Mad Dog - They Shot Me in the Head, They Gave Me Cyanide and They Stabbed Me, But I'm Still Standing. Johnny Adair
Mad Dog - They Shot Me in the Head, They Gave Me Cyanide and They Stabbed Me, But I'm Still Standing
held, to prevent details of the venue being leaked.
In September 1983, I helped organise a National Front march from Belfast City Hall to the Shankill. But the real home of the NF was London, so I travelled there a couple of times to attend meetings, go to gigs and buy the latest skinhead fashions. The Last Resort on Petticoat Lane, in the East End, was the shop to go to, and you weren’t a real skinhead until you bought your gear from there.
London was also the place to see the best skinhead bands, like Skrewdriver. In November 1983, after seeing a gig, Skelly and I got caught up in some heavy fighting. The result was an assault charge and an appearance at Camberwell Magistrates’ Court, where I was ordered to pay £100 compensation.
I went over to London on the bus a couple of times to see Skrewdriver play, and on one trip there were some Catholic skinheads from the Falls Road. All the way there they were begging me and Sam not to tell the English skinhead crew we were going to see where they were from, as they were petrified they would get a real going-over.
The first time I went there I couldn’t believe London. It was so different from Belfast and I’d never seen anything like it before. The skinhead thing at the time was to share a squat, and I would have loved to do that. Skelly and I even got to meet the lead singer of Skrewdriver, Ian Stuart. I was infatuated with the whole movement, and here I was sitting in a cafe with the singer of the band I loved and he was buying us toast and tea. I couldn’t believe it was happening. But the problem was that I had a job and I couldn’t just jack it in and disappear to London.
My parents weren’t happy that I was involved with the skinheads. Every weekend they knew I was going out fighting, and they had no idea what injuries I would come back with. Between my first conviction in July 1981 and my appearance at Camberwell in 1983, I was done 16 times, for disorderly behaviour, criminal damage and assault, but none of my court appearances had resulted in prison. I just picked up a fine every time.
At the time I was only ten stone, but I was game and had no fears about getting stuck into whatever was put up in front of me. I regularly woke up in hospital with new wounds, and that would get me more grief from my mother about the fighting. To this day I’m covered in scars from being smashed over the head with bottles or police batons.
When I was 18, my parents decided there was no talking to me, and they were probably right. Instead of going to the youth club and playing snooker, we preferred to get some cider and head for the city centre, on the lookout for a fight.
By the time I’d reached the top of the UDA and was serving time for my involvement, I tried to keep my parents from knowing more than they needed to. The fact that I’d ended up in prison was nothing to do with them at all. During all the time I was locked up, I think I sent them only one access pass to visit me. As far as I was concerned, the Maze wasn’t the sort of place that my dad would want to be seen. It was my fault I was behind bars, and there was no way I was going to bring more shame on him by making him come there.
My father and I were completely different. For years he worked away at the timber yard and did his best for the whole family. Once I’d completed the course at Crumlin Road Opportunities, he made sure that I got the first vacancy that came up at the yard.
Both Protestants and Catholics were working there and I clearly remember my first day at the job. By this stage I’d built up a bit of a reputation for fighting, but of course that wasn’t the case with my dad. He could walk through Catholic areas like the New Lodge without any trouble. We walked together to the timber yard, but for me it wasn’t the most comfortable way to get to work, because if I’d been spotted I would have been dragged up an alley and got in all sorts of trouble.
It got worse when we reached the yard. There was an RUC reservist who worked alongside my dad, and the first thing I heard when I arrived that first day was one of the other workers saying to him, ‘I think I know his face,’ to which the copper replied, ‘I know his face – from the back of a police Land Rover.’ Thankfully, it was a joke, but my card was marked.
The trouble I’d been getting into backfired on me when I tried to sign up for the Ulster Defence Regiment. I wanted to do more than be a street fighter, as I was sure I had other skills to offer. My plan was to sign up for the UDR on a part-time basis and do something legitimate to fight our corner. By giving a couple of nights a week to the regiment, I thought, I’d be doing my bit to take on the IRA.
To start with, I went to night classes at the UDR centre on Malone Road, where they assessed if you were the sort of person they wanted in the regiment. If I made it through the selection process, I would then act as a back-up for the regular forces and the RUC. The prospect excited me and I was determined to make the grade. I knew that my convictions would be a problem, but a guy who was already in the UDR took me aside and told me he had made it through selection despite having a few marks against his name. That really got my hopes up. I would be doing something on the right side of the law, protecting the community
It didn’t happen. Instead I got a letter saying that I had been rejected. I’m sure that Special Branch had a hand in it. They would have known who I was and that I was fighting all the time, and warned the UDR that I was trouble. What made the knock-back all the harder to take was the fact that I’d been given a bit of hope that my convictions wouldn’t count against me. I’d convinced myself that I would make it despite my record. Now there was only one option left if I was going to take the fight to the Republicans.
It wasn’t long before I started getting noticed by the UDA leadership. The Shankill is a pretty small place and it was no secret that there was a hard core of us who were regularly fighting with Catholics. They saw me as someone who was bitter and game to get his hands dirty. That was just what they wanted.
The problem at the time was that the UDA was a shambles run by drunks who were little more than small-time bullyboys. The last thing they were was a military organisation who were able, or even willing, to take on the Republicans. Virtually no operations were being carried out and the commanders were more interested in making sure that they had enough money to cover their drinks bill in whichever of the 86 pubs on the Shankill that they used.
If they weren’t boozing, they were in the bookmaker’s placing bets, or coercing kids into petty crimes to fund the rest of their day. My father, on his way home from work, would walk past them as they lay slumped in doorways. He used to say they were nothing more than ‘scumbags who never worked or wanted’.
None of us had any interest in signing up to become part of that. If I was going to volunteer, it would be to join the UVF, as at the time they were the only ones taking the fight to the Nationalists. But in the end I didn’t have a choice. One night I was summoned off the streets to the UDA headquarters and told that I had to sign up.
The guys in charge stank of booze and barked at us that they knew everything we were up to. The first time they asked us to join I managed to dodge it. But within days I was hauled back in and it was made clear that unless I did what I was told I would be taking a bullet.
Donald Hodgen, Jackie Thompson and Skelly were all in the same boat. None of us wanted to get involved with the UDA but we were all made an offer we couldn’t refuse. While the UDA guys were drunks, they would still have had no problem shooting you if you didn’t do what you were told. The four of us were told that we had to be back at the headquarters in a week for the swearing-in ceremony, otherwise there would be trouble.
In reality, what was supposed to be an initiation into a paramilitary organisation was little more than a shambles that confirmed what we all thought about the UDA. There were no hoods or guns, just two men holding a bit of paper. One by one we were made to read out the oath and soon it was my turn:
I, Johnny Adair, am a Protestant by birth and, being convinced of a fiendish plot by republican paramilitaries to destroy my heritage, do swear