Early UDA Activity
White began his career in loyalism with a group called the Woodvale Defence Association, a vigilante group based on the Woodvale estate in the upper Shankill, in the early 1970s. Before long the WDA was absorbed into the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and White became one of this group's leading members.
White was close to Charles Harding Smith, who emerged as the first leader of the West Belfast UDA, and in April 1972 he accompanied Harding Smith to London, where the two held a meeting with an arms dealer in order to procure weapons for the UDA. However both men were arrested after the meeting and charged with the procurement of arms. After a series of mistakes by the prosecution however, the case collapsed in December of that year allowing White and the other defendants to return to Belfast.
Read more about this topic: John White (loyalist)
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