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Showing posts with label Johnny Adair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Johnny Adair. Show all posts
Brandon Sullivan ✒ ✍ “We were the business. There was no one better than us.” - Sam “Skelly” McCrory.

Intro

Skelly McCrory’s death in July 2022 was widely reported. He slipped and fell, suffering catastrophic fatal injuries, outside his flat in a rundown part of Ayr, Scotland. The business that Skelly referred to in the quote above was the operations of the West Belfast UDA/UFF, roughly speaking from around 1987 to 1994. This piece will look into some aspects of McCrory’s life, and tie together the fates of some other West Belfast UDA figures, including Johnny Adair.

Much has been written about Adair, the volume of which in my opinion significantly outweighs his importance in the Troubles. Adair is a gifted self-publicist, and this has led to many histories of loyalism in general, and the UDA in particular, focusing heavily on him and the actions of those around him. Despite the self-congratulatory hyperbole, when analysed closely, far from being the most effective paramilitary unit of the Troubles, they were not even the most prolific iteration of “C Company.” I was given an opportunity to view files that the RUC prepared for the case to prosecute him for Directing Terrorism. Much of the detail of these files is already in the public domain, reported by Hugh Jordan, Ian S. Wood, Martin Dillon, and others.

As with many of my pieces, I sometimes find news reports of persons with the same name and approximate age as those I am writing about. Unfortunately I am unable to confirm if they are indeed the same person, so simply give the details as reported and cite the source, which is usually the Belfast Telegraph via the British Newspaper Archive.

Bigots, Skinheads, Hoods, and respectable unionist cover

On Friday, 2nd November 1979, three men were given six months in prison each for an assault, in which hammers were used, which fractured the skull of a 14 year old named Samuel McCory. The assault happened in the Crumlin Road area of Belfast, and appears to have been a reprisal for earlier incidents involving “gangs of youths” harassing locals. I do not know if this is Skelly, but he would have been 14 in 1979. The last reported criminal incident I know of involving Skelly was in 2019, a bizarre incident which involved indecent exposure and homophobic abuse.

One of the interesting, and unreported, details from the RUC Adair files concerns George Seawright, UVF member, Belfast City Unionist Councillor, and assailant of Tom King. Adair, and others, were seen in Seawright’s company in 1986, and the RUC assumed a “process of sectarian indoctrination” was taking place, with Seawright playing the role of indoctrinator. Given the close friendship of Adair & Skelly, it’s probable that Skelly was with Adair. But I think, not for the first time, the RUC had it wrong. Adair and his friends were already deeply sectarian by that stage, as well as being violent, anti-social, and deeply dysfunctional criminals who enjoyed the power their violence gave them. Seawright was given an eulogy in an “Official National Front” publication, that lauded his far-right credentials and links with the NF. Perhaps it wasn’t just sectarian indoctrination that had taken place with Skelly & Adair, though the racial politics seemed to recede in importance to the men. Adair and his friends association with the NF dated to at least 1983.

In April 1983, a 36 year old homeless alcoholic Catholic man named Patrick Barkey had the misfortune to meet three men from the Shankill area who called themselves “NF Skinz.” William Madine (17), Clifford Bickerstaff (18), and Albert Martin (19) were originally charged with murder, but convicted of manslaughter. Despite luring the vulnerable Mr Barkey to what would be the scene of his death, and using their fists, feet, and concrete blocks to ill Mr Barkey, the trio were provided with “character references from respectable unionist politicians” (UDA, McDonald & Cusack) which helped them receive sentences ranging from 12 months suspended (Martin) to under three years (Madine, Bickerstaff). Adair and Skelly were named as members of NF Skinz by Henry McDonald in the Guardian, but there’s no suggestion they were involved in this particularly squalid killing. In 1991, eight years after 18 year old William Madine violently killed a defenceless man, another William Madine from the Shankill vicinity (I can’t confirm if it is the same man) aged 25 was charged with a violent assault on a Belfast woman. Skelly had a son named Samuel Madine – again, I cannot confirm if he is any relation is the violent Shankill “NF Skin.”

The UDA’s Political Animals

Skelly and Adair were given to proclaiming their effectiveness in targeting the IRA. Skelly saying that “The IRA had the upper hand so we decided to fight fire with fire and fight the IRA on a level battlefield and they didn’t like it” with Adair recently saying, about Skelly:

Sam McCrory wasn’t just a crazed gunman. He followed a carefully thought-out strategy … He was a political animal who physically stood up to the IRA. And when the time was right, he supported peace.

