Johnny Adair

Adair succeeded Jim Spence as brigadier in 1993 after Spence was imprisoned for extortion.[16] When Adair became the first person in Northern Ireland charged with directing terrorism in 1995, he admitted that he had been a UDA leader for three years up to 1994. During this time, Adair and his colleagues were involved in multiple random murders of Catholic civilians, mostly carried out by a special killing unit led by Stevie "Top Gun" McKeag.[17] At Adair's trial in 1995, the prosecuting lawyer said he was dedicated to his cause against those whom he "regarded as militant republicans – among whom he had lumped almost the entire Roman Catholic population".[18]

Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives believe his unit killed up to 40 people in this period.[19] Adair once remarked to a Catholic journalist from the Republic of Ireland that normally Catholics traveled in the boot of his car.[20] According to a press report in 2003, Adair was handed details of republican suspects by the Intelligence Corps, and was even invited for dinner with them in the early 1990s.[21]

In his autobiography, he alleged he was frequently passed information by sympathetic British Army members, and that his own whereabouts were passed to republican paramilitaries by the RUC Special Branch, who, he claimed, hated him.[22] As brigadier of the West Belfast UDA, Adair was entitled to one of the six seats on the organisation's Inner Council and in this role, because he wanted to continue on the path of violence, clashed frequently with South East Antrim Brigadier Joe English, who advocated seeking a peace settlement.[23]

The BBC described Adair as "the most controversial, high-profile and ubiquitous" of all the paramilitaries operating in Northern Ireland during this period.[24] The IRA's Shankill Road Bombing of a fish shop in October 1993 was an attempt to assassinate Adair and the rest of the UDA's Belfast leadership in reprisal for attacks on Catholics. The office above the shop was the UDA's Shankill headquarters and a meeting was due to take place shortly after the bomb exploded.[25][26] The bomb detonated prematurely, killing one of the two IRA men, Thomas Begley, and nine Protestants (a UDA volunteer and eight civilians). The UDA retaliated by carrying out the Greysteel massacre in County Londonderry, an attack on the Rising Sun bar in which eight civilians, two of whom were Protestants, were shot dead. While Adair was targeted for assassination a number of times, he frequently exaggerated the number of attempts.[27]

During this time, undercover officers from the RUC had recorded months of discussions with Adair in which he boasted of his activities, producing enough evidence to charge him with directing terrorism. He was convicted on 6 September 1995 and sentenced to 16 years in the Maze prison.[28] As is standard practice in the UDA, Adair vacated his position as Brigadier upon entering prison, with his friend Winkie Dodds succeeding him.[29]

Adair was held with other loyalist prisoners in their "block" of the prison. In prison, according to some reports, Adair sold drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy tablets and amphetamines to other loyalist prisoners, earning him an income of £5,000 a week.[30]

In January 1998, Adair was one of five loyalist prisoners visited in the prison by British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Mo Mowlam. She persuaded them to drop their objection to their political representatives continuing the talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement in April that year. Following the killing of Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) leader Billy Wright inside the Maze prison by the INLA the previous December, the UDA prisoners had voted two to one to withdraw from the peace process.[31] Adair's co-operation was essential as he was regarded as the key figure in securing the support of the other loyalist prisoners.[24]

At the end of April 1999, while he was on home leave from prison, Adair was shot at and grazed by a bullet in the head at a UB40 concert in Belfast which he had attended with his wife.[32] He blamed the shooting on republicans, although a drug dealer was responsible.[33][34] In September 1999, Adair was released as part of the early-release scheme for paramilitary prisoners under the Belfast Agreement.[24]

The "Diamond Jubilee" pub on the lower Shankill Road was the favourite meeting place for Adair and his C Company

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

In August 2000 Adair claimed he had been attacked with a pipe bomb by the IRA.[35][36] That same month, on 19 August, he 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 loyalist[37][38] 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 marked the start of a violent feud between the UDA and its main rival, 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 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,[39] while orders were also sent to A Company in Highfield that the estate should be "cleansed" of UVF members.[40]

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.[39][41] 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).[42] 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, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Mandelson revoked Adair's early release and returned him to prison. This time he was sent to Maghaberry instead of the Maze.[24] With command reverting to Dodds, UVF member Samuel Rockett was killed by C Company the following night. The UVF struck back and 4 more people on both sides were killed before the feud then petered out.

On 15 May 2002, Adair was released from prison again. Outside the prison he was greeted by up to 300 of his supporters.[43] Once free, he was a key part of an effort to forge stronger ties between the UDA and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), a small breakaway faction of the UVF founded in 1996 by 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 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.[44]

Adair also sought to work closely with Belfast-based dissidents such as Frankie Curry and Jackie Mahood, provoking further anger from the UVF.[45] 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 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.[46]

On 13 September 2002, Jim Gray – the head of the UDA in East Belfast and an archrival of Adair – was shot in the face by Adair's supporters.[47] 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.[48]

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.[49] 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.[50]

On 20 September 2002, Adair was summoned to an Inner Council meeting held in Sandy Row where there was a showdown between him and the other brigadiers, including Gray. Fearing an ambush, Adair had his allies "Fat" Jackie Thompson and James "Sham" Millar smuggle a pistol for him to the meeting. Five days later, Adair was expelled from the UDA for treason along with close associate John White. Adair's response to the expulsion was "Fuck them uns" and declared the West Belfast Brigade a separate organisation from the mainstream UDA.[51] He even erected "West Belfast UDA – Business as Usual" banners on the Shankill Road.[52] By this point Adair had even lost the support of the Shoukri brothers, his proteges in north Belfast who had been amongst his closest allies outside of his own area but who decided to side with the mainstream UDA in this dispute.[51] There were attempts on Adair's and White's lives.

Adair returned to prison in January 2003, when his early release licence was revoked by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Paul Murphy on grounds of engaging in unlawful activity. He appointed "Fat" Jackie Thompson as his replacement as Brigadier.[53] On 1 February 2003, UDA divisional leader John Gregg was shot dead along with another UDA member, Robert "Rab" Carson, on returning from a Rangers FC match in Glasgow. The killing was widely blamed on Adair's C Company – Gregg was one of those who had organised the expulsion of Adair from the UDA. Among the mainstream UDA, a powerful faction of Adair opponents quickly formed under the leadership of South Belfast brigadier Jackie McDonald. In the early hours of 6 February (five days after Gregg's shooting and just hours before his funeral was due to take place), about twenty Adair supporters, including White and Adair's wife, fled their homes for Scotland after 100 heavily armed men from the mainstream UDA invaded Adair's stronghold, forcing them to quit Northern Ireland.[54]