Loyalist outcast loses his swagger

By Brian Rowan
BBC Northern Ireland security editor

The loyalist Johnny Adair once walked with all the swagger and with all the confidence of the man in charge.

It was he who directed the Ulster Defence Association at the height of its sectarian killing campaign, and that position of leadership meant he was both feared and idolised.

Johnny Adair is no longer the top man in loyalist circles

But Adair no longer walks with the confidence he once displayed, and he no longer rules within the Shankill Road loyalist community.

He is now an outcast - disowned and expelled by the UDA leadership he was once a part of.

Adair thrived on power. He wanted to rule the loyalist roost - wanted, according to one of his former associates, to be "it" rather than be "a part of it".

He was used to giving orders and used to having them obeyed, but not any more.

On his release from prison, he was unable to return to the loyalist heartland.

Instead, he was taken by helicopter from RAF Aldergrove to Manchester and, only after he was gone, did the Prison Service say he had been freed.

Twice since the Good Friday Agreement, Adair was returned to prison - first by Peter Mandelson and then by Paul Murphy.

On both occasions loyalists were feuding. They had turned their guns on each other and, in the infighting, Adair was seen as the central figure.

Safe place

This was part of his play for overall power within loyalism, but it was to be his downfall.

In the end the UDA turned on him and his supporters. His family and closest associates fled to England, and that is where Adair has gone to join them.

There is no longer a safe place for him to stay in Belfast.

"Personally I view him as insignificant," a senior UDA leader told me.

"As an individual he is no danger to anybody," the source continued.

"I'm glad to see the back of him and all of the trouble he brought with him - all to do with his ego."

But is Adair no longer a danger to his former associates?

Remember this is the man once likened to the moth and the flame - the man who found it impossible to stay away from trouble.

While he gave the public impression of being a man of peace, privately Adair was always plotting war.

He was released from jail early as part of the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, but twice since then he was thrown back into prison.

Adair was jailed for directing loyalist terrorism

Intelligence reports prepared on him and delivered first to Peter Mandelson and then to Paul Murphy at the Northern Ireland Office, showed Adair was still directing terrorism, was still involved in drugs crime, was still involved in extortion and money laundering, was still up to all of his old tricks.

Adair had not changed.

He had not become part of the new "peace" but, rather, he was de-stabilising that new situation and destroying his own community.

When he was in prison, Adair's men murdered another UDA leader John Gregg, and this was the straw that broke the loyalist back.

This was the start of 2003, and this was the beginning of the end for Johnny Adair.

While he was jail, the UDA moved against his family and supporters.

They were forced out of the Shankill - out of the capital of loyalist Ulster - and told not to return.

Adair - the loyalist known as "Mad Dog" has now joined them. He is out of sight, but not out of mind.

Whatever the loyalists now say about him, they know what he is capable of and, privately, they will know that to dismiss him would be to ignore the threat he might still pose.