Ray Coyle has been told he’s been sentenced to death by Republican Action Against Drugs. He takes the warning seriously, as he should. The last person RAAD told to fear for his life, Andy Allen, was blasted to death at his home two weeks later, on February 9.

Contrary to RAAD’s allegations, Andy wasn’t anything resembling a “drugs baron”. But he’d been doing a bit of blow, and that can be deemed beyond the beyond when RAAD feels a killing coming on.
The day after the funeral, I chaired a protest rally near the Allen family home at the top of the Hill. About 30 young people, wearing “Andy RIP” T-shirts, arranged themselves in front in semi-circular formation. Ray stood immediately behind, waving a placard aloft – “Reject Action Against Democracy.”
In February last year, Ray had himself been shot by RAAD, three times in the leg and thigh in his shop in Waterloo St. where he sold subversive garments, collectors-item comics, legal highs and knick-knacks of one sort and another. Something of an anarchist and forthright to a degree, he’d made no secret that, “I sell stuff as legal as alcohol but not as dangerous.”
The hysteria over “highs” which swept the land last year combined in the North with a toxic paramilitary “policing” tradition to provide RAAD with a plausible raison-d’etré. Thus do zero-tolerance law ’n’ order attitudes to drugs feed the ghouls’ addiction to death.
The fact that Ray returned to the fray as soon as he’d recovered was regarded by RAAD as intolerable. “He shows no respect.” All outfits which set themselves up as protectors of the community crave respect. Some of the most pitiless Provo attacks over the course of the conflict were prompted not by allegations of the victim having compromised the Struggle but of behaviour which belittled the ‘Ra in the eyes of the people, such as besting a ranking Volunteer in a fight.
Back in July 1998, Andrew Kearney beat up a prominent north Belfast Provo, fair and square. A fortnight later, a seven-strong IRA gang battered its way into his eighth-floor flat in a New Lodge tower-block and trussed him up and dragged him out before shooting him three times. They ripped the phone out and jammed the lift on the ground floor before fleeing the scene. None of the neighbours, understandably terrified, opened their door. Andrew bled to death on the balcony as his two-year-old son howled in horror and his girlfriend tumbled distraught down the stairs screaming for help. Every member of the Provisional hierarchy, including those who, exceedingly pleased with themselves, now regularly parade on the news for our applause, either openly approved or silently endorsed this action by the ‘Ra to uphold its standing.
Similarly, an incident in Creggan in March this year in which RAAD ordered the parents of four youngsters to bring their children to a specified laneway to be shot had nothing to do with drugs but with the four having badly beaten a member of the group with whom they’d had a run-in in a bar.
This scenario is played out against a background in which many in the bottom-half of society have reason to regard the peace process as just a phrase the news is going through. This doesn’t arise so much from the dashing of this or that political aspiration as from the fact that day-to-day life has not gotten better and in some ways has grown palpably worse – joblessness, benefit cuts, the slashing of services, the lack of money, the bleakness of the environment, the absence of optimism, constant anxiety for the future…
None of this is allowed to cast a shadow on the sunshine spectacle of the New Northern Ireland of craic agus ceol, Cities of Culture and born-again leaders of the Two Traditions glad-handing their way across the grinorama world. The only place on earth where a sinking ship can be made into cause for celebration.
RAAD isn’t a “dissident” organisation in the sense of opposing the Belfast Agreement or promoting a return to armed struggle to achieve a united Ireland. Leading members of Sinn Féin played midwife at its birth, reasoning there was need for a hopefully temporary means of keeping discipline in the community by cracking down on instances of criminality and “anti-social behaviour” which the PSNI wasn’t able (yet) to handle. Now, however, RAAD, having developed its own momentum and its sense of entitlement to enforce its will, has begun to challenge SF’s own assumed authority. In recent weeks, the mainstream Republicans have disowned and denounced their rival as a “micro-group”, a “criminal gang” and so forth. The more this attitude hardens, the greater the area of common operational ground between RAAD and the Reals.
RAAD’s threats to young people were roundly condemned at a rally at Free Derry Wall on International Women’s Day. As we applauded, a fellow tugged at my elbow. “Would you look at that hypocrite?” indicating a chap from Sinn Féin no more than six feet away whom we both knew had headed up a Provo punishment squad not very long ago.
The smiling man making the point was a supporter of the 32-county Sovereignty Campaign, widely seen as the political wing of the Real IRA. It occurred to me he had at least as much reason for contentment about the future as any writer of advertorials hailing our happy transformation to prosperity and peace.