Robert
McCartney was murdered one year ago. Knifed, beaten,
kicked, danced upon, the Short Strand resident,
despite his physical strength, stood little chance
as his 'defenders' stabbed and bludgeoned the life
out of his body. His drinking buddy Brendan Devine
was lucky to wake up the other side of the operating
theatre. Only a minority of people in Magennis's
bar took part in the savagery, yet out of a sense
of either fear or common purpose not one of the
many onlookers found it within themselves to call
for an ambulance.
Only
in an Orwellian ensemble where truthful testimony
has pariah status, could perpetrators such as the
bar room butchers describe themselves, or be termed
by others, as community defenders. Then again history
teaches us that even torturers and those who practice
the dark art of disappearing human beings see themselves
in good light and have their admirers. Argentina
and Chile being merely two of the many countries
where 'respectable, responsible and Christian' are
terms lavished on brutes and butchers.
Thirteen
months ago the Sinn Fein leadership could hardly
have foreseen the year that lay ahead. Despite initial
bad press, it would have been over the worst of
the fallout from the Northern Bank robbery by May
when the British general election would have created
new imperatives which in turn would have led to
the quelling of awkward questions. Peace processing
would have been back at its most virulent ravishing
transparency and ridiculing honest commentary. The
murder of Robert McCartney changed everything. While
Sinn Fein's growth continued it was incremental
rather than exponential as anticipated. The year
ended as badly as it had started, with the party
reeling as a result of spy allegations and widely
felt to be unworthy of belief. Some observers now
feel that the Sinn Fein bubble has burst, that its
erstwhile image of idealism fuelled by the hunger
strikes and the sacrifices of IRA volunteers has
given way to a reputation for slime and sleaze.
Premature perhaps, even a touch caustic or wishful
thinking, but Sinn Fein's 2005 journey was made
barefooted on a thorny path. And the damage sustained
may yet prove irreparable. The irony of the party
predicament is that an issue it can normally be
expected to benefit from - the murder of a Sinn
Fein voter - became a spectre that stalked it relentlessly
from Washington pillar to Brussels post.
Much
has been suggested that the murder flowed from an
order given by what the PSNI allege was 'a very
senior IRA man' in the bar on the evening. Even
if this is true what sort of 'thinking republican',
to borrow Gerry Adams's term would fail to stop
in their tracks to reflect that people's lives cannot
be ended on an arbitrary whim translated into an
order issued from the middle of some pub. Robert
McCartney's knife wielding assailants murdered him
because they wanted to. If such an order was given
it was easy to refuse it and win the case if brought
before any leadership tribunal. Spur of the moment
decisions hatched in pubs to kill people was the
modus operandi of the UDA; never the IRA.
There
is no need to subscribe to Nigel West's view that
one in three Provisionals are touts in order to
accept the likelihood that agents aplenty were in
the bar on the evening of the murder. Out of the
large body of Provisional activists there, statistically
this would lend itself to a belief that more than
one taxi would have been required to whisk the informers
away from the scene if perchance they decided to
travel together. Investigators within the PSNI may
not have known from the outset what happened in
the bar, but those running the agents who were present
on the night were certainly aware. That the inquiry
has not made the progress that it should have suggests
that Kevin Dunwoody and his team of evidence gatherers
may have had their investigation frustrated by those
within the PSNI or other security agencies more
keen to protect informers than to solve murders.
Two
men have since appeared in court. Terry Davison
was charged with murdering Robert McCartney while
Jim McCormick stands accused of attempting to murder
Brendan Devine. While expressing no view about the
guilt or innocence of either man the McCartney women
are despondent over the limited progress to date.
They believe that as many as fifteen were involved
in either assaulting the two men in the bar or in
the fatal attack outside the premises. Others were
involved in the forensic cover up and subsequent
attempts to pervert the course of justice, intimidate
witnesses or hamper the inquiry. The women feel
all should be brought to book. It would be a rare
event in the murderous history of the North if this
were to happen. For the most part the cops get the
main perpetrators, if at all, and sometimes frame
the innocent to make up the numbers.
When
I first met the McCartney women the Friday after
they had buried their brother, I had little idea
that a full year later the case would still be generating
public interest despite the hopes of those opposed
to a just outcome. Then they displayed no interest
in giving Sinn Fein a hard time. Catherine McCartney
would say later she had 'such faith in Sinn Féin.'
The women readily accepted the suggestion that they
would spare themselves and Sinn Fein a lot of trouble
if they could persuade Brendan Devine to give evidence.
It never worked out like that. It would be a matter
of months before Devine grasped the nettle. By then,
with the women less and less convinced that Sinn
Fein was the honest broker it claimed to be, the
story had developed a momentum of its own and the
women moved centre stage in a struggle against Sinn
Fein which the party never remotely looked like
winning.
As
the family sit on the first anniversary of Robert's
death and reflect on a year in which they have hardly
had time to grieve they know that there are people
out there who hold the key to unlock the case and
release them from their mental anguish. Paula expressed
their hopes to the Sunday Tribune:
