Loyalists in hiding after UDA expels 'Mad Dog'

Fears of a new feud in Belfast after Johnny Adair is thrown out of Northern Ireland's most violent loyalist organisation

Northern Ireland's biggest and most violent loyalist organisation, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), expelled its most notorious figure, Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, yesterday.

A number of senior loyalists immediately left their homes for secret locations, believing that the move would inevitably lead to serious conflict on the streets of Belfast and elsewhere.

The development was seen as the formal declaration of another deadly loyalist feud of the kind that has claimed many lives in recent years.

One senior paramilitary figure has already been killed, and another shot in the face, earlier this month.

Feuds involving Adair tend to cost many lives, and tend to be settled violently rather than through diplomacy. He prevailed in the last feud in 2000, though at a cost of huge disruption in his west Belfast power base on the Shankill Road.

While he remains as west Belfast "Brigadier", the commanders of the UDA's other five districts have now disowned him. Unless Adair's west Belfast members also turn against him, battle-lines have been drawn between his area and the rest of the UDA.

A UDA statement said: "It has come to light that certain people have been acting as agent provocateurs between the UDA and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) to capitalise on events for their own purpose.

"As a result of ongoing investigations, the present Brigadier of west Belfast is no longer acceptable in our organisation."

The charge levelled against Adair is that he has been trying to seize control of the largely federal UDA, which has not had an overall chairman for many years.

Adair is accused of trying to put an associate, Stephen Warnock of the LVF, in command of the east Belfast UDA as part of a power-play to take over the organisation. Adair has been friendly with the LVF for many years.

What is said to be the response of the rest of the UDA to this move came earlier this month when Warnock, a drug dealer, was shot dead in his BMW car.

The next development also took the form of a shooting, when east Belfast Brigadier Jim Gray was shot in the face when he arrived to pay his respects at the Warnock household. He escaped with his life when the gunman's weapon jammed.

Since this was regarded as an LVF attack on the UDA, eyebrows were raised when Adair and other UDA members from west Belfast attended the Warnock funeral.

The origins of the feud lie in the murky paramilitary underworld where continual struggles take place for territory, status and the very substantial revenues generated by drug-dealing and other illegality.

Although loyalist paramilitary outfits began life as avowed defenders of the Protestant community, most of them long ago degenerated into groups concerned with criminality and the gangster lifestyle rather than patriotism.

The UDA has been much in the news recently, with Adair and other leaders meeting the Northern Ireland Secretary, John Reid. While the government has no illusions about the UDA, it takes the view that even the slightest chance of encouraging such groups into politics should be fully explored.

In another development, the north Belfast Brigadier, Andre Shoukri, was remanded in custody this week on a charge of having a gun in a car. He is regarded as a protege of Adair, who turned up at his court appearance.

Almost a score of loyalists have died in internal disputes since the beginning of 2000, sometimes singly and sometimes in extensive bursts of violence.

The most vicious outburst, which cost half a dozen lives, took place when Adair became locked in a feud with another organisation within the Shankill district.

In addition to the deaths, hundreds of people moved out of the district. Many of them had been ordered out by the Adair faction. Years earlier he himself had been regarded as being at the heart of west Belfast UDA's assassination squads, and had received a lengthy prison sentence on a charge of directing terrorism.

As with most other prisoners, he was set free under the early release provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, but he was recalled to jail by Peter Mandelson, the Northern Ireland Secretary at the time, in what proved to be a successful attempt to quell the feud.

Adair was released in May, and was welcomed outside the prison by a crowd that included Jim Gray.

On that occasion he called out the UDA motto, "Quis Separabit" (who shall separate us). Given the new outbreak of feuding, this may well be regarded as an inappropriate sentiment.