Adair.