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Recent
controversy over Gerry Adams’ relationship with
the IRA, while amusing due to the Sinn Fein president’s
endless and thoroughly unpersuasive stream of infantile
prevarications, has nevertheless failed to offer any
credible explanation for the organisation’s continuing
existence.
For
long enough, many of us felt that the acquisition
of institutional power in the North was the sole hinge
on which balanced the future of the IRA. All else
was secondary. If Sinn Fein’s military wing were
to prove an insurmountable obstacle to attaining such
power then the party leadership would dispense with
it. But arguably that perspective had the blinds purposefully
drawn on it last November when the Provisionals decided
against doing enough to allow David Trimble the wriggle
room necessary to bring his deeply partitioned party
back into government with Sinn Fein. Consequently,
we are now forced to adjust our interpretive lens
and panoramically extend our gaze over the strategic
field Sinn Fein are currently playing on.
The
dynamic pushing Sinn Fein at present is one of expansionism,
North and South. The party leadership inhabits an
ideological vacuum and therefore cares little whether
it expands to the right or the left, just so long
as ideology, tradition or human rights concerns do
not act as inhibitors on its ability to expand. A
united Ireland has nothing to do with it, nor getting
rid of partition. Growth and power in both parts of
a divided country will do just fine.
It
is within this overarching expansionist project that
Provisional strategic attitudes are developed towards
power sharing executives and cross border bodies –
in fact towards the whole project of the Good Friday
Agreement. What function all such institutions and
processes serve within the expansionist project is
what ultimately determines Sinn Fein strategy. They
are means rather than ends. Whether they facilitate
expansionism or not is how they will be evaluated.
An
essential asset in this voracious project is the role
of the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. More than
any other factor, it is he who enhances the magnetic
pull of the party in the Republic. Frequently, he
has emerged from opinion polls as the most popular
political leader. For those unfamiliar with him he
emits an aroma more akin to roses than to the rotten
cabbage Paul Bew referred to in the wake of the publication
almost two years ago of Ed Moloney’s book, A
Secret History Of The IRA, which extensively detailed
the role of Adams within the organisation’s command
structure.
The
profile of both Adams and his party benefit enormously
from the peace process. In an age of unadulterated
spin it is what defines Sinn Fein. End the process
and the party grinds to a halt, bogged down in the
mundane minutiae of normal sleazy political life.
It is the peace process that gives Adams his huge
standing in the South. What significance or media
profile would they have if it were not for the peace
process? Would Sinn Fein be any more newsworthy than
the Green Party, which has roughly the same number
of Dail seats but considerably less media attention?
But
the peace process itself has no forward momentum without
the existence of the IRA. If the body were to be wound
up now both Blair and Ahern would bin their Hillsborough
season tickets, and few in the US would care if Northern
politicians failed to darken the doors of the White
House on St Patrick’s Day ever again. Why bother
paying to see Hamlet without the prince?
The
notion popular in London-Dublin government circles
that the way to wind up the IRA was through incrementally
putting it to sleep by drip feeding concessions to
Sinn Fein, was misplaced. It was premised on the fallacy
that Sinn Fein would send the IRA off to graze once
the party had enough in the goodies bag to buy of
the supposed hardcore and dissipate the residue. At
that point Adams and his team would bed down permanently
in government. The flaw in this approach was that
it did not give due consideration to the impact such
an outcome would produce on the ability of the party
to further develop its island wide expansionist project.
There
is little basis for believing that Adams could not
disappear the IRA at a moment of his choosing. Such
is his standing within the organisation that he has
been able to persuade it to do those things its membership
dreamt of only in nightmares. He has brought it to
accept positions previously described as surrender.
To seize on an utterance made by senior Sinn Fein
member Jim Gibney, the IRA has been turned ‘upside
down’ by the Sinn Fein chief. Adams maintains
the IRA for one reason – he needs it to make
the peace process a work in progress. By presenting
himself as the person who can ultimately deliver the
head of the IRA on a plate to the establishment, he
maintains his and his party’s high profile in
the Republic. His attitude has been one of ‘please
God make us disarm and disband – but just not
yet.’
London
could put up with this for aeons if there was no return
to war. Dublin could tolerate it if the Sinn Fein
project were to be safely corralled in the North.
But now that Adams is using the IRA not merely to
destabilise the unionists and wring concessions from
the British, but to launch an assault on Fianna Fail
hegemony, Dublin is displaying signs that it can no
longer afford to be nonchalant to the existence of
the IRA.
It
is not that the IRA poses any direct aggressive threat
to the Irish state. Far from it. But its role is no
less real for that. It is one of stealth. Sinn Fein
does not need the IRA to perform any military function.
Merely by maintaining it and offering himself as the
one person who can secure its denouement, Gerry Adams
keeps the party in the frame, sharpens its teeth,
stretches its jaws in preparation for the savaging
of Fianna Fail.
Ultimately,
the peace process is not about delivering peace in
the North. It is about managing the Northern peace
in such a way as to ensure power will come the party’s
way in the South. When the continued existence of
the IRA becomes an obstacle to that project then and
then alone shall Mr Adams pull the curtain down.
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