“They have let people know that regardless of what the Provo command says they will settle their own accounts.”When the Sinn Fein leadership agreed to hand over a little information they organised for slogans to be written on the wall saying Gerry Adams is a tout.”There is nothing ostentatious about the gang or its leader. If not, there would be fires and damage until he reconsidered.”Was it never challenged? “Now who’d do that? The police have enough to do; why would they bother? It’s a way of life that has been going on here for 30 years, it’s just that lately the rules have changed and people are sick of it.”The gang is defiant. “They said: ‘You hire our boys and your site will be safe.’ If the constructor paid the money that was fine. Robberies were allowed by the IRA leadership on the understanding that if you were caught you would be disowned, although that would be quietly reversed later.”The gang has smuggled cigarettes and pirate DVDs, says one man formerly close to them They also offer security to bars and builders. They acted as enforcers for the IRA but also ran criminal enterprises – a few rackets to generate a bit of income.”Some people suggest half their income was going to Sinn Fein. “The old-style IRA men retired when the peace process began to evolve, or they moved away to seek better lives elsewhere.”This new crowd got rid of anybody in the Short Strand who had integrity or morals.

It was not respected at the time – there was a joke that its initials stood for I Ran Away – and the battle helped establish the idea of the IRA as protector of its people.That powerful notion began to crumble after the Good Friday agreement, says Alasdair McDonnell, SDLP representative for South Belfast. Ordinary people living here are saying that this gang is now more menacing, more oppressive to the community, than the Brits ever were.”The Short Strand became central to IRA mythology in June 1970 when a gun battle there between a small group of provisionals and a loyalist mob earned the organisation credibility. Something similar is happening in Belfast.”In the old days IRA men didn’t go about drinking; they didn’t get involved in silly public fights that left somebody dying in an alleyway,” says a frustrated republican “People are getting sick of it. But as the notion of good old-fashioned working-class criminal solidarity faded in East London, the gang leaders were exposed as cruel, self-obsessed psychopaths. To someone who grew up in the East End of London it sounds like the rose- or blood-tinted view of the Kray brothers, who “never harmed their own and only punished those who deserved it”. If the men of 30 years ago were here they would not have them in the ranks.”To an outsider this sounds like nostalgia for the old-fashioned beat bobby.

The people who did that were genuinely republican,” says one man They are just a gang of scumbags. When he came back they let it be known he was their boy – anyone attacking him would get shot.”There is also strong nostalgia in the Short Strand for the old-style IRA, the enforcers who may or may not have had a free hand but who certainly had a cause.”The IRA fought and kept loyalists from invading the Short Strand. Another broke into a neighbour’s house and attempted to rape her. She screamed, he ran and was found hiding in some bushes.”The Provos had to do something. They gave him a flesh wound – nothing much – told him to stay out of the place for a while. The leader does surround himself with lapdogs and sidekicks, people who have been involved in attempted rape, paedophilia, wife battering Racketeering They don’t work, these people.

They get up to all sorts of Mafia-type activity.”There are many stories about the gang of a dozen or so men believed to have been involved in the McCartney killing. One burned his own wife with the steam from a wallpaper stripper. If you’re a friend of theirs or a relative it doesn’t matter what you do – joyriding, house breaking, whatever – you get a free hand.”One of them had an uncle who molested young children He wasn’t punished. He was given protection when he left the area.”A woman who lives in the Short Strand and has grow up with members of the gang says: “They have been conditioned, schooled all their lives, in fear and how to intimidate Violence and physical abuse and murder are what they know. But see what happens when the big man’s own son steals a car radio? Nothing. If he’s not there on time we’ll find him and shoot him.’ We’re used to that, it’s been that way around here a long time.