Knowledge
about the incorrigible criminal nature of some republican
activists on the other side of town was hardly the
sole preserve of the Times of London. The
Provisional Movement knew what it had in its ranks.
Beatings, threats, intimidation were a way of life
to what one Irish News letter writer termed
the 'do you know who I am gang?' There was no republican
objective associated with their activity, unless
hanging out in bars a la the characters out of the
movie Donnie Brasco, bullying those who crossed
their paths at the pool table or who looked the
wrong way - resulting in a forced visit to the toilets
- had some discrete republican function that was
never explained to the rest of us during political
education sessions.
Yet
they remained within the ranks of Provisional republicanism,
for the most part parasitical on the sacrifices
of comrades from a bygone era as they proclaimed
themselves the 'Ra. On other occasions they would
appear as Sinn Fein election workers seeking electoral
support for the structure they believed would be
most advantageous to allowing them to continue exercising
malign power over their neighbours. Some of them
avoided republican activism like the plague when
there was a risk to personal safety or freedom,
but with the Good Friday Agreement found it easy
to puff the chest out and ask menacingly 'do you
know who I am?' They were the muscle that the Sinn
Fein leadership relied upon to fortify its position
on the streets. Greenshirt thugs always at hand
to break a leg or kidnap a critic. Now that leadership
has joined their lengthy list of victims as they
treat with self serving contempt the calls by Gerry
Adams and others for them to do the honourable thing
and make themselves amenable.
The
latest IMC report has confirmed what was already
public knowledge: that the IRA did not authorise
the cutthroat killers of Robert McCartney to ply
their savage trade. The organisation no more killed
him than the RUC killed three men in Sinn Fein's
Belfast offices in 1992 when an armed police killer
gained access to the building and opened fire on
anybody within reach. The killers on each occasion
belonged to wider institutions but were on solo
runs without the prior approval of those institutions.
While it is easy to refute allegations of the IRA
being responsible for the McCartney murder, it is
more difficult to absolve IRA culture of culpability.
This was brought out most vividly in a recent RTE
reconstruction of the events surrounding the killing.
There
have been few documentaries over the past decade
exploring issues associated with the Northern conflict
that have been put together so methodically as last
week's Prime Time reconstruction of the
events that occurred in Magennis's and beyond on
the evening of January 30th. The public, arguably
labouring under the fatigue of persistent media
coverage, had their energy reserves topped up with
a captivating account that is still being talked
about almost a week later. If awards are to go to
current affairs programme makers and the people
behind this do not achieve one, all faith in the
awards system will justifiably evaporate.
The
graphic reconstruction of the circumstances pertaining
to the death of Robert McCartney constituted a jolting
assault on whatever complacency may have lodged
itself in our minds in the four months since the
murder. As the knife men, organised and purposeful,
filed out of the bar some time after the initial
clash - belying any notion that it was all a rush
of blood to the head - in pursuit of their defenceless
victims, the scene could as easily have been a Munich
beer hall in the 1930s with a gang of armed Nazis
homing in on their defenceless Jewish victims. Immersed
in observing the key players the one surprise was
that they did not address each other as Lenny, Artie,
Basher, Big Sam or Billy - all of Shankill Butcher
infamy.
In
Chris Petit's book The Psalm Catcher, there
is a horrific scene where a drunken UDA mob toot
and hoot while some innocent is carved up while
tied to a chair. Prime Time in bringing its
viewers inside Magennis's Whiskey Bar in 2005 exposed
them to a form of magic realism in which a door
opened on a very dark era we thought we had left
behind us thirty years ago. Suddenly the primordial
savagery that reverses the order of things and leads
us to think that apes descended from men was there
in full-blown gore.
The
sheer arrogance of the republicans in the bar, unable
to brook that some people will not be deferential
in their presence, has its roots in a militarist
elitism that is as old as the Provisional IRA itself
and shows every sign of wanting to outlive the conflict
that give rise to its existence; a most ominous
phenomenon. The IRA did not need to be in the bar
as an organisation for the killing to have occurred.
That its members were present, equipped with the
attitude, 'we run these areas', was enough. IRA
culture was drawn on heavily both to inflict the
crime and to cover it up. It is the only 'bar room
brawl' in over thirty-five years of conflict that
was followed by a methodical forensic sweep on behalf
of the brawling party.
Another
casualty of the events that took place on the 30th
January has been the political career of Deirdre
Hargey, the young Sinn Fein activist who was present
in the bar on the night of the murder. Her reputation
has been damaged immensely by the Prime Time
production. A much respected figure in the Markets
where she followed in the footsteps of her late
father Jim - who persevered despite long term health
problems in trying to enhance the conditions of
life for those within his community - Deirdre Hargey
managed to sound like a leadership devotee who was
ultimately more concerned with protecting her leaders
than addressing the very real issues of justice
that the McCartney murder had thrown up. That she
was less than forthcoming in an RTE interview about
the extent of her own knowledge, no matter how marginal,
in relation to the McCartney affair has cast a shadow
over a bright political future. A writer watching
Deirdre Hargey 'drool' over the leadership, later
told me that on witnessing such blind adherence
she merely sighed 'Hitler Youth material.'
Although
Deirdre Hargey's misfortune was largely self-inflicted,
this acerbic observation seemed an inappropriate
characterisation of a young woman who allowed herself
to succumb to the anonymous pressure of the group.
She played no part in the murder of Robert McCartney.
While she certainly made a bad judgement call, for
her to be dragged down into the gutter alongside
the fiends who, John White like, grew excited at
the sensation of human flesh yielding to the force
of the knife, is a punishment that grossly outweighs
her misdemeanour.
Others
however deserve no such consideration. Amongst the
many things achieved by Prime Time was confirmation
of the view expressed by former republican prisoner
Rosemary Caskey in the Irish News last month
that those responsible for the murder were a bunch
of lowlife gangsters who should now retreat back
into their lairs. It also rubbished the already
pathetic perspective of a critic of Caskey, himself
too a former republican prisoner, Sean Montgomery,
who argued that the knife murderers should not be
condemned to a lifelong label of being criminals
because of a 'drunken row.'
Republican
activism is not a license to murder members of the
nationalist community in pursuit of self-gratification.
Those who engage in it should be given no cover.
If they want the cloak of political legitimacy,
then, if jailed, they can do their time as political
prisoners on the UDA wing in Maghaberry. Jim 'Doris
Day' Gray would make ideal company for them.
For
now Robert McCartney is a name that hangs over the
leadership of Sinn Fein like the sword of Damocles.
A party that prided itself on challenging injustice
will not be allowed to sleep easily until it delivers
it. Prime Time was a Sinn Fein nightmare.
