Mainland UDA Brigade Stands Down

The London UDA claims to have transitioned into an “old comrades association” – what does this mean for Northern Ireland’s loyalist paramilitaries?

A senior source close to the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) ‘Brigade’ in London has confirmed to me that the unit has stood down and transitioned into an “old comrades association.”

The London UDA statement issued to me reads:

“The OC of the UDA London Brigade has stood himself down. The rest of the Brigade have respected his decision and have also stood down. Collectively they will now function as an old comrades’ group.”

This is significant news.

It is the first time that a loyalist paramilitary group has opted to voluntarily leave the stage of its own volition.

At one time the London UDA was a tiny – yet key – component of the broader loyalist organisation, which numbered tens of thousands of members, mostly in Northern Ireland.

According to the British security services, the UDA was responsible for over 408 deaths between 1970 and 1999.

Although concentrated in the Northern Ireland, the UDA had hundreds of members in London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Corby and other towns and cities across Great Britain.

The UDA’s activities in London were mostly limited.

The group carried out an attack on a pub in Kilburn in December 1975, with the gang responsible having been pooled from Belfast, Glasgow and Yorkshire.

A London-based UDA was subsequently established but it would remain somewhat inactive until it was rejuvenated in the mid-1980s.

Many of its activities were confined to mounting counter-demonstrations against pro-Irish republican demonstrations held in London to protest against internment, Bloody Sunday and British troops deployed to Northern Ireland.

By the late 1980s a new leadership had been installed and took the group in a more militant direction, forming an inner core known as the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF).

The London leadership made frequent trips to Belfast and sat on the wider organisation’s ruling “Inner Council”.

Two of its leading members, Frank Portinari and Eddie Whicker, were arrested in Birmingham in a sting operation in May 1993. Police officers discovered seven semi-automatic pistols and 260 rounds of ammunition in the boot of a car. Along with another man from Belfast, James McCrudden, Portinari and Whicker were tried at Birmingham Crown Court for possessing firearms with intent to endanger life and possessing firearms in a public place. Portinari received a five-year prison sentence.

It is believed the London UDA had several Labour MPs sympathetic to Irish nationalism under surveillance. Ken Livingston and Diane Abbott were frequently mentioned as potential targets.

In his memoir, Portinari recalls how London UDA members discussed the acquisition of dozens of 9mm Browning handguns, information that soon found its way into the hands of the RUC Special Branch and onwards to the Met Police.

The UDA in Belfast was saturated with agents and informers.

Sir John Stevens, who led investigations into the UDA murder of Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane, said that of the 210 loyalist paramilitaries he arrested, 207 were agents or informers.

In London the UDA took a ruthless stance on informers.

It was considered active, dangerous and worthy of intense state security and intelligence scrutiny.

The UDA was finally proscribed by the British government in 1992.

In July 1994 the UDA boasted in its New Ulster Defender magazine how it now had several brigades across England, Wales and Scotland and was on a recruitment drive.

Incredibly, UDA membership remained legal in Great Britain.

The group became moribund during Portinari’s imprisonment.

According to one former Metropolitan Police Special Branch officer I spoke to, the London UDA were “very much seen as credible at the upper level. They suffered from wannabes and hangers-on who diluted their reputation. However, anyone in the know realised they had a hard core you didn’t want to mess with.”

In the early 1990s the London UDA enjoyed close connections with the National Front and Combat 18. “Combat 18 and the London UDA were very close at one point. Combat supplied the manpower to counter demonstrations by Irish republican supporters. The relationship subsequently soured, and Combat transferred its allegiance to the Loyalist Volunteer Force,” said the source.

Matthew Collins, head of intelligence for Hope Not Hate, has charted the development of the London UDA for decades. Responding to the announcement, he said, ‘‘This is like someone who hasn’t played international football in 10 years announcing they’ve retired from international football. What about the London UVF? Have they done the same?”

Collins was closely involved in the National Front when they were aligned to the London UDA. “All they are,” he tells me, “and all they ever have been – is a motley crew of hooligans and far right activists who don’t like Irish people or Catholics.”

The UDA has been in existence since the outbreak of the Troubles. It called a ceasefire alongside the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and its allied group the Red Hand Commando (RHC) in 1994.

Both the UDA/UFF and UVF/RHC announced the decommissioning of their extensive arsenal of weapons and explosives in 2009-10.

Nevertheless, this latest development comes at a time when mainstream loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have been deliberating on the issue of collective disbandment.

The Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), formed in October 2015, represents mainstream loyalist groups. It claims loyalist paramilitaries ‘eschew all violence and criminality.’

Announcing the formation of the LCC a decade ago, Jonathan Powell, now the UK government’s National Security Adviser, told journalists how, ‘Some may argue that these organisations should just disappear. The experience from around the world suggests that would be a mistake. Other violent groups would simply take over the names UVF, UDA and the Red Hand Commando and carry on with paramilitarism.’

It was imperative, Powell said, that the groups “continue but there is no criminality; there is no violence; they continue in a civil fashion.”

Despite the LCC’s formation a decade ago, little progress has been made by paramilitary groups towards disbandment.

The Independent Reporting Commission, a joint body staffed by the British and Irish governments, has maintained a ‘watching brief’ on ongoing paramilitary activity. In its latest report, published in February 2025, it pointed to the ‘transformation of society over the last three decades’ and ‘a compelling rationale to redouble efforts to close out paramilitarism definitively and complete the journey started in 1994.’

The IRC recommended both governments appoint an ‘Independent Person, who would scope out and prepare the ground with various stakeholders for what a possible formal process of engagement and Group Transition might look like.’ This proved controversial. Nevertheless, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hillary Benn MP, did announce a ‘scoping exercise’. An appointment is yet to be confirmed.

This new development by the UDA, however, is welcome and may well signal the first domino to fall in bringing about an end to paramilitarism.

Is the London UDA announcement likely to signal the beginning of the end of the broader organisation that has yet to complete ‘group transition’? Only time will tell.

As a senior UDA source told me, there had been “no outside pressures or influences. It is purely a recognition that political and cultural activism is the only way forward.”

 

Aaron Edwards is author of UVF: Behind the Mask and A People Under Siege: The Unionists of Northern Ireland, From Partition to Brexit and Beyond. He is working on a new book, Enemies Within, on the British intelligence war against the UDA/UFF.