UDA Superfan

Snowy: Replaced his pipe for a flute

This is the far right English extremist who’s aligning his gang of thugs to the UDA.

Self-styled anti-Muslim fanatic John ‘Snowy’ Shaw is seen here posing for snaps in Derry during a recent Orange march. The former English Defence League leader – who has formed a breakaway group called ‘The Infidels’ is also seen posing in front of a UDA mural in north Antrim.

“Shaw went to Northern Ireland to try and get his photo taken with as many UDA and UVF men as possible to try and big-up his loyalist credentials,” says a loyalist source. “He went to the Apprentice Boys Parade in Londonderry, telling friends in England that he had the backing of the terror-groups in his bid to take over the EDL. He even plays the flute in an English loyalist ‘kick-the-pope’ flute band.”

Shaw is desperate to recruit Ulster based loyalists into his rag-tag bunch of football hooligans. But we can reveal the 40-year-old fascist has a bizarre background – he’s a former crack addict who runs a llama farm in Yorkshire.

The pathetic hate campaigner split from the notorious EDL after a fall out with leader Tommy Robinson.

Shaw was once charged along with Ulster’s run-away EDL leader Leon McCreery for a bizarre anti-Muslim rooftop protest in Dudley, West Midlands but the charges were later dropped.

The Sunday World can reveal that Shaw is desperately trying to get loyalist paramilitary groups involved in his violent anti-immigration campaign. And Shaw showed his true colours in a letter to far-right followers when he described EDL leader Robinson as a “little Fenian bastard” a “ginger fenian c***” and a “leprechaun ****”.

The EDL has recently been linked to the Norwegian extremist Anders Breivik, the man who murdered 76 people in Oslo in a campaign against Muslims in July. Breivik cited the EDL in his “manifesto”, describing the English group as an “inspiration”.

The EDL is an anti-Islam group that has courted controversy for its provocative and violent protests in England. It was formed after a counter protest by Muslim extremists, “Jihadists”, against a homecoming parade by British soldiers returning from Afghanistan in Luton in 2009 gained headlines around the world.

The EDL’s controversial leader Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), is a recently convicted football hooligan with a previous conviction for assaulting an off duty police officer.

Robinson formed the EDL to protest against what he saw as a growing Muslim influence in England and the group quickly snowballed into a pressure group that could put thousands of “counter Jihadists”, mainly ageing football hooligans, onto English streets to whip up tensions against Muslims.

In desperation, former crack addict Shaw, who patrols his desolate farm in rural North Yorkshire dressed in combat fatigues while brandishing an air gun, has turned to Loyalism and sectarianism to drive a wedge among the predominately football hooligan membership.

Interviewed in 2010 before he left the EDL, Shaw told how he had wanted to previously come to Northern Ireland as a member of the British army as a teenager, but the “hard man’s” mother had stopped him joining the army as she was scared he would be hurt if he came to Northern Ireland.

Not long after the interview, Shaw was ejected from the group after a minor power struggle and reinvented himself as a self-style paramilitary “anti-Jihadist” and rival to the EDL’s leadership. Since then Shaw has been playing on the fact that the EDL leader has Irish roots to plant sectarian tensions in the bully boy outfit.

Shaw has even started playing the drums in the Yorkshire based “Leeds Crown Defenders” loyalist flute band and now rubs shoulders with English UDA chief Frank Portinari. Portanari has even taken to counselling the former crack addict as his 50- strong gang of fascists gain a more and more notorious reputation for violence not just against Muslims, but also against EDL members.

Not surprisingly, the EDL has already allegedly rebuffed the advances of Johnny Adair and his close friend, the German neo-Nazi bomber Nick Greiger who also wanted to take over the group.

EDL leader Robinson at the time cited his Irish ancestry as a reason why he wanted nothing to do with the disgraced former Loyalist leader.

A spokesman for the antifascist organisation Hope Not Hate that monitors the far-right described Shaw’s sudden conversion from anti-Jihadist to hard-line Loyalism as “part of a longstanding pattern” that sees English extremists turn up in Belfast “looking for kudos, a pint of beer and a new tattoo”.

Sunday World via Hope not hate

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up