Amid the usual scrawls of teenage graffiti in the pedestrian subway under the dual carriageway at Carrickfergus are the letters "ATAT" and a rifle sights cartoon. While this would mean nothing to day-trippers to the historic harbour and Norman castle, to the initiated it is a signal that this seemingly demur east Antrim town harbours sectarian and ethnic hatreds of a type normally associated with the Balkans.
"ATAT" stands for "All Taigs Are Targets" - the rifle sights spell out the rest of the message quite clearly.
Carrickfergus has always been a predominantly Protestant town. The Catholic percentage of the population has fallen below 7 per cent and, if some local loyalists have their way, it could soon be a town without any Catholics.
The campaign is being waged by members of the South East Antrim UDA. Its commander, a former loyalist prisoner who lives in the huge housing estate of Rathcoole about four miles away, has apparently decreed that this area be cleared of Catholics and people in mixed marriages.
Last year his directive was carried out robustly by his lieutenant in Carrickfergus, a man in his mid-twenties who is a familiar figure in the working-class housing estates built on the slowly rising land behind the town centre.
The Carrick UDA boss, like his counterpart in Monkstown, the other major loyalist housing area in this part of south-east Antrim, is a minor criminal and drug dealer, who has risen to the position of local UDA boss largely because of his ruthless sectarianism. One loyalist figure who knows both men said drug users in the area know they can telephone the Monkstown UDA man and he will delivered "e" (ecstasy) tablets and hash to their houses.
Last year the UDA virtually cleared Carrickfergus of the few dozen remaining Catholic families living in public authority housing. They have since turned their attention to Catholics living in private houses. There are "for sale" signs all over the town. One Catholic woman, married to a Protestant, who spoke to the Irish Times on the understanding she would not be identified, said she and her husband decided after last year's attacks on Catholic property in the town they had to leave for the sake of their children. They have lived in the town for seven years and are moving out this summer.
She said: "There is an unspoken agenda here. Since last year it has become less subtle. There is writing up on gable walls, in Woodburn (one of the local housing estates) and around the town. It is quite scary. There was a pipe bombing a couple of months ago and then that man was shot (a Catholic workman narrowly missed death when he was shot in the chest on May 12th).
"We have had vandalism. Our fence has been knocked down nine times. We called the police but they said it was just young fellows' high jinx. At Hallowe'en they threw a fire cracker into our porch. I sat up for four nights in a row trying to catch them".
Last year, when more than 20 Catholic families and several RUC members - some of whom were also Catholics - were forced out of Carrickfergus, the woman said she was almost hysterical with fear, especially after she heard the news of the deaths of the three Quinn children in a loyalist fire-bomb attack on their home in Ballymoney, Co Antrim. The Quinns, Mark (9), Jason (7) and Richard (10), were also children of a mixed marriage.
"That was when it really hit home. It sounds awful but that had a worse effect on me than the Omagh bombing.
"Recently two teenage fellows came up to my son and asked him: `which one's the Taig, your ma or your da?' "
In the southern suburbs of Belfast, another low-level but concerted campaign is underway to intimidate Catholics from their homes and businesses in the Dunmurray and Derriaghy area. Again this is being orchestrated by the local UDA. Dunmurry and Derriaghy has had a growing Catholic population for decades as it adjoins west Belfast.
There is evidence that the UDA has been building up information on homes owned by Catholics or by mixed-religion couples. Like Carrickfergus, this targeting is aimed principally at people who own their own houses, many of whom have chosen to live in the area because it was perceived as mixed. In fact, there has been a sectarian delineation roughly along the line of the Deriaghy river where it bisects the main street in Dunmurry village. To the south on the Lisburn side the area has been almost entirely Protestant, and to the northern or city side the area is mainly but not totally Catholic. The "line" in Dunurry began to move earlier this year as the local UDA started targeting Catholic homes and businesses on the northern side of the river. There was a pipe-bomb attack on a house in Derriaghy in March and a petrol-bomb attack on another Catholic house in Dumurry a month later. Windows were broken in Catholic-owned businesses. Last month a large gang of loyalists burst into the Motte and Bailey bar, recently refurbished after being taken over by a Catholic builder, and smashed the pub. It closed down.
On the night of Mother's Day in February cars belonging to three Catholic families in a street near the centre of Dunmurry village were vandalised and covered in threatening graffiti like "Fenians out", "LVF" and "out, out, out". Two Catholic families have left and the home of the third is up for sale.
One man who moved out of Dunmurry earlier this year (and who like most other people in his position does not wish to be identified) said there was a sudden change in attitude to Catholics living in the village in February.
"One day they were speaking to you and the next day you were a leper. That went on for a couple of weeks. Then on Mother's Day the cars from the Catholic houses were all done - they wrote all this graffiti: `Fenians out', `out, out, out', `LVF', `Fenian scum' and `bastards'.
"The police came around and treated it as very jovial because one of the cars had Southern plates saying: `you should have more sense' and `there are not many other Roman Catholics living here'.
"We knew it was time to move - it is no use flogging a dead horse and we put it [the house] up for sale."
