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A View North Drugs, power roots of loyalist conflict

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Jack Holland

There are tourists now in West Belfast, looking at some paramilitary sights, and being taken on tours by enterprising local historians. But there are a few spots that they normally do not get to see. Like Johnny Adair’s "drug house."

My guide, a former loyalist paramilitary now involved in community work, slowed his car down as we drove through the Shankill Estate to take in the obligatory murals of King Billy, Billy Wright and other Protestant icons. We were passing a row of two-story, dilapidated apartments, with their windows boarded up, an ugly, semi-derelict block scarred by graffiti, which stands on a street leading into the center of the estate.

A cluster of four or five young men stood outside a ground-floor apartment in the middle of the block. It was a warm day for Belfast — about 60 degrees, and they were in sleeveless T-shirts and vests. With shaven heads, and tattooed arms, they could have been soccer hooligans or right-wing thugs of the sort the Italians call "Naziskins."

"They’re the drug dealers," said my guide as we passed and they glanced at us for a second, wondering if we were potential customers. He explained that Johnny Adair, a notorious UDA activist, who has just recently been put back in jail after enjoying almost a year of freedom thanks to the Good Friday agreement, controls the premises from which a variety of drugs was being sold it would appear, quite openly. Among the drugs available are Ecstasy, crack, marijuana, and heroin. Heroin, the most recent import, is at the moment only available in small quantities. But its appearance is of deep concern to local social and community workers, knowing as they do its potential for dreadful damage if it should get into the country in greater amounts.

The authorities’ response to the growing menace has been criticized by community workers. Local people claim that the police, for whatever reason, often turn a blind eye to illegal activities involving drug dealing. (For their part, the RUC say privately that as the political situation stabilizes, they are switching a lot of their resources to the problem of drugs and predict that it will eventually show in the numbers being arrested.)

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In the middle of the Shankill Estate is a large open space, where there was piled a huge stack of wood. Every gable wall around it was adorned with a mural. Here were all the loyalist icons, proudly displayed, from King Billy onward. However, most prominent was a portrait of another Billy — Billy Wright, nicknamed King Rat, the leader of the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force, who was assassinated in prison in December 1997 by the INLA. It was inscribed: "Loyalist Martyr 1960-1997".

Rather incongruously, it was directly opposite a huge portrait of Princess Diana, inscribed "Queen of Hearts". It might seem like a bit of a stretch to have a notion of loyalty that can include both Princess Di — the young woman who struggled to give British Royalty a modern look — and a man whose idea of loyalty was to kill innocent Catholics. But not on the Shankill Estate.

Princess Di was surrounded by other portraits of fallen loyalist heroes, not quite as notorious as King Rat but each having made their own little contribution to the North’s Troubles, men such as Billy "Bucky" McCullough, 1949-1981, a prominent UDA man shot dead by the INLA, and Stephen McCrea, a member of the small but vicious Red Hand Commandos, who the Provisional IRA murdered in Crumlin Road Prison in late 1991.

However, it was Wright’s portrait that has been given the most attention. A few months ago, when it was painted (as were all the others on the estate) by the UDA, it was seen in loyalist circles as a direct challenge to their main rivals in the loyalist community, the UVF, from whom Wright split in 1996. The mural helped spark off a series of recriminations, fights, and, finally, shootings, which last week claimed three lives. Dozens have been injured.

The youth worker and the former loyalist paramilitary-turned-community worker both come from the Shankill area, and they don’t like what they see going on around them. Not only have they witnessed a rapid rise in drug culture, thanks to paramilitaries switching from "political" violence to ordinary criminal activity, but they see how some are blatantly profiting from it. One leading loyalist gunman now drives around the Shankill in an Izuzu Trooper — stock price about $32,000. Adair and his wife holiday in the Caribbean. Other recently released UDA and UVF men are running community organizations. Community workers are afraid that their attempts to deal with the drugs problem on the streets will be undermined by people within their own community groups who are reaping such hefty profits from it.

"It’s hard for people to speak up," said the youth worker. He also fears that the paramilitaries will use the community groups to recruit members.

People are "being shafted by the British government," according to the community worker.

"They are not going to take guns off the street," said the former loyalist, who was angry at the release of prisoners due to the Good Friday agreement.

"I couldn’t swallow the taste in my mouth," he said when he saw the IRA man Sean Kelly walk free. Kelly had been convicted of murdering nine people in a premature explosion on the Shankill Road in October 1993. "That means," said the ex-loyalist, "that Kelly has done less than seven months per murder."

"Ordinary people feel sick about the early releases," the youth worker agreed.

The Shankill, like the Falls, is a close-knit community. It is being traumatized by the current UDA-UVF conflict. Last weekend alone, 47 UVF-linked families were forced out of the Shankill Estate by the UDA. The home of Gusty Spence, the founding father of the modern UVF, was gutted after an attack by UDA members.

However, there is one hopeful sign. Loyalist sources report that attempts by the Shankill UDA to get the support of the UDA in North and East Belfast have so far failed. In those areas, the local commanders are deeply suspicious of Adair and his ambitions. But as mediation efforts begin, loyalists are warning of further deaths before the "score" is settled.

"There’s no ideology behind it," commented the former loyalist. "It’s all about drugs and power."

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