In terms of taking the war to the IRA’s door (a wearisome loyalist trope), it is true that Skelly was sentenced to 16 years for the attempted murder of two senior IRA figures. But it is also true that that operation was a security force set-up, and the chances of either IRA man dying at the hands of the UDA/UFF was remote. That ill-fated operation in 1992 led to one loyalist saying “they [security forces] were going to wipe us out – this was going to be our Loughall (Mad Dog, Lister & Jordan, p125). This gives the entire collusion debate another, usually overlooked, angle.

Killings that Skelly has been linked to (in the Belfast Telegraph 11th Aug 2022) include ex-internee Francisco Notarantonio, a pensioner, and an English man named Patrick Hamill, both in 1987. It’s difficult to see how either of these killings could be considered taking the war to the IRA in any feasible way.

Just over a week before Skelly and his comrades drove into the security force ambush, UDA members in East Belfast murdered a 51 year old teacher named Cyric Murray. A former colleague of Mr Murray’s had this to say about him and his death:

It was unbelievable that it happened. He wasn’t a political animal in any way at all ... He was quiet, reserved, shy. He’d given his whole career to the children. That was his life – the school was his life. He was dedicated to his school and the children. When I look back on it, I think it was an awful waste. A terrible act. And, really, they couldn’t have picked a worse target.

I wonder what Skelly, the “political animal” following a “carefully thought out strategy” would have made of the murder of Mr Murray, a man dedicated to education, who was not a “political animal.” I am unaware of this question being put to him.

I’m frequently baffled at the lack of challenge given to loyalists who see the post Anglo-Irish-Agreement phase of their violence as successful, let alone different, to loyalist campaigns that preceded it.

“When the time was right, he [Skelly McCrory] supported peace.”

Mo Mowlan, as was heavily reported at the time, visited the UDA/UFF prisoners in HMP Maze, and this supposedly played a role in maintaining the UDA/UFF ceasefire in the late 1990s. In 2000, Skelly is alleged to have led a massive crowd of UDA/UFF members and supporters during an assault on the Rex Bar on the Shankill Road (Mad Dog, p289). The Belfast Telegraph reported that he was one of the those who opened fire on the bar. Again, it’s difficult to see a carefully thought out strategy at play here, but I revisited some sources and, whilst it’s speculation on my part, can perhaps see a rationale for the attack on the Rex Bar, and the subsequent loyalist feud, which was intense and bloody, as well as devastating and traumatic for the Shankill Road community. I am starting to think that the nucleus of the Shankill feud sat with John White. One thing is abundantly clear though: the UDA’s penchant for nihilistic, politically barren violence didn’t stop with the Good Friday Agreement.

When sadistic, oddball knife killers fallout: John White vs the UVF

In Jack Holland’s book, Hope Against History, John White claimed that the UDA’s C Company were responsible for “90%” of the sectarian violence in Belfast between 1972 and 1976. This is highly unlikely given the range of organisations carrying out killings in this era, including the Red Hand, UVF, and some elements of the Provisional IRA. White, like Adair, seems to enjoy publicity and revising his own history. Despite White’s egotism, Hope Against History is a good book to get a sense of the UDA without the undue focus and attention given to Adair. It’s published prior to Adair’s weird attempts to place himself front and centre of loyalism, and a meek media’s acquiesce to his desires.

Ian S. Wood in his peerless book about the UDA, Crimes of Loyalty, wrote this about John White in particular, and tensions between the UVF and UDA in general:

The lingering antagonism between the two organisations supposedly brought into being by a common enemy was clearly voiced in a short and lavishly illustrated history of the UDA published late in 1999 and widely believed to have been compiled by John White. In the section entitled 'Casualties' he declared: "It is sad and quite ironic that the UDA had more men murdered by the UVF than by the IRA. In fact the UVF has been responsible for murdering twenty seven members of the UDA. In many cases these crimes were carried out for no other reason than rivalry and disrespect for an organisation which the UVF saw as a threat to its power base and influence in the Loyalist community." He went on to refer to the "deep resentment among many UDA members towards the UVF that still comes to the surface from time to time.

White’s animus against the UVF could well stem from his belief that UVF members (some of the ‘Shankill Butchers’ gang) gave the RUC information about him (Hope Against History), leading to his intense interrogation and subsequent conviction for the “psychotic outburst” murder of Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews. In 1977, the RUC put it to UVF member William Moore that he’d been involved in recent cutthroat murders. Moore replied “It was the UDA in the lower Shankill who committed those murders” (Shankill Butchers, Dillon, p209). Moore was deflecting: it was him and his friends who had committed cutthroat murders in the mid-1970s, but it was indeed the lower Shankill UDA who committed many murders of Catholic civilians involving knives and torture. White may well be correct about the source of information about him. Interestingly, Martin Dillon attributes murders from 1972 to UVF members which are likely to have been instead carried out by UDA elements.

