Fears of a bloody power struggle within loyalist paramilitarism escalated last night after UDA leaders expelled one of its most iconic and volatile members, Johnny Adair.
Five of the UDA's six brigadiers met in Belfast yesterday where they decided that Adair, who is the sixth west Belfast brigadier based on the Shankill, must leave Northern Ireland's largest loyalist paramilitary grouping.
The broader UDA organisation is blaming Adair for aligning himself with elements of the Loyalist Volunteer Force and flouting instructions to shun the LVF. UDA figures are also understood to be working to a principle that if they did not strike against Adair first then he could take the initiative against them.
"Certain people have been acting as agents provocateurs between the Ulster Defence Association and the Loyalist Volunteer Force to capitalise on events for their own purposes," the UDA said last night
Security and paramilitary sources are aware that the seriousness of this development cannot be over-estimated.
Two years ago about a dozen people died in a feud focused on Belfast and Portadown and involving the UDA and LVF on one side and the UVF on the other. A senior UDA source in Belfast told The Irish Times last night that the expulsion could cause "absolute mayhem" in loyalism. "Johnny will not take this lying down," he added.
He said it would be very difficult to avoid a feud because Adair was a similar fiercely independent figure to his friend, the murdered LVF leader Billy Wright who defied a UVF order to stand down his organisation in mid-Ulster.
He feared that Adair would also defy the UDA leadership. "I doubt if the other brigadiers are powerful enough to impose their will on Johnny," he added.
Adair's main power base in on the lower Shankill where he runs the UDA C-Company, which is intensely loyal to him. Parts of the lower Shankill were en fête when Adair was released from jail in May. It was unclear last night whether the A and B companies on the Shankill would side with Adair. They largely kept out of the feud two years ago.
"If you put Johnny out you are effectively putting C-Company out, and things will be very hard to control. This could be the time to batten down hatches," said the UDA source.
The leaders of five of the six UDA command areas - north, south and east Belfast, southeast Antrim and north Antrim/Derry - ruled yesterday that Adair, brigadier in west Belfast, had put the overall organisation in an impossible situation and that he was no longer recognised as a UDA member.
This dispute has been simmering since Adair was released from Maghaberry Prison in May this year but intensified after senior LVF figure Stephen Warnock from east Belfast was murdered in Newtownards over a week ago.
The LVF are understood to have blamed the UDA for this attack, and some reports claimed that a secondary intention of the killing was to send a message to Adair that he must clip his wings.
Days after Warnock's murder an attempt was made on the life of the UDA commander in east Belfast, Jim Gray.
He was shot in the face but escaped with his life after running from his attacker. This was viewed as a revenge attack for Warnock's murder.
UDA commanders issued an instruction that members must stay away from Warnock's funeral but Adair and Mr John White of the Ulster Political Research Group went ahead and attended the funeral.
UDA commanders were angry that Adair was maintaining contact with the LVF.
That was exacerbated by the subsequent painting of a joint UDA/LVF mural on the Lower Shankill in the UDA's C-Company area. The broad leadership viewed all these matters, as well as what they perceived as a power bid by Adair, as unacceptable defiance.
Mr John White of the UPRG said Adair was mystified by the expulsion and that he was trying to find out the reason for the decision.
A sub-text to the in-fighting is what security figures believe is a power struggle for control of lucrative drugs, racketeering and other interests in Belfast.
Prior to this development, the chief of Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in Belfast, Mr Alan McQuillan, said the feuding was mainly motivated by a "sordid, mafia battle over business interests". He added: "It's basically a turf war."
