Driving
through a rainy Belfast on Friday morning, accompanied
by two other journalists, there was no heightened
sense of anticipation that something new might be
learned at the imminent press conference to be given
by Hugh Orde. Speculation had been rife throughout
the previous twenty-four hours that the finger of
blame for the Northern Bank robbery was going to
point unambiguously in the direction of the Provisional
IRA. From news first broke about the event at the
start of Christmas week, the 'common sense' on the
ground, and virtually everywhere else, had eliminated
all others as potential contenders.
The
venue at the Clarendon Docks headquarters of the
Policing Board was packed with journalists. The
PSNI press team had laid on tea, coffee and sandwiches
for hungry hacks who might have to wait around a
bit. The buzz of conversation that had filled the
room tapered off as soon as Hugh Orde, Sam Kincaid
and the PSNI press secretary entered.
Orde
seemed the more relaxed of the two cops. He exuded
a certain confidence as he eyed his audience, weighing
up the challenge. If he spotted any wolves there
he showed little sign of alarm. Kincaid appeared
subdued. Perhaps that is his usual demeanour but
if journalists were scenting a weakness they may
have felt it was from the Assistant Chief Constable
that they would draw first blood.
When
he spoke, Hugh Orde was resolute. He must have sensed
instinctively that much of the credibility the British
police force in the North had built up with him
at its helm was in danger of melting in front of
his eyes. The earlier much vaunted professionalism
had been hit by a pre-Christmas robbery of tsunami proportion
which capsized it. Twenty minutes after he had delivered his
opening lines Orde had steadied his vessel. From the discourse
of the journalists present it was clear that Britain's
top cop in Ireland had put down an anchor. Suddenly,
his force was moored and it was the turn of the opposition,
cut adrift from public credibility, to flounder in a choppy sea.
The
simple act of unambiguously fingering the Provisional
IRA had transformed Orde's fortunes. Had he
blamed the UDA, St Vincent de Paul or some other
group then his passage would have been much less
secure. Whose head would roll for not pre-empting
it, would have been the theme from the floor. But
the newsworthiness no longer lay in his force's
inability to prevent the world's largest cash bank
robbery. The charge that the Provisional Republican
Movement had settled so comfortably in the unfathomable
depths of political cynicism had the news field
all to itself.
Orde
spoke for about ten minutes, and took questions from the assembled
press for the same amount of time. Only in the closing
comments of his monologue did he make the charge that the Provisionals
were responsible. There were no exclamations of
shock or deep inhalations of breath. He had hardly
told us that his force had discovered Ian Paisley
was a Catholic. We knew what he would say. On finishing,
the press pack turned into a mob shouting over each
other. One journalist gave what his colleagues described
as a party political broadcast on behalf of Sinn
Fein, before Orde cut him short. Another berated
the PSNI boss for telling journalists anything that
might damage the peace process. I kept my hand
up throughout but my reward was a sore shoulder.
Courtesy gets stampeded at big story press conferences,
where 'first shout first served' seems to be the
only rule observed by all.
The
one weak point of the Orde delivery came when he
tried to protect his force from allegations that
it was completely blindsided by the robbery. His
intimation that this was not true led to a justifiable
demand for an explanation as to why such intelligence
was not acted on. Orde hesitated and faltered somewhat
before recovering. In days to come he may have cause
to regret that he did not concede the point on the
intelligence debacle, cut his losses and run. Few
would have been interested in pursuing him on that,
with another juicier hare firmly in sight. Now he
has provided a side dish, which some might turn
to when the main course digests itself.
We
had hardly left the press conference when reports
began to filter through that the Sinn Fein lie machine
was taxiing down the runway. When it came to the
bit, it never took off. There was no fuel to power
it, having been used up telling earlier lies. Few
were taking up the party's invitations to come on
board. Been there too often in the past, seemed
to be the prevalent view. These days the lies are
not even told in a new manner. Same stale old guff
about securocrats trying to wreck the peace process;
same as when the Stakeknife informer allegations
surfaced; same as every other time. For a party
that for long praised itself for being imaginative,
it fails hopelessly when it comes to massaging the
lie with even a modicum of imagination. Given that
it lies as often as others would take a drink of
water, perhaps the practice has become ritualised
and commonplace. Nobody dresses up just to go to
the water tap.
The
only thing that resembled the Sinn Fein performance
and that of the bank robbers was sheer audacity.
But the imagination, ingenuity, organisational skill
and professional brilliance that deprived the Northern
Bank of 26.5 million were simply not evident in
the endeavours of the lie machine. The image of
mismatched twins was hard to escape. One, tight,
trim, fit, energetic and direct; the other, a fat
fumbling liar, too gorged on the good life to even
work up the energy to use a tiny fraction of the
imagination of the robbers.
The
irony is that even if the Provisional IRA has been
wrongly accused, the Sinn Fein lie machine has exhausted
any residual trust that might have given it the
benefit of the doubt. The boy cried 'securocrat'
once too often.
