Artifact 7: Vice News: “Free Derry: The IRA Drug War”.

“A fairly effective group of men that were targeting and executing drug dealers, and had them on the run from the looks of it!”

Unnamed mourner attending the funeral of New IRA commander Alan Ryan. 2014.

This exposé by Vice News focuses on the 2014 uptick in violence committed by the New IRA, including the mailing of letterbombs from (London)derry and the paramilitary war on drugs. The report begins with the funeral procession in Dublin of Alan Ryan, a New IRA commander. He was executed in front of his home by drug dealers for his incredibly successful efforts to disrupt the drug smuggling trade in Northern Ireland from Dublin. His death led to the New IRA merging with other dissident Republican groups including RAAD, or Republican Action Against Drugs.

“We don’t like drug dealers. We think all drug dealers deserve to be shot dead.”

Unnamed 14 year-old Republican Volunteer from Dublin. 2014.

The report also includes multiple interviews with dissident Republicans who are seeking to continue the violent opposition to British rule of Northern Ireland. The above quote by a very young masked dissident connects directly to Reinisch’s (2020) work describing the successful recruitment of Irish youth. Notably, VICE focused their interviews in the Republic and not Northern Ireland, confirming Reinisch’s hypothesis that for a variety of reasons youth recruitment is more lucrative in the South.

The perceptions of legitimacy are critical to all paramilitary groups and tribune parties in Northern Ireland, both externally and internally. Kit and Bakke (2021) describe the extreme commitment to internal legitimacy by paramilitaries, especially through community policing programs. They highlight multiple such instances, including the aforementioned ‘Night of the Long Knifes’ as evidence of the importance both Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries place on legitimacy within their communities. However, that event, as well as the actions committed by the New IRA in their war on drugs, show that these groups generally only have one mechanism to establish that legitimacy: violence. Due to the fact that said violence is frequently targeted towards other Republicans engaged in drug smuggling only furthers the existing divisions in the movement.