AIA Calls For Community Response To Drug-Based Intimidation

The Socialist Republican organisation Anti-Imperialist Action (AIA) has released a statement calling for a concerted national effort against drug debt intimidation, the drug barons behind the scenes and the gardaí & PSNI officers who enable them.

This statement came shortly after the Tuesday 13 October arson attack on the home of the English family in Waterford City. Four members of the family were murdered, while two remain in critical condition.

This attack on the English family comes not long after the drug-related arson murder of 4-year-old Tadgh Farrell and his great-aunt Mary Holt in Offaly last year.

Ireland’s contemporary drug violence epidemic stretches back to the dawn of the Celtic Tiger era, where in 1996, 80% of crime was drug-related.

As noted by Séamus Mac Shíomóin and Alexander Homits, the bitter consequences of the wealth hoarding and drug habits of Ireland’s upper classes in the past three decades have largely been outsourced to working-class communities, which have been transformed from meccas of resistance into centres of violence.