Liam
Kennedy's decision to contest West Belfast in this
week's general election seems bizarre. It was not
as if his range of choices was constrained. He could
have stood in South Belfast and posed his questions
about punishments attacks to former city mayor Alex
Maskey and been much more effective. Post-Northern
Bank robbery and the Robert McCartney murder, Maskey
has lost much of the goodwill he had accrued as
mayor. Even the ultra-tolerant Ken Newell was frustrated
to the point of despair by Maskey's evasions during
a Hearts & Minds exchange. Maskey would find
it difficult to both ignore and field the questions
Kennedy would lob his way. As it is, the West Belfast
MP Gerry Adams, so assured of walking the seat,
never even bothered responding to Kennedy's request
for a debate on punishment attacks.
Moreover,
Liam Kennedy has the benefit of living in South
Belfast where the McCartney murder issue would have
touched many of the constituency's voters who knew
the murder victim's family in a personal capacity.
The people suspected of having killed Robert McCartney
are known throughout nationalist South Belfast.
Many of the voters have had them at their own doors
in the past seeking a vote for Sinn Fein. Liam Kennedy
could also have cashed in on the strong woman profile
established by the McCartney women and taken a slice
of the sizeable vote that previously went to the
Women's Coalition. Moreover, he may have topped
up his total with some unionist votes. In any event
had he opted to contest South Belfast his electoral
endorsement would not be as derisively low as the
102 he pulled the last time he faced the Sinn Fein
boss in 1997 in the west of the city.
The
weakness of the Kennedy stand is further underlined
by the difficulty he experienced in getting people
to nominate him. A false impression is created when
Ruth Dudley Edwards explains this away as a lack
of courage in West Belfast. Liam Kennedy is not
sans moral fortitude but there are enough people
living in this constituency cheek by jowl with totalitarian
militarism and who have said their piece and would
have no hesitation openly endorsing a candidate
they identified with. It would be more accurate
to point out that a central plank of the critique
made by those within West Belfast opposed to the
Adams regime is that grassroots democracy has been
usurped by edict from on high. Yet here we have
the Kennedy election machine coming into the constituency
and, in so far as it is possible to tell, consulting
with no one in it, haughtily expecting them to provide
funding and nominations.
The
Kennedy campaign if it is to have its very real
concerns widely discussed within the constituency
needs to appeal to a broader segment of West Belfast
opinion than that represented by Margaret McKinney
and Carmel Donnelly, despite both women having suffered
immensely at the hands of the Provisional Movement.
Nor will the campaign benefit from the endorsement
afforded it by the Sunday Telegraph and the
Sunday Independent.
Reading
Ruth Dudley Edward's fellow columnist at the latter
paper, Eoghan Harris, the only conclusion we are
drawn to is that the electorate is to blame because
it does not vote as instructed by the Sunday
Independent. Why then not just do as Brecht
suggested and change the electorate?
Moralising
arguments, such as that articulated by Eoghan Harris
and which sound remarkably like a religious rant,
move very few in West Belfast. Constituencies which
return Sinn Fein MPs are lambasted for the democratic
choices that they make. They are dismissed as politically
and morally delinquent Northern nationalists. Other
constituencies which over the years returned representatives
who defended repression, thwarted investigation
into state murder, unequivocally backed a police
force that tortured those in its custody and murdered
children with plastic bullets, seem to have escaped
the invective directed at West Belfast. It is no
more delinquent for Northern nationalists to vote
Sinn Fein than it is for Eoghan Harris to back the
US invasion of Iraq. Both, in my view, could make
better choices, but the right to make choices, including
wrong ones, is what democracy is about. We don't
need it to be managed, instructed or tutored.
Liam
Kennedy is a staunch and tireless human rights advocate.
A decade ago he wrote a very compelling book on
crime and punishment in West Belfast. Far from being
a rant it was laced with nuance and perceptiveness.
He has always opposed the torture administered by
the punishment squads from wherever they came:
He
reinforces the human rights discourse when he defends
all people - not just the ones he likes - against
torture and maiming. But his ability to put force
behind the questions that matter is seriously handicapped
in this constituency in so far as his robustly admirable
discourse gives him the appearance of being of the
Families Against Intimidation and Terror school.
FAIT's standing in West Belfast was never high;
its motives, in my experience, rarely considered
altruistic even by those who shared its objectives.
Kennedy inhabits a vastly different moral universe
to FAIT's Vincent McKenna when attitudes towards
children are concerned. Yet it is all too easy in
West Belfast for those who narrow their focus down
to opposing punishment attacks to be cast in the
garments of FAIT which double up as a loser's medal.
Things
do not break down so simply in West Belfast that
people are easily persuaded by the 'Adams bad -
opponent good' argument. Yes, as is evidenced increasingly
through public discourse, there is a growing body
of opinion within the constituency which sees its
MP as embodying fascistic traits. In that small
community when the term 'corroded old fascist' was
recently hurled the way of Adams, it raised few
eyebrows. But therein lies the rub - it is a very
small pool.
Jenny
McCartney writing in the Sunday Telegraph
claims she 'cannot comprehend how someone could
vote for Sinn Fein - which blatantly practises the
most extreme forms of coercion - and easily reconcile
it with his or her conscience.' Such a perspective,
laden as it is with blinkered vision, ignores the
fact that the Provisional Movement functions like
a para-state in West Belfast. It rules, like most
states, through a mixture of coercion and consent.
Certainly there is an ongoing debate within the
critical republican community within West Belfast
about the relationship between consent and coercion.
In my view, there is a tendency by Sinn Fein apologists
to grossly understate the case for intimidation.
But this is equalled by the party's critics who
vastly overstate it. Most people in West Belfast
do not directly experience the coercive side of
Sinn Fein. It is a minority who live in fear of
the party's wrath. A small number do indeed need
protection and Liam Kennedy provides a valuable
service in highlighting the issues that he does.
But to argue, as many in the British media have
done recently - suppressing evidence to the contrary
in the course of doing so - that Sinn Fein gets
its vote mostly through fear is to present a wildly
inaccurate account of life in West Belfast. If the
Kennedy project is one of speaking truth to power
then it cannot overlook the necessity of speaking
truth about power.
Maybe
one reason that people will not be dissuaded from
voting Sinn Fein is that the main backers of Liam
Kennedy - the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday
Independent - never displayed much concern for
the widespread state abuses perpetrated in West
Belfast. It was not the constituency's penchant
for violence but its reaction to state repression
that led to it placing its trust in both Sinn Fein
and the IRA. Consequently, voters intuitively sense
the cynicism of Sinn Fein's long standing critics
and in no way feel bad at dismissing the siren calls
against the party.
Ultimately,
Liam Kennedy may take consolation from the fact
that his goal was to raise the issues rather than
secure votes. Such issues are not, however, immune
to the ravishing effects of electoral ridicule.
Choosing West Belfast as the site for this type
of campaign was both hasty and ill judged. An opportunity
existed elsewhere but wasn't availed of. Consequently,
the real loser in this electoral contest will not
be those who still think torture plays a productive
role within nationalist communities.
