Johnny Adair - Loyalist Feuds

Loyalist Feuds

Since his release, much of Adair's activities have been bound up with violent internecine feuds within the UDA and between the UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groupings. The motivation for such violence is sometimes difficult to piece together. It involves a combination of political differences over the loyalist ceasefires, rivalry between loyalists over control of territory and competition over the proceeds of organised crime.

In August 2000, Adair was injured by a pipe bomb he was transporting in a car.

That same month on 19 August Adair organised a "loyalist day of culture" on the lower Shankill Road. He invited the five other brigadiers from the Inner Council to attend along with leading loyalist Michael Stone and politicians John White and Frank McCoubrey. This event featured loyalist marching bands and a militant show of strength by the West Belfast Brigade. It also sparked a violent feud between the UDA and its rival loyalist organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Clashes first broke outside the "Diamond Jubilee" on the lower Shankill then spread to the "Rex Bar", a popular UVF drinking den where shots were fired and and UVF members beaten up. Adair and his followers then attacked the homes of UVF members and their families in the lower Shankill, forcing them out of the area, whilst orders were also sent up to A Company in Highfield that the estate should be "cleansed" of UVF members. Adair's men also sacked the homes of Gusty Spence and Winston Churchill Rea as part of a move to drive the UVF off the Shankill. The UVF struck back on 21 August, killing two of Adair's allies, Jackie Coulter and Bobby Mahood, on the Crumlin Road. In response C Company members burned down the headquarters of the UVF-linked Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). However Adair was arrested on 22 August 2000 whilst he and Dodds were driving down the Shankill Road. As a result of his involvement in the violence, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Mandelson had revoked Adair's early release and returned him to prison. This time he was sent to Maghaberry instead of the Maze. With command reverting to Dodds, UVF member Samuel Rockett was shot and killed at his home by C Company the following night, with the feud petering out after this.

On 15 May 2002, Adair was released from prison again. Outside the prison he was greeted by up to 300 of his supporters. Once free, he was a key part of an effort to forge stronger ties between the UDA/UFF and the LVF, a small breakaway faction of the UVF founded in 1996 by the charismatic Billy Wright and following his killing, commanded by Mark "Swinger" Fulton, with whom Adair was on good terms. Fulton had been in Maghaberry since December 2001. The most open declaration of this alliance was a joint mural depicting Adair's UDA "C company" and the LVF. Other elements in the UDA/UFF strongly resisted these movements, which they saw as an attempt by Adair to win external support in a bid to take over the leadership of the UDA. Some UDA members disliked his overt association with the drugs trade, which the LVF were even more heavily involved with. For his part Adair controlled a block of flats in his lower Shankill stronghold from which he and his allies dealt drugs. Adair also sought to work closely with Belfast-based dissidents such as Frankie Curry and Jackie Mahood, provoking further anger from the UVF. Another loyalist feud erupted, and ended with several men dead and scores evicted from their homes. The Rathcoole home of long-standing UDA member Sammy Duddy was raked by gunfire; although Duddy was not injured in the shooting attack, his pet chihuahua dog, "Bambi" was fatally wounded by shots fired through the front door by masked gunmen from Adair's C Company. Adair later admitted in an interview he gave for journalist Suzanne Breen that Duddy never got over the loss of "Bambi".

On 13 September 2002, Jim Gray - the head of the UDA in East Belfast and an arch rival of Adair - was shot in the face by Adair's supporters. The shooting was described by the police as "loosely related" to the death of Stephen Warnock, an LVF leader, as part of a loyalist feud. Adair had been spreading rumours that Gray and John Gregg, head of the UDA South East Antrim Brigade, were both to be stood down as part of his attempts to take full control of the UDA. As part of this campaign Adair had visited Warnock's family and told them that Gray had been involved in their relative's death, even though he was aware that it had actually been carried out by a hired Red Hand Commando (RHC) gunman after Warnock refused to pay a drug debt to a North Down businessman. As a result Gray was shot by a lone gunman after he left the Warnock home, where he had been paying his respects to the deceased.