Brian Rowan, in the Belfast Telegraph named John White as working for RUC special branch. Rowan also wrote: “Loyalists also blame him for the collapse of the CLMC ", an umbrella leadership covering the UDA, the UVF and the Red Hand Commando.

"He had a deep hatred of the UVF," one loyalist source said.

Another source described him as "the most malign figure within loyalism."

The article also says:

There was his association with Johnny Adair, no-one was closer, his role within political loyalism after the ceasefire and in the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement and his links to the Inner Council of the UDA. White sat in meetings attended by the so-called brigadiers - the six most senior figures in the paramilitary group.
So, on the face of things, he would have been a valuable listening device inside this part of the loyalist community, but, of course, there is another side to the story.
He is a convicted killer. He was also a suspected drug dealer, and he and Adair became two of the most destabilising influences inside loyalism during the peace process years.
Indeed, it could be argued that they are largely responsible for the mess that loyalism now finds itself in.

So, several sources, wrote of John White’s antipathy towards the UVF.

It is of course conjecture on my part, but the RUC would presumably have been quite happy to watch militant loyalism descend into violent anarchy that reduced the menace of the UVF and UDA individually and collectively. Perhaps White got what he wanted, and the security forces got what they wanted.

Part Two to follow…

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys. 

Another Look At The Belfast UDA – Part Ⅰ

Brandon Sullivan ✒ I set out to write a relatively short piece about the Belfast UDA post Anglo-Irish Agreement, compared to the same organisation in the 1970s. 

It’s become more complex than I first intended, more and more sources became available, and very interesting themes emerged. This piece is to explore two of those themes: Ulster Resistance, and the IRA’s 1993 Shankill bomb, which killed ten people, eight of whom were politically uninvolved civilians, including women and children.

Ulster Resistance and the UDA post Anglo-Irish Agreement

Sometime after taking control of the West Belfast UDA/UFF (hereafter referred to as the UDA), John James “Johnny” Adair met with an organisation, shadowy even by Irish paramilitary standards, in the pursuit of weaponry to step up his campaign against, he claims, the IRA. That organisation was Ulster Resistance. The number of dead nationalist civilians (and not a few unionists) and the scarcity of UDA-assassinated Belfast IRA men challenges some loyalist, and ( security force and media) narratives, that Adair and his comrades had “the IRA on the run. This is a theme that I will return to another time.

The BBC reported that the clownish Willie Frazer was Adair’s Ulster Resistance contact. Frazer lost his father, and other close relatives, to the IRA. A source said to me that Frazer’s father, Bertie Frazer, was targeted because of links to the UVF, as well as his UDR membership. The Historical Enquiries Team said there was no evidence of Bertie Frazer being a “terrorist suspect.”

Ian Cobain wrote an excellent article in The Guardian detailing the formation of Ulster Resistance, and that organisations links with the Democratic Unionist Party, up to and including leadership level. Cobain wrote:

Ulster Resistance joined forces with the two established loyalist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA), to smuggle an enormous arsenal of weapons into the province, including about 200 Czech-made assault rifles called VZ58s and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Over the next 17 years, these VZ58s would be used in the murder or attempted murder of about 70 people in Northern Ireland. In the early 90s, they were used in three massacres: gunmen stood at the doors of a bookmaker’s shop and two bars, and simply sprayed the room. Nineteen people died and 27 were wounded.

The Sunday Tribune (20/11/88) reported that:

Speaking in the context of the huge arms finds in the past week, former [DUP] Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sammy Wilson, has defended ‘the right’ of loyalists to stockpile weapons.

The DUP later officially “disassociated” themselves with Ulster Resistance. A founding member of the DUP, the brilliant lawyer Dessie Boal, told Eammon Mallie that, if he, Boal, were ever to write his memoirs, “If I did a lot of people might end up in gaol.” Interestingly, Boal “disassociated” himself from his decades long friendship with Ian Paisley over Paisley’s entering into government with Sinn Fein. Boal said he couldn’t stand the thought of Paisley governing with the men Boal had defended, often successfully, in court. Boal’s life and times would make for a fascinating biography.

When Adair met with Ulster Resistance, he put his case for access to the formidable arsenal that they possessed, writing in his autobiography:

Their ranks were filled with prison officers, landowners, RUC men, even the clergy. Although they weren’t going to go on operations, Ulster Resistance snapped up their slice of the 1987 shipment in case of a doomsday situation. C Company was able to strike up a relationship with them and tap into their stocks. The more success we had, the happier Ulster Resistance were to hand over guns.

