Denis
Donaldson was a stalwart defender of the peace process.
Closer to the Sinn Féin leadership think
tank than Freddie Scappaticci aka Stakeknife - very
close in fact - Donaldson was never slow to berate
those who dissented from the leadership.
While
in Maghaberry on remand as a result of Stormontgate,
both as a leading Sinn Féin activist and
a long- term British agent (the difference is sometimes
blurred) a Real IRA prisoner offered him Ed Moloney's
book A Secret History of the IRA. Donaldson reacted
as if he had been scalded, declined to take the
book, muttering that it was unhelpful to the peace
process and that it undermined the credibility of
the Sinn Féin leadership.
A
number of months ago as I walked my young daughter
into her school, Donaldson looked at me with something
close to hatred. Seemingly, I too was not helpful
to the peace process. Frequently, Donaldson would
seek to demonise me and vilify my writing on the
grounds that it was disloyal to the leadership.
With him as part of that leadership I shall proudly
wear my disloyalty like a badge of honour.
And
part of that leadership he was. Early in the peace
process and shortly after he was sent out to take
charge of the party's New York operation, he began
to undermine anyone thinking along traditional republican
lines. Martin Galvin became a casualty in that exercise.
According to Galvin, the orders from the Sinn Féin
leadership in Belfast were that all vestiges of
the old order be purged and replaced with others
who would be acceptable to the US political class.
Sinn Féin in New York was to be such in name
only. Operationally, under the guidance of Donaldson,
it was to function much the same as Fianna Fail.
Whether
in south Down or Antrim town, the role of Donaldson
as leadership enforcer remained as it was in New
York. Any republican who asked a question about
the strategic direction of the party was removed
by him and expelled from the movement. Solid republicans
such as Paddy Murray and Martin Cunningham were
ambushed by this agent of the British state.
While
Donaldson did all of this at the behest of the Sinn
Féin leadership, it is inconceivable that
his 'securocrat' handlers also did not approve of
his activities. His role was to implement the shared
agenda of two masters.
The
Sinn Féin leadership, shaken less by the
fact that it appears agent-penetrated and more by
the revelations of how closely its own agenda and
that of the British state overlap, has resorted
to abandoning Donaldson in a manner that Scappaticci
escaped.
Gerry
Adams has sought to construct the fiction that there
was no Sinn Féin spy-ring at Stormont; that
the only spy-ring there was, in fact, one operated
by the British intelligence services. This would
be all very well were it not for the fact that the
person operating the same spy-ring happens to be
a senior elected Sinn Féin politician. Scappaticci
certainly provided his British handlers with an
inordinate amount of information about the same
person in a bid to make him more susceptible to
"being turned" through blackmail.
Is
Mr Adams telling us that this politician is the
third 'horseman'? What a complex web we weave when
first we practice to deceive. It is too early to
say that there are sufficient horsemen within the
Sinn Féin leadership to make a cavalry regiment.
But, as Oscar Wilde might have said, one tout, Mr
Adams, is misfortune, two is carelessness.
