#Father and son mover skin

'The young buck would be told to turn up at an appointed time or they would call at his house for him. 'I've known this happen to other UDA men's sons over the years, but relatives must step aside and let others deal with it,' one said. Adair would not have been informed during the 'initial stages' of discussion, which would probably have involved UDA members of a lower rank anyway.īut he would have been told 'as a matter of courtesy' before the shooting was carried out. They said the shooting would have followed the 'usual pattern'. But they implied the shooting was the result of many small misdemeanours rather than one big transgression. UDA sources were reluctant to reveal the nature of his wrongdoing, except to say he had 'raised his fists' on a few occasions and enjoyed fast cars. 'It's harsh and it's hard for people outside this society to understand, but unfortunately that's the way life is around here, and the way it has been for the past 30 years,' one man said. This is the first one we've had in this area for months because we've been working hard to normalise this society.'īut other loyalists said the punishment attack system was part of the fabric of the community, and that Jonathan had been warned numerous times about 'anti-social behaviour', standard procedure before a shooting is ordered. 'I'm totally opposed to what has happened and I think punishment attacks should stop. 'He was unemployed, and like many young lads in this area, his expectations about a job were low, but he called into my office on Wednesday to discuss getting on to a computer training course,' Mr White said. John White, a close associate of his father's and a prime mover on the UDA's new political thinktank, the Ulster Political Research Group, said he was a quiet boy, going steady with a local girl.

#Father and son mover skin

In July last year he needed a skin graft on his arm after being trailed along the ground by a car when republicans attempted to abduct him in north Belfast. But being his father's son has made for a hard enough life. The teenager has never been convicted of any criminal offence. There is even talk of him running for the Stormont assembly next year.įriends say he is adamant Jonathan should not follow in his paramilitary foot steps.

He was freed to a hero's welcome in May this year, and while many remain unconvinced by his reinvention of himself as a force for peace, he has since met the secretary of state, John Reid.

In September 1999 he was released early under the Good Friday agreement but put back behind bars the following August, when the former secretary of state, Peter Mandelson, claimed he was involved in sectarian violence, drug dealing, and gun running. Police sources claim his ruthless C company was behind the murders of dozens of Catholics in the early 90s. 'The organisation is bigger than any man's family.'Īdair was jailed in 1994 for directing terrorism. 'Johnny Adair is a man of principle and integrity, and that integrity would have been in question if his family had been treated any differently from anyone else's, and he wouldn't have wanted to be treated differently,' a UDA source said. Yesterday was proof that nobody, not even the son of the man reputed to be the most powerful loyalist paramilitary in Northern Ireland, is above that justice. But for decades working class loyalists and republicans, wary and distrustful of the police, and not persuaded that the courts will deter young hotheads from fighting, stealing cars, taking drugs or robbing pensioners, have taken matters into their own hands and dispensed summary justice. To outsiders, it is the brutal law of the jungle. No one in the neighbourhood, where UFF murals gaze down from every gable wall, and red, white and blue flags festoon every lamppost, has the slightest doubt that the attack was carried out by members of Adair's own 'C' company battalion, or that Adair himself knew of and consented to the shooting.

Two hours later Jonathan discharged himself, dosed with painkillers, and returned to the house where he lives with parents, Johnny and Gina, his two younger sisters, and three-year-old brother, Jay, whom his father has affectionately dubbed 'Mad Pup'. But the baying mob forced officers to pull back. As he was taken to the nearby Mater hospital, where, ironically, loyalist paramilitaries recently threatened to kill Catholic staff, police moved into the lower Shankill to try to dispel a crowd which had gathered at the scene of the shooting.