Adair’s mention of Ulster Resistance having prison officers in their ranks is interesting, as a man who served in the prison service and UDR, was shot dead by the IRA. Charles Watson appears on a UVF Roll of Honour, and has been linked, by Martin Dillon, to Ulster Resistance.

Adair had other sources of weapons, but Ulster Resistance had a stock from a major arms shipment that loyalists received in 1987. The assault rifles, hand-grenades, and rocket launchers would feature in many UDA attacks until the 1994 ceasefires, and beyond.

Loyalists threaten violence “to a ferocity never imagined.”

On the 5th January 1993, the Independent newspaper reported that:

“ON NEW YEAR'S EVE, a violent loyalist group, the Ulster Defence Association, issued a grim warning that it intended 'to intensify and widen our campaign in 1993 to a ferocity never imagined'.”

In 1993, up to and including the 15th October, loyalist militants killed 24 members of the nationalist community, including at least one member of the IRA, and two members of Sinn Fein. The death toll also included two women.

Andrew Silke in his superb analysis of the Shankill bombing, Beyond Horror noted that:

Predictably, the relentless attacks and the mounting numbers of people killed and injured, led to an increasingly tense atmosphere in Catholic areas in general and in nationalist West and North Belfast in particular. The IRA found themselves under growing pressure to respond to the loyalist threat. Pressure to do something grew within the movement as well and IRA commanders in Belfast experienced increasing grassroots unrest, as men on the ground became more and more anxious to take some action against the loyalists.

This is in stark contrast to the belief held by some loyalists that murdering members of the nationalist community would pressurise the IRA into calling off their campaign. In fact, it appears to have had a contradictory effect.

The IRA released a statement that said:

[W]e in the IRA are very clear about a number of issues. One is that no-one should respond to the activities of the loyalist death squads in anything but a disciplined manner. We in the IRA will under no circumstances play into British hands by going down the cul-de-sac of sectarian warfare, which would allow our enemy to portray itself as somehow holding the ring between warring factions in Ireland. But as we have demonstrated . . . there is no hiding place for those involved with the loyalist death squads. We are determined to exact a price from them. No one should be under any illusions. Those involved with the loyalist death squads will be held accountable for their actions.

October 1993 – the targeting of Adair

An interesting chain of events took place in mid and late October 1993, concerning Johnny Adair.

On the 19th October 1993, an armed INLA unit was apprehended close to Adair’s home. The RUC noted that this was the fourth serious attempt on Adair’s life that year. That same day, Adair was noted by the RUC going into 275A Shankill Road, which was the UDA’s HQ in Belfast. Also on that day, an article appeared in the Guardian newspaper detailing the often squalid lifestyle and antics of a man named as the “UFF commander, West Belfast.” The IRA, as well as the RUC, were satisfied that the man in the article was Johnny Adair.

On the 22nd October 1993, the Irish Independent ran an article entitled “Face to face with the UFF’s Top Assassin.” Again, the RUC, and the IRA, were satisfied that the man detailed in the article was Johnny Adair.

Johnny Adair and 275A Shankill Road

Adair was noted by the RUC of entering 275A Shankill Road on numerous occasions. Furthermore, Adair gave his address as 275A Shankill Road on over 30 instances to the RUC. An RUC file on Adair noted his:

 … propensity to give the address of UDA headquarters as his personal address on number occasions both pre and post UDA proscription.

On the 10th of August 1992, Adair and another man, Curtis Moorehead, walked into Tennant Street RUC station to announce that they had, up until that day, been members of the UDA, but no longer were. The UDA was, finally, proscribed on that particular day. The RUC were able to demonstrate that Adair’s movements and associations remained identical pre and post UDA proscription. His relationship to 275A Shankill Road was a major part of this, comprising two full appendices (out of 13) of an RUC file evidencing Adair as a “Director of Terrorism.”

The day after Johnny Adair informed the RUC that he was no longer a member of the UDA, his brother, James, and another man, convicted rapist and child murderer Trevor Hinton (both members of the UDA) were remanded following the attempted murder of a nationalist civilian. Adair and Hinton had used knives and hammers to attempt to kill the man and were later convicted of attempted murder.

Brian Rowan, in his book Living With Ghosts, described the effect of Adair on the Belfast IRA like this:

The IRA spoke of their absolute determination to made Adair ‘pay for his crimes’. He was inside their heads, inside their plans. They were chasing him, hunting him. And it was this fascination with him, that absolute determination to kill him, that led to the unthinking madness of the Shankill bomb.

