BELFAST-GLASGOW: John White, the best friend of rebel Northern Ireland loyalist Johnny Adair, on Friday vowed to defy Ulster Defence Association (UDA) paramilitary chiefs and return to Northern Ireland from exile in Scotland.

Former UDA comrades, who sided against Adair in a bitter internecine feud, drove Mr White, Adair’s wife, Gina, and about 20 others from their homes in Belfast’s lower Shankill Road on Wednesday night. They fled under police escort to a ferry bound for Cairnryan, in western Scotland.

The UDA leadership blamed Adair, who is in jail, for ordering the murder of the terror group’s south-east Antrim brigadier, John “Grug” Gregg, who was buried on Thursday.

Those hiding in Scotland said that they expected another 12 to 15 families to flee the Shankill this weekend. But they vowed to eventually return home, despite being under death threat from the UDA.

Mr White, jailed for stabbing to death a Catholic politician and a Protestant woman in 1972, said: “We were born and reared on the Shankill, and we’re not going to be put out. I’ll be back, possibly not next week, but I’ll be back.”

Hugh Orde, the chief constable, likened the loyalists to the mafia, with both warring factions equally evil. But Mr White denounced the UDA leadership as a “fascist dictatorship” full of gangsters and criminals, and called on them to disband. “The biggest threat to the people of Northern Ireland is the UDA,” he said.

Mass defections from Adair’s renegade C company to the mainstream UDA have brought the feud to a halt for now. But there are fears there will be revenge for Gregg’s death.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.