The temperature in Belfast went up with the release from prison of the leader of the Shankill Road UDA, Johnny Adair. Publicly, Adair was claiming to support the Peace Process. But when a series of sectarian attacks on the homes of Catholics close to the peace line began, there was little doubt that it was the work of the UDA. Clearly, this was an attempt not just to drive Catholic families from their homes but to stir the Provisional IRA into retaliatory action. On the latter score, the campaign failed. However, within loyalist Belfast, as Adair s gang began to strut their stuff, the same restraint was less in evidence.
Adair landed back on the scene with a bang, and seemed intent on asserting his authority, and that of the UDA, in Shankill. Tensions between loyalist factions, which had been relatively dormant while Adair was in jail, resurfaced. What manner of skulduggery, intrigues and betrayals may have been going on, only those who are intimately involved will know for sure. It has been suggested that there is an element, in all of this, of an old-style gangland turf war about spheres of influence and control of illegal activities of one kind or another. But there is more to it than that: as the sectarian attacks on Catholic homes underline, the Shankill UDA are militantly antagonistic to the peace process. With the UVF, the paramilitary wing of the PUP, committed to holding the line on the Loyalist ceasefire, confrontation was always likely between the two groups. In a sense, this feud is about the future of militant Loyalism, and who directs it. In the minds of the protagonists, the stakes couldn t be higher.
The stand-off that had held for some time finally ended during a UDA band march, a show of strength that took them along the Shankill Road. The marchers were attacked by a gang associated with the UVF. Reprisals followed swiftly, with a series of gun attacks on the bar from whence the attackers had come, as well as on a number of houses of people involved with either the UVF itself or its political wing, the PUP. Among those whose houses were targeted was the legendary loyalist leader, Gusty Spence. For the UVF, it was an indecency too far.
In reprisal, a UVF hitman murdered Jackie Coulter, an associate of Johnny Adair with known UDA links. Sitting in the car with Coulter at the time of the hit was Bobby Mahood, an anti-agreement loyalist with UVF links he was blown away too. Two days later, Samuel Rocket s number was up: in the grim scorekeeping of tit-for-tat killings, the UDA made it 1-2, shooting Rocket several times at close range while his girlfriend and 18-month-old daughter looked helplessly on.
In most communities throughout the world, the likes of Johnny Adair would be treated as pariahs, and shunned by ordinary, decent people. But in the twisted politics of the north, bigots and bullies are elevated to the status of defenders of the community, and frequently become heroes to local teenagers and children. In this context, you have to ask yourself: where will it all end?
It was a question that resonated with particular force, as images from the funeral of Bobby Mahood were fed through the media. There at the front, carrying the coffin, were the two sons of the dead man, Robert and David Mahood.
They look like rock n roll fans, possibly readers of hotpress. At 22 and 15 respectively, in a different place, all the potentially great and wonderful experiences of adulthood would await them. Instead, in Belfast, they have been plunged into the nightmare of having to deal with the murder of their father. I found the picture of them, arms around one another, the coffin resting on their shoulders, desperately, awfully sad and moving.
I don t know the influence that their father s political thinking might already have had on these two young men, and whether or not they d have contemplated having any truck with the world of loyalist paramilitarism. In a sense it doesn t matter because an event as terrible as they ve been through is, in any case, likely to act as a catalyst.
In would be easy to understand if Robert and David Mahood felt a deep bitterness about what happened to their father. It would be easy to understand if they felt a need for revenge. But, looking at them carrying the coffin, I wondered was there any hope that they might go the other way, and decide that whatever else this is a kind of abomination they never want to be next or near again.
The only lasting hope for the future of Northern Ireland rests with young men and women like Robert and David Mahood, and the possibility that they will be able to put the grim legacy of bitterness, hostility, sectarianism and the use of the gun behind them. When you ve been to the graveyard to bury your own murdered father it isn t easy. But if young men and women can t or don t shake off the shackles that have burdened and made life terrible, for so many people in Northern Ireland, then surely this cruel strife will go on and on and on.
Looking at Robert and David Mahood it occurred to me that if these bereaved young men could take a stand for peace, then surely they d be doing a heroic thing.