Rowan is right that Adair was in the IRA’s plans, and that they were determined to kill him. Silke wrote that “The IRA had known for some time that senior members of the UDA, including Adair, met regularly on Saturdays at the West Belfast UDA headquarters.” The UDA HQ featured in a series of IRA plans to kill Adair and other UDA men involved in violence against the nationalist community.

The RUC heard from an informer that one plan was:

two IRA bombers would be dropped off by car about 20 yards from the building, and the driver would remain in the getaway car with the engine running. The two men, the coffee jars concealed under their jackets, would hurl the jars into the first floor offices and make their escape (Silke).

Another plan was to:

mount a heavy machine-gun on the back of a lorry, and rake the offices while a UDA meeting was taking place. The IRA certainly had the firepower to make this a serious threat. However, there was a rumour that the loyalists had reinforced the structure of the building, so an attack using one of the dozen or so general purpose machine-guns that the IRA possessed might not have been powerful enough.

The IRA had heavy machines, DHSKs, capable of killing everyone even in a reinforced building but, according to Silke:

 … the IRA dropped the idea, claiming the possible UDA reinforcing made the plan unworkable. However, the real reason was different. The reality was that the IRA planners realized that using a DHSK in the circumstances of the planned attack would have severely undermined the likelihood that the attackers could escape successfully.

As determined as the IRA were, they would not undertake an operation without a solid chance of their volunteers and equipment “returning to base” safely. Silke reported that the IRA considered an attack with RPGs, but that the Provisionals viewed them as generally unreliable, but:
 
bombs have been much more successful weapons for the organization. With over 20 years of bomb-making and deployment behind them, the IRA at that time were arguably the most skilled terrorist group in the world when it came to the use of explosives.

So it was that the IRA chose to use a bomb to attack the UDA HQ at 275A Shankill Road.

The Shankill Bomb

The IRA’s bomb attack on the Shankill Road on 23rd October 1993, by any standards, was a disaster. There has been debate on this blog about the intention of the bombing, but I think it's clear that it was a targeted operation against Adair in particular, and high-ranking members of the UDA in general.

I would challenge Brian Rowan's assertion that it was "unthinking madness" - arguably, it is madness to use an explosive device in a civilian area at any time, but it had been done many other times, including in two attacks on bars in loyalist areas in 1994, without death or injury.

In their determination to kill Adair, the IRA unit definitely risked the lives of Protestant shoppers on the Shankill Road, but also their own lives. Silke wrote that:

Although the timer had failed disastrously, casualties could have been much higher but for the fact that the design of the rest of the bomb worked as the IRA had intended. The charge had been shaped so as to explode upward taking out the floors above the fish shop rather than damaging the buildings to either side. In this at least it succeeded and only two people outside of the shop were killed by the bomb.

As one senior security source put it:

The difference between that [the Shankill bombing] being a disaster and a stunning success in IRA terms was very marginal. The bomb was designed to direct the blast upwards, and it did—in the fruit shop next door the rows of oranges were hardly disturbed.

The aftermath

Silke wrote of “disarray” in the ranks of the Belfast IRA following the Shankill bomb. Loyalist paramilitaries predictably went on the rampage, so indiscriminate were their attacks that they killed two Protestants “accidently”, one of whom was a former B-Special. Looking back at statistics, CAIN notes that 26 nationalists were killed by loyalists before the Shankill bomb, whilst 16 were killed after it before the end of 1993.

Adair survived some more attempts on his life, before the RUC lifted him, and most of his UDA structure, off the streets and into remand, awaiting trial. Republicans killed eight loyalist paramilitaries in 1994, prior to calling their ceasefire at the end of August, as well as killing others ranging from Protestant cleaners to British soldiers and RUC officers.

Without the political manoeuvres which had been in place since the 1980s, an IRA ceasefire would have been highly unlikely. Silke described the internal pressure the IRA was under to “deal” with loyalist violence. I believe that the loyalist campaign, and potential republican response, could have dragged the North back to levels of violence last seen in the 1970s. I don’t think it would have been a high-intensity civil war situation, but, as ever, civilians would have borne the brunt of paramilitary excesses.

In the past few days, the media has reported that the UVF and UDA are “reviewing” their ceasefires. It is worth noting the intense misery, death, destruction and imprisonment the loyalist campaigns brought their own communities, as well as in nationalist communities.

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys. 

Ulster Resistance, The UDA, The IRA, And The 1993 Shankill Bomb

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