Republican News · Thursday 3 October 2002

More violence predicted as UDA splits

BY LAURA FRIEL

Of one thing northern nationalists can be certain. As with the wrangle within unionism in which David Trimble finally surrendered to the anti-Agreement lobby within his own ranks last week, the current bitter and bloody feuding between loyalist paramilitaries will also end with Catholics picking up the price tag.

As Susan McKay of the Tribune acknowledged, "loyalists from both sides of the latest divide predict more violence. They also predict that the violence will turn outwards again as unity is sought in reasserting the common enemy. Any Catholic will do."

Loyalist posters appearing in North Belfast this week proclaimed UDA icon Johnny Adair a criminal. "Guilty," ran the message, "of loose talk, self-profit, drug dealing, gangsterism and demeaning the proud cause of Ulster loyalism." Adair's "only crime", it continued, "was loyalty (to himself)".

Of course, this has always been true. Adair's inability to keep his mouth shut and avoid boasting about how many Catholics he had killed landed him in jail in the mid-1990s. Similarly, drug dealing and gangsterism has become a way of life for members of the UDA.

Adair's journey from loyalist 'hero' to 'traitor' in less then five months is more likely to have been precipitated by his widely acknowledged desire to add 'top' to his epithet 'mad dog'.

Inherent tensions between loyalist paramilitaries spilled into the public consciousness on Friday 13 September, with the killing of LVF leader and close associate of Johnny Adair, Steven Warnock.

According to the media, Warnock's LVF in East Belfast and North Down owed the UDA £100,000 for drug deals. But if the killing was intended to frighten off other loyalists threatening to muscle in on UDA rackets, it was also seen as notice to Adair to curtail his association with the LVF.

The fatal shooting followed an earlier gun attack targeting another associate of Johnny Adair's, Davy Mahood of the UDA. In the wake of the Mahood shooting, three Catholic men were injured in a drive by-loyalist shooting in North Belfast.

Nigel Dodds, DUP Assembly member for North Belfast, later reiterated Mahood's false assertion that the attack against him had been carried out by republicans.

Three days after the Warnock killing, UDA leader Jim Gray survived a gun attack in which he was shot in the face. Gray had been attending Warnock's wake when a lone gunman confronted him.

According to the media, following the Gray shooting, while the UDA leadership plotted revenge, Adair tipped off his associates in the rival LVF. The LVF leadership informed the UDA of the intervention, leaving Adair to play the fall guy.

Citing a catch phrase from a popular television quiz show, graffiti along the Shankill Road declared, "Johnny Adair, you are the weakest link, goodbye".

When Adair was released from jail last May, all six UDA ruling council leaders met him at the gates, but as Rosie Cowan of the British Guardian pointed out, "now it is more likely to be pistols at dawn after five of those commanders unceremoniously dumped him after accusing him of treason" against the organisation. Adair had already ousted the sixth after regaining control of the lower Shankill's notorious C company.

On Wednesday 25 September, the UDA leadership issued a statement expelling the West Belfast commander, who they denounced as an 'agent provocateur' intent on exploiting the rift between the UDA and LVF to pursue his own power agenda.

Adair's loyalist rising star was founded on ignominy, built on ignominy and ended much the same. An early photograph of Adair as a teenager at a neo Nazi rally exposed the soon to be UDA leader as a beer swilling racist in the companion of other glue sniffing thugs.

Since the late 1980s, Adair's name has been linked to dozens of sectarian killings of Catholics. At the height of his killing sprees, Adair's apparent immunity from arrest or prosecution led many to believe, even within his own organisation, that he was acting as a British or Special Branch agent.

In more recent years, within northern nationalist communities Adair will be remembered as a key figure fuelling sectarian violence at interface areas throughout the city, stoking anti-Catholic hatred within his own community to swell his own power base with youthful recruits.

The UDA and its new political wing, the Ulster Political Research Group, also expelled Adair's close associate John White. Curiously, White has always denied being a member of the UDA.

As a sectarian killer, White had been jailed in the mid-1970s for the brutal killing of a nationalist politician and his Protestant friend, Irene Andrews. As well as being shot, Paddy Wilson was stabbed 32 times and his companion 19 times in what the trial judge called "a frenzied attack, a psychotic outburst". At the time, White had told the court that "any Roman Catholic would have done".

The fear is that in an attempt to shore up loyalist unity and distract the rank and file from further internecine feuding, loyalists paramilitaries will escalate sectarian violence and any Catholic will do.