Subject: [SocialistWorker.org] Drug squad vigilantes in Derry
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View original article here:
http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/25/derry-drug-squad-vigilantes
Comment: Eamonn McCann
======== DRUG SQUAD VIGILANTES IN DERRY ======================================
Irish socialist Eamonn McCann looks at the behavior of Republican Action
Against Drugs, a vigilante squad that justifies its killing and maiming by
pointing to drugs.
June 25, 2010
A COUPLE of weeks ago, an armed gang took over Central Drive in the Creggan
estate in Derry, placing men with automatic weapons at either end of the
road, while others threatened at gunpoint youths standing outside a row of
shops, searched them and warned that they could expect no mercy if they
stepped out of line again.
The gang claimed that before leaving the scene, it fired 80 shots from
automatic weapons to underline the seriousness of its intent.
I suspect that many in other parts of the north won't have heard of the
incident. In contrast, a piece of playacting by "dissident republicans" in a
village in south Armagh a few weeks earlier had attracted widespread coverage
and concerned statements from senior politicians.
The relative silence about the activities of the Derry gang can be detected
in the name in which they have cloaked themselves: Republican Action Against
Drugs (RAAD).
Drugs. The very word seems to send otherwise sensible people into spirals of
hysteria.
RAAD has shot 15 people in Derry in the last 18 months--dragged young men
from their homes and maimed them in full public view; hurled a pipe-bomb at a
terraced house, blowing out the living-room windows and wrecking a car;
kicked their way into a home and forced a young man to lie on the floor to be
shot. And so on.
The offense of the youngsters at Central Drive appears to have been hanging
around outside the shops making nuisances of themselves. RAAD explained that
their major operation "should be seen as a warning to young people who cause
weekly mayhem in the Central Drive area. We would ask parents to take this
warning seriously and advise their sons and daughters to stay away.''
The outfit had evidently extended its remit. Having come onto the scene
proclaiming an intention to rid the town of drugs, it appeared now that they
didn't have to suspect you of drug-dealing to make you a legitimate target.
If they reckon you've been involved in anti-social behavior, expect a bullet.
And your ma and your da can whinge all they like. They should have kept you
in, shouldn't they?
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RAAD IS a lineal descendant of Direct Action Against Drugs, which murdered 11
people in the Belfast area in the 1990s. The question arises: Morality apart,
if there is any validity in this approach, how come the drugs problem in
Belfast is as bad now as it was then?
One reason the approach can be maintained has to do with the intense
irrational alarm about drugs generated by right-wing politicians and media
outlets, which has the effect of making anyone accused of drug-dealing seem
fair game to people who would never approve of such cowardly maiming and
killing in any other context.
The ideology behind RAAD can be found in profusion in the letters page of the
/Sun/. Useless police, namby-pamby judges, prison a doddle, only language
these people understand...
In January, RAAD shot a shopowner in Derry three times for selling
mephedrone. A demonstration against the shooting outside the shop attracted
councilors and members of the legislative assembly. So when news came in
March of the mephedrone-related deaths in Scunthorpe of 18-year-old Louis
Wainwright and 19-year-old Nicholas Smith, RAAD's cup of joy overflowed. "We
wuz right," they crowed, jeering at those who had attended the demonstration.
The mephedrone angle had earned the story of the deaths of the Scunthorpe
teenagers front-page billing. But there was hardly a cheep from the same
outlets when toxicology tests revealed last month that there wasn't a trace
of mephedrone in either youth's bodies. The drug found in dangerous
concentration was alcohol. So no story there, then.
Members of the Wainwright and Smith families had been subjected to television
and newspaper interviews in which they were invited to plead with young
people not to use mephedrone and to demand that it be banned. Responding to
the furor, Home Secretary Alan Johnston announced that the government would
move with all haste to ban mephedrone. A bill was drafted and became law
within a couple of weeks.
Two members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned in
protest, claiming that the council had been subjected to "intolerable"
political pressure. The medical journal /The Lancet/ warned against politics
being allowed to "contaminate" the appraisal of medical evidence.
Once again, drug policy had been made on the basis of inaccurate information
and accepted in an atmosphere of moral panic. This moral panic is the mulch
in which weeds like RAAD grow.
/First published at the/ Belfast Telegraph [1].
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[1] http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamon-mccann/hysteria-over-drugs-gives-the-green-light-to-killers-and-thugs-14844922.html
