If
all those with a motive or a desire to kill Denis
Donaldson were to be rounded up as the usual suspects,
cross border policing would take on a new dimension
as PSNI holding cells were quickly commissioned
to accommodate the overflow from detention centres
run by a Garda unable to cope. Motive and desire
in this case, being as wide as they are deep, would
render any inquiry based on those factors a non-starter;
a case of hoping to pull the right bee from the
swarm.
Investigators,
whether police or press, may be tempted to
conclude that a more productive avenue is to examine
those willing to take the risk. Such a mechanism
would not in itself lead to verification of who
killed Donaldson but it would eliminate certain
categories from serious scrutiny. The two most likely
to benefit from this formalistic exoneration would
be the Provisional leadership and British spooks.
Many
of those invited to comment on the killing of Denis
Donaldson, presuming it was the work of republicans,
claimed it was inevitable and that they had expected
it. I was shocked when I learned of it. I had heard
no one else predicting it in advance. Most that
I spoke to since his public confession in December
were ruefully of the view that Donaldson had got
away with it and that a life in Donegal was more
than he had any right to expect. Nobody was predicting
that either the Provisional leadership or British
spooks were keeping him for a more propitious moment
down the road.
Theoretically,
spooks could have been the perps. The record of
the British security services in Ireland is not
the envy of other European governments. But their
method of getting rid of Franko Hegarty in 1986,
rather than sign the substantial cheque for his
relocation, would have been to engineer a situation
in which Donaldson's own movement colleagues could
be moved by the hidden hand. Rather than bounce
him into rushing forward to admit his role and acquire
some discount from the IRA, they would have allowed
him to be discovered by the IRA, where his pleas
of mitigation would likely fall on deaf ears. Or
they could have given Donaldson 'the measles', making
his death look like suicide.
Alternatively,
the Provisional leadership could easily have ordered
their former colleague dead. But for what strategic
purpose? If for destabilising political life and
sabotaging the return of the political institutions,
it made more sense, as pointed out by Ed Moloney,
to wait until premium political crunch time in November
and then strike for maximum effect. There was little
strategic prudence in killing Donaldson this month
in order to prompt Ian Paisley to do what he was
going to do anyway. Donaldson's death will at most
allow the DUP to indulge in a little shroud waving
for the purposes of concealing their intent, long
visible before the Donegal killing.
What
benefits there were for Sinn Fein were dwarfed by
the costs. The Provisional leadership would have
foreseen the party's already dented credibility
in the Republic erode even further. It would be
prescient enough to understand that the US would
have dismissed it completely as a serious peace
broker, despite Gerry Adam's protestations that
he, as its leader, had been invaluable to the White
House. And it would discern that even the current
occupant of 10 Downing Street would be forced to
conclude that continuing to work with Adams/McGuinness
had as much chance of producing success as efforts
to fashion a rope from sand. One senior British
source told the Irish Times that, 'if there is evidence
that it was the IRA then we will face up to that,
and if there is evidence then, that's it as far
as the process is concerned.' In such a scenario,
a new leadership with no connections to the armed
struggle, as recently suggested by Tommy McKearney,
would be the logic dropping from the skies on top
of those still hopeful of a return to devolved government.
The
long moment for hoping to benefit from continuously
destabilising the Northern political institutions
has passed. A viable strategy, certainly, but one
that was always dependent on an ability to depict
an intransigent unionism forever finding ways to
prevent the anchoring of the Good Friday Agreement.
In turn the electorate in the Republic would reward
an ostensibly blameless and conciliatory Sinn Fein,
allowing it to expand into regions hitherto unimagined.
Prior
to the Northern Bank robbery, when that long moment
could be endlessly stretched, it may have made sense
for the IRA to carry out but deny the type of killing
that occurred in Donegal. It would have served as
the weed in the peace process flower preventing
unionism - but not the governments - from admiring
its beauty, inhaling its fragrance and pressing
it to its bosom. At that juncture a Donegal style
killing would have guaranteed the instability in
the political process on which Sinn Fein thrived,
providing the electorate North and South blamed
the unionists rather than it, and responded accordingly.
No matter what the fall out from the killing then,
by May 2005, after the British general elections
Sinn Fein would have been back boogying at the peace
process ball with the DUP two-stepping alongside
it. Experience being a good teacher, all the key
players knew the template: only six months after
the IRA were accused of kidnapping Bobby Tohill
both the DUP and Sinn Fein were waltzing around
Leeds Castle together.
Since
December 2004 Sinn Fein has watched the political
terra firma shift beneath its feet. It could easily
have got over the Northern Bank fallout but for
the intervention of the Robert McCartney killing
which caused the party serious problems. These complications
were admitted to by Declan Kearney at this year's
internal Northern party conference and by Alex Maskey
in the aftermath of last year's British general
election. In that contest Sinn Fein needed to do
to the SDLP what the DUP did to the UUP. It didn't
happen. Sinn Fein now finds itself in a position
whereby it has united unionism, helped maintain
a divided nationalism, and is facing incremental
rather than exponential growth in the Republic.
In this context it seems likely that the expansionist
strategy fuelled by manufactured crises in the peace
process has run its course. The law of diminishing
returns has reduced Sinn Fein's 'Lebensraum' potential
dramatically.
If so, the only option left to the party is to cut
its losses and follow the line of least resistance.
That means a shift in orientation, looking North
rather than South; getting into the institutions
rather than devising crises in order to ensure there
are no institutions. With Paisley commanding the
entrance fee, handing him a reason via Denis Donaldson
to hike the price even further, and having the moral
high ground from which to do it, would amount to
gross strategic folly.
Not
so many years ago, the name Donaldson figured at
the heart of the peace process. Speculation was
endless about Jeffrey's intentions. Today, speculation
about a Donaldson remains as vigorous as ever. Denis
certainly took some secrets to the grave with him.
Who killed him remains, at present, the most sought
after of them all.
