William Elliot was a former Northern Irish loyalist who served as brigadier of the Ulster Defence Association's (UDA) East Belfast Brigade in the 1980s.
These groups had sprung up in loyalist Protestant areas such as Woodvale, Shankill and east Belfast in the wake of The Troubles ostensibly to protect their communities against nationalist attacks.
It subsequently emerged that Elliot had set up a unit of 19 schoolboys, most of whom were members of the proto-spide "tartan gangs" that gathered in loyalist housing estates in the early 1970s.
[8] Elliot was ostracised by other brigadiers and he began to fear that he would meet the same fate as powerful Shankill Road racketeer and UDA fundraiser James Craig who was killed in October 1988 by the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) for allegedly helping the Provisional IRA to assassinate John McMichael.
[6] His retirement left a power vacuum within the organisation, but this was soon filled by the volatile Ned McCreery who assumed command of the East Belfast Brigade in his place.