Republican News · Thursday 6 February 2002

Two of a kind, Gregg and Adair

BY LAURA FRIEL

Their lack of response to loyalist violence makes it clear that unionist politicians haven't got their heads around the fact that the greatest threat to the safety and prosperity of their own constituents comes from the paramilitares that those same politicians played footsie with us for more than a generation. - Brian Feeney, writing in the Irish News on Wednesday 5 February

Recently, Church of Ireland Reverend Earl Storey, speaking at the Dublin Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, endorsed unionist rejectionism and described it as 'unreasonable' to expect unionists to share power with republicans. But if this week's events have shown anything, it has been to expose just how untenable such a position has become.

If unionist communities are to purge themselves of the brutal outworkings of unionist paramilitary violence, power sharing with nationalists and republicans is not only reasonable, it is an urgent imperative. Change, transition, progress, development are all inextricably linked to the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and its power sharing pluralist institutions.

Tragically, since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, instead of moving forward, unionist rejectionism has repeatedly tried to cling to the old power relations of domination and repression. And within this, unionist paramilitaries have played an integral part.

In recent years, in a collective determination to thwart the Agreement, unionist paramilitaries have systematically attacked vulnerable Catholic areas in an attempt to break the IRA cessation and thereby provide unionist politicians with a mechanism with which to exclude Sinn Féin.

Unionist political leaders could have rejected this sectarian campaign of violence by the UDA and UVF as a means to achieve their ends. They could have used their public office to isolate the men of violence within their own communities and generated political pressure to ensure their declared ceasefires became a reality. They did not.

Instead, David Trimble and Ian Paisley fed two myths. The first was that republicans posed the greatest risk to the peace process in general and the unionist community in particular. The second was that unionist paramilitary violence was defensive, reactive and if not exactly justifiable, at least understandable.

But in order to sustain this lie, unionist politicians not only failed the northern nationalist community, they also betrayed a sizable section of their own community.

Unleashed and unchecked, unionist paramilitary violence has continued to wreak havoc in some unionist areas as well as against vulnerable nationalist areas. The ongoing UDA feud is just an extreme expression of the outworkings of unionist paramilitary violence within unionist communities.

While the current brutal internecine violence is highly visible, the ongoing misery of unionist paramilitary intimidation, lawlessness, drug dealing and vice rings is less obvious but just as destructive to the unionist people unfortunate to live amongst it.

John Gregg lived a violent life. His violence earned him respect and money and power and when it was convenient for British rule in Ireland, it also ensured immunity from prosecution. But this was nothing unique; there were and are plenty of other unionist paramilitaries just like him.

Johnny Adair, another UDA leader, is just like him. Like Gregg, Adair carved out his reputation as a UDA leader by taking part, organising and ordering sectarian violence, often resulting in deaths and injuries and always resulting in fear and terror.

Adair, a glue sniffing racist who developed into a steroid abusing bigot, addicted as much to a sense of his own importance as any illegal substance, is currently the prime suspect in the ambush that killed John Gregg and another member of the UDA last Saturday night. Of course, currently incarcerated in Maghaberry jail, Johnny Adair could not actually pull the trigger but few doubt the order came from him.

Just hours before his death, Gregg had issued a chilling threat to members of Adair's Shankill based C Company. In the company of William 'Mo' Courtney, a former close associate of Adair now turncoat, Gregg told a tabloid journalist, "make no mistake about this, we're going into the Shankill to take out three or four people who are Johnny Adair's puppets".

Apparently referring to Adair and John White, both recently expelled from the UDA, Gregg continued, "no matter what happens there are two graves going to be dug for two men who have engaged in treason against the organisation.

"If others want to stay with those two men, they will go the same way. There won't be anywhere safe for them to hide in Northern Ireland when we move against them."

John Gregg, one of five members of the UDA Inner Council, then travelled to Scotland in the company of his 18-year-old son, Stuart, other members of the UDA and supporters of the Glasgow Rangers football team.

After the match, Gregg joined other Rangers supporters on the ferry back to Belfast. The ferry docked around 10pm on Saturday night. The taxi carrying John Gregg, his son and two other passengers was ambushed a short distance from the ferry terminal. The car was riddled with bullets and John Gregg (45) died at the scene.

A second member of the UDA, Robert Carson (33), died later in hospital. The taxi driver sustained serious injuries and remains critical. The other two passengers, including Gregg's son, escaped uninjured.

As leader of the UDA in South East Antrim, John Gregg was responsible for numerous sectarian attacks, including the killings of Catholic postman Danny McColgan (20), Protestant teenager Gavin Brett and Trevor Lowry, the latter kicked to death in the mistaken belief he was a Catholic.

Revered in unionist paramilitary circles for his role in the attempted assassination of Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams in 1984, Gregg was described after his death as "driven by pure and absolute bigotry". This was the epitaph chosen, not by any member of the nationalist or republican community, but by a senior member of the PSNI.

The ambush in which Gregg died was one of a number of attacks believed to have been carried out by Adair's associates on Saturday night. A number of shots were fired into the house of UPRG member Sammy Duddy just before 10pm.

In east Belfast, shots were fired into a house in Tullycarret. The intended target is believed to have been Jim Gray, leader of the east Belfast UDA and member of the Inner Council.

A pipe bomb was planted outside the Carrickfergus home of Andre Shoukri. Shoukri, another member of the UDA Inner Council who shafted Adair, is currently facing arms charges. Shoukri was once favoured by Adair but later became a bitter rival.

Meanwhile, jail associate of Adair and Milltown UDA killer, Michael Stone, was giving the media a psychological profile of his former cellmate. The picture he painted was both ridiculous and sinister - a boastful, unthinking, insecure addict with a hunger for paramilitary power.

"True loyalists have to ask themselves what Johnny Adair actually did - he pleaded guilty and told the cops everything. How smart is that?" asked Stone.

But the truth is that unionist paramilitaries like Adair and Gregg never needed to be smart. They left their thinking to the British Intelligence agents who reorganised and rearmed them or to members of the Special Branch who helped them select their targets and who covered up after them.

Unionist paramilitaries like Adair and Gregg left their political aspirations to the unionist politicians who kept their hands clean but utilised unionist paramilitary violence when expedient.

John Gregg was a brutal sectarian killer and there will be no tears shed for him within the nationalist communities he terrorised for many years. There will be no tears shed for those that follow Gregg to the grave in what appears to be a far from over bloodletting feud.

But if the next generation of Protestant poor, many already waiting in the wings, are to avoid revisiting this discredited past, unionist politicians and other community leaders must begin to think imaginatively about their future. It might even involve taking a risk and working with everyone else to ensure it's a better future. It might also involve actively supporting the Good Friday Agreement.