The
sound of exploding bombs in London is something
many who live there are well used to. But it wasn't
just those who lived through the 1940s Blitz who
could remember the thunderous roar of high power
explosives detonated in some part of their city.
After the Luftwaffe came the Provisional IRA.
Each
time the British capital found itself rocked by
some IRA engineer's increasingly powerful and sophisticated
device Sinn Fein members could barely contain their
glee. In the IRA prison wings the cheers would echo
along the concrete corridors. Punching the air to
shouts of 'up the 'Ra' was the ritualised form of
celebration for republican prisoners elated at the
misfortune of Londoners.
Today
the mood music is different; mellow rather than
raucous. With the political orchestra playing only
one note - the peace process - cheering for bombs
in London has given way to expressions of solidarity
with the British ruling bloc. Sinn Fein boss of
bosses Gerry Adams, no longer thinking as he used
to that Guy Fawkes had the proper approach to the
Houses of Parliament, was quick out of the traps
to stand shoulder to shoulder with his ally against
terror, Tony Blair.
Listening
to this it is tempting to forget that Mr Adams wasn't
always in the camp of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin
Luther King. But times change and the wheels of
political careerism are not oiled by expressions
of support for what Adams terms 'ethically indefensible
terrorism.' While the British Prime Minister and
the Sinn Fein leader may have a shared interest
in serial lying, of the two Blair has been the most
consistent. He at least has always opposed bombing
London.
When
Gerry Adams' party colleague Gerry Kelly launched
a car bomb offensive on London in 1973, it was the
first blow in a campaign that would see the British
capital bombed repeatedly over the following twenty-three
years.
What
started as an inept foray with a poorly co-ordinated
operation, over two decades evolved into a sophisticated
military strategy which saw IRA devices of devastating
potency rip their way through the Baltic Exchange,
the NatWest and Canary Wharf. Such was the effect
of the IRA's campaign in Britain that the Organisation
of Economic Development in a recent report placed
four of its UK blasts in the world's top ten most
costly attacks. The 1993 IRA bombing of the NatWest
Tower in London came second only to the Twin Towers
attack in New York in 2001.
Unlike
the Al Qaeda strike on New York four years ago,
and again on London this month, IRA bombings were
only occasionally designed to cause civilian casualties.
A recent news report in Belfast illustrated a debate
that took place within the IRA in the 1970s on the
wisdom of bombing the tube network. The proposal
from a senior IRA figure in Belfast was rejected
out of hand. The public outcry generated after the
Birmingham pub bombs, which saw the IRA indiscriminately
slaughter 21 civilian pub revellers, led the bulk
of republican leaders to exercise caution against
their more bloodthirsty colleagues.
Where
the IRA did bomb trains, in Northern Ireland, the
primary objective was not to kill civilians. In
both 1976 and 1980 while civilian fatalities did
occur as a result of train bombings, the fact that
one of the IRA's most seasoned volunteers lost his
life in the 1980 attack, indicates that the blast
was premature and the deaths accidental.
This
month's bombings come at an inauspicious time for
Sinn Fein. The party's political fortunes have been
capsized since its IRA alter ego robbed the Northern
Bank and members of both Sinn Fein and the IRA hacked
to death Sinn Fein voter Robert McCartney in a gruesome
orgy of psychopathic violence not authorised by
the Sinn Fein leadership. The pressure is on Gerry
Adams like never before to call a definitive halt
to the IRA's activities.
Adams
solidarity with Tony Blair is tactical rather than
ethical. He realises the deleterious effect of bombings
on his relentless pursuit of political power. He
took a political hammering in the US earlier in
the year as a result of his refusal to wind up the
IRA. Against this backdrop he is eager to project
his relationship with the British Prime Minister
as the Blair/Adams alliance against terrorism and
very definitely not as Blair against Adams the terrorist.
Adams
knows the price of success. After the 9/11 attack
the Sinn Fein leadership moved quickly to distance
itself in the public mind from 'terrorism.' It ensured
that the first act of IRA weapons decommissioning
took place barely a month later in order to avoid
international opprobrium rather than in the more
strategically fertile spring of the following year
when Sinn Fein could anticipate a handsome dividend
from the electorate in the Republic of Ireland for
having 'persuaded' the IRA to disarm.
The
IRA that bombed London was a determined force. But
the British Government following the Orwell maxim
that nine times out of ten revolutionaries are social
climbers with bombs, came to realise that if it
allowed republican leaders to sit aloft the gravy
train, they would quickly come to accept the formula
'less republicanism, more gravy.'
The
current crop of London bombers are unlikely to prove
so amenable. Unlike the IRA they are theologically
driven. Ideologically, Sinn Fein came to embrace
the devil and all his works. Al Qaeda and its London
bombers are of a different mindset. For those intent
on destroying rather than supping with the devil,
compromise is anathema. The IRA was a starter. The
main course is currently under way. And what a bloody
feast it promises to be.
