Andy
Sproule, the senior PSNI member running the investigation
into the robbery at the Northern Bank, has reported
that on the evening of the theft, a couple with
a child approached a traffic warden and made it
known that two men wearing wigs and carrying baseball
bats were in the immediate vicinity of the bank.
The information that the traffic warden, in turn,
passed on to the police was of the type that would
lead only Inspector Clueso to think Halloween revellers
were having a lark. This is all the more so since
the revelation by Suzanne Breen on RTE's Prime Time
that the PSNI were in possession of information
that a robbery of a Belfast bank by the Provisional
IRA was imminent. By the time the cops arrived,
however, the robbers had gone. Along with their
substantial haul of notes.
As
if things were not bad enough for the PSNI, a diffident
Sproule went on to assert that his boss Hugh Orde
had made no claim to be in possession of actual
evidence but was nevertheless in a position to identify
the group behind the heist. Setting aside the debate
about where the boundary between intelligence and
evidence sits, the PSNI performance both before
and after the robbery has left many of the force's
advocates jittery. A cloud of suspicion still hangs
over the PSNI that its professional and technical
prowess was far outmatched by that of the robbers.
Using
the type of language that has come to characterise
most PSNI pronouncements thus far, even the evidence
for the existence of evidence, was evidently not
evident when, on the same news report, Ulster Unionist
MP David Burnside could be seen angrily gesticulating
as he took advantage of parliamentary privilege
to name a former republican prisoner as being responsible
for the bank heist. Given that the same man was
named by the Hennessey Report as being behind the
massive 1983 escape from the H-Blocks, and has featured
in public discourse in relation to a series of alleged
IRA activities, it is all too easy to create the
dots and then join them any way you want. Shouting
a well-known name is evidence of an ability only
to shout a well-known name. It can as easily be
the result of guesswork as it is the product of
reliable intelligence. The upshot of the blame game
is that neither Sproule nor Burnside has firmed
up public assumptions about culpability, managing
only to reinforce a view already out there of investigators
peering into a black hole.
But
as ridiculous as the meanderings of those determined
to pin the rap on the Provisionals at times seem,
they pale in comparison to the absurdity displayed
by those seeking to deflect barrages of fingerpointing
away from Sinn Fein's alter ego. There is more heavy
lifting to be done in defending than accusing on
this one. Finding anyone who thinks the job was
not the work of the Provisionals is as challenging
a task for journalists as locating those responsible
for pulling it off is for detectives.
In
their denials of Provisional IRA involvement Sinn
Fein have exuded the demeanour of men with forked
tongues managing to protrude through every cheek.
Martin McGuinness at one point took to calling the
robbers criminals. No doubt he would insist on this
to the family of Bobby Sands if they were to ask
him if the IRA were involved.
Perhaps
more than anything else this displays the cynical
opportunism of Sinn Fein. In 1976 republican prisoners
began a protest within the H-Blocks of Long Kesh
to refute a British government lie - that IRA activities
were criminal. Five years later ten republican volunteers
died defying the lie. A major consideration in those
young volunteers readily giving up their lives was
to create space for people like Martin McGuinness,
understood by those hunger strikers to be their
chief of staff at the time, to publicly proclaim
in defiance of the British state that IRA (and INLA)
actions were political in motivation.
The
hunger strike was the most intense moment in the
history of the Provisional IRA. It has assumed the
status of sacred. Those of us involved in the blanket
protest still shake with emotion when the memory
of ten men dead visits our consciousness. When we
approach their graves we do so with the respect
reserved for hallowed ground. To see Martin McGuinness,
who went on to gain so much from their deaths, virtually
spit on their sacrifices and demean their agony
by employing the term criminal to describe what
few could possibly deny is an IRA operation, is
more galling than having to listen to Margaret Thatcher
in the days before Bobby Sands died pontificate
'a crime is a crime is a crime.'
Thatcher
and the Tory government could not make criminals
of the IRA. McGuinness and the Sinn Fein leadership
most certainly did.
