Several hundred people followed the coffin which was draped in a UDA flag, beret and gloves.
The UDA ceasefire - in spite of its flaws - was another important factor.
UDA's announcement this time was undermined by the refusal to hand over its guns.
Jimmy Birch says UDA members have been told not to take part in rioting.
The feud within the UDA earlier in the year led to some leaving the country while others were jailed.
UDA's threat, it was yet another reminder that is unwise to assume that Northern Ireland will stay quiet for long.
Could it have been through MI5 agents within the UDA (and there were several) being fed with ideas and information?
BBC: De Silva report on Finucane case turns spotlight on MI5
The disguise has failed and, behind the mask, the UDA's involvement in recent attacks is plain for all to see.
Both men work for the Charter organisation which seeks to help former UDA prisoners adjust to life on the outside.
They started applying to be rehoused after the feud flared up at a UDA-linked festival on the road at the weekend.
"The money is not going to the UDA, it is not going to UDA personnel or into their coffers, " he said.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | ?1m is confirmed for UDA project
Mr Finucane was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries, the UDA, in front of his family at his home in Belfast in 1989.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Finucanes to meet commissioner
He was released under the Good Friday Agreement and these days is a leader of the UDA in north Down and Ards.
Frankie Gallagher of the UPRG said "the community is the paramilitary organisation... they (the UDA) are an integral part of the community".
BBC: NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | ?1m is confirmed for UDA project
In the febrile sectarian climate that existed in the late 1980s, feeding the UDA with anti-IRA propaganda was pouring fat on the fire.
BBC: De Silva report on Finucane case turns spotlight on MI5
The brigade's current leader was never drawn into that process because he was not then a member of the UDA's decision-making inner council.
The move comes more than 15 years after the UDA announced its ceasefire and 12 years after the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning was set up.
Having lost the UDA ceasefire, the government can ill afford to preside over any weakening of the other main loyalist faction's commitment to peace.
The UDA's formal rejection of the Agreement in a statement last summer was followed by the dissolving of the UDP as a political party.
UDA, so that their representatives would be kept out of talks?
The group spent the past six months talking to its grassroots membership, with about 4, 000 active UDA members attending a series of meetings throughout Northern Ireland.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | UDA bites at huge cash carrot
And there are clear signs that the political path the UDA is taking in east Belfast is in the direction of closer engagement with the DUP.
The self-confessed UVF members walked into Antrim police station in 2008 and admitted their involvement in the murder of leading UDA member Tommy English eight years earlier.
But there are those at the most senior level of the paramilitary group who are sanctioning attacks and whose actions have reduced the UDA ceasefire to a farce.
Mr Slane, a 27-year-old father of three, was shot dead by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) at his home at Waterville Street, west Belfast, in September 1988.
"There has been dialogue taking place between the UDA and the UVF but it hasn't actually resulted in an actual truce, " he told BBC Radio Ulster on Wednesday.
The concern now is how successful the UDA leadership will be in curbing its violence - under pressure in the past, they have brought it to an end.
Meanwhile, Mr McMichael and his party colleague and deputy lord mayor of Belfast, Frank McCoubrey, helped to carry the coffin of murdered UDA member David Greer on Wednesday afternoon.
The shooting was thought to have been in reprisal for the murder of 21-year-old David Greer, a member of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA) on 28 October.
The body which monitors paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland said in its last report that the UDA remained split into two distinct groups - the mainstream UDA and the south east Antrim group.
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