Feud exposes 'loyalist gameplan'

Politicians take back seat as gunmen take control

BBC Northern Ireland political editor Stephen Grimason says loyalist politicians have little power to put on the brakes in the bloody power-struggle for loyalist supremacy.

Fishing in the alphabet soup of loyalist paramilitarism has been a frustrating business over the past week.

Just when you think you have hooked into what's really going on amid the capital letters plastered all over the Shankill Road in Belfast, it becomes the one that got away.

Where did it all start and where will it all end, are just two of the questions.

In a sense, the friction between the main protagonists in loyalism has been there for most of the last 30 years, which have been regularly punctuated by feuds and murder.

Over the last few years, however, the rise and rise of convicted Ulster Freedom Fighters' leader Johnny Adair and his determination, backed by others around him, to effectively be the top dog in loyalism, has put his organisation and the Ulster Volunteer Force on a collision course.

Adair's crash-test dummies

For a long time he was largely a Shankill Road phenomenon, but following his release from the Maze prison under the early release programme in the Good Friday Agreement, Adair was seen to spread his wings, most notably at Portadown during the Drumcree marching stand-off.

Johnny Adair studied UVF reaction to LVF attacks

The UFF, politically represented by Gary McMichael's Ulster Democratic Party, is avowedly pro-agreement, yet Adair forged an alliance with the anti-agreement splinter group the Loyalist Volunteer Force, which was involved in its own feud with the UVF.

As the LVF baited the UVF, Adair watched carefully how the latter responded. Under pressure from its political representatives, the Progressive Unionist Party, the UVF response to attacks on its members was relatively muted.

Having thus used the LVF as crash test dummies to see what the UVF was capable of, Adair appears to have calculated that meekness was weakness and last weekend he made his takeover bid on the Shankill Road, attempting to sweep aside his opponents there.

Adair's closest confidant, UDP chairman John White, insists he and his now incarcerated friend are still pro-agreement, but Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson revoked Adair's licence on the basis of what he and the UFF were doing rather than on what they were saying.

Attempt to bait IRA

Part of the UFF gameplan appears to have been to try to draw the IRA into the conflict through a series of attacks on nationalist areas.

UDP leader Gary McMichael: Sacrificed to another agenda?

The crudity and transparency of the tactic drew no response from republicans, other than to indicate they knew exactly what was going on.

They had no intention of playing, knowing the Catholic community would be the losers as hairy-chested loyalists tried to unite themselves by murdering nationalists.

The consequences of recent days for the political representatives of the main loyalist groups have been disastrous.

The UDP, the political wing of the UFF, has all but imploded. It failed to win a seat in the new Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998 because the electorate suspected the UFF of drug dealing and continued involvement in sectarian murder.

Recent events have shown the party leadership marginalised and having no ability to apply anything like a brake on the downward spiral.

A more cynical view is that elements of the UFF leadership, in particular Johnny Adair, were never really interested in politics at all, having once referred to the UDP as "a load of old women".

The UDP was sacrificed because it was an irrelevance to the agenda of those calling the shots.

Leeching of agreement support

The situation is different on the other side of the argument. The PUP was widely regarded as a serious attempt by the UVF to plot a different course and that brought two seats for the party in the assembly.

But the PUP too was seen to have had no influence on the violence of the past week - assembly member Billy Hutchinson giving the brutally honest opinion that he was not prepared to intervene because nobody wanted to talk.

The PUP's David Ervine: Pledge to attempt to stop violence

The other PUP assemblyman, David Ervine, who has been on holiday in Australia, says his party must take responsibility for what is happening and has pledged to lead efforts at mediation on his return.

As for where these events leave the peace process, there will in the short term, be a further leeching away of support among the unionist population who have become increasingly sceptical.

They did not sign up for this sort of stuff when they held their noses and voted for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, including its sections on the early release of terrorists et al.

But it could equally be argued that loyalist feuds were just as likely before the ceasefires of 1994, and that outside a full-scale terrorist campaign, the paramilitaries have had less cover for their real agendas.

Loyalists cannot blame republicans for murders they have committed, nor are the IRA there to remove loyalist leaders who have fallen foul of their erstwhile comrades, as has happened in the past.

The peace process means feuds now have to be fought out in a much more public spotlight. But the simple fact is, that will be of no benefit to the families of the victims, and the families who may yet be victims.