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What
an ironic note was struck through merely observing
a Belfast Telegraph photo of a po faced Sinn Fein
MLA appearing to conduct a damage assessment exercise
in the party's Stormont office after it had been raided
by British police last week. After all, was it not
just action of this very type, or maybe even more
robust, that Mick Murphy implied was needed when he
recently criticised the PSNI for not confronting the
Real IRA in his South Down constituency? Would such
confrontation have taken the form of polite knocks
followed by a lengthy period of waiting outside the
doors of RIRA suspects?
Not
only does hypocrisy seep through the pores of our
politicians like treacle, the body politic also drips
with its own sense of self-importance and searches
around for absurd comparisons with major events of
three decades ago to highlight its own predicament.
David Trimble has been comparing the raids on the
Sinn Fein offices and the arrest of Denis Donaldson
to the Watergate scandal. Mary Nelis of Sinn Fein
has likened the certain collapse of the institutions
to the Pinochet overthrow of the democratic government
of Salvador Allende in Chile. Because they have more
staffers running their fiefdom than the US president
has to manage his own, the unionists now seem to think
that their little provincial Hicksville carries the
status and stature of the White House. As for Pinochet
comparisons, it never seems to dawn on people like
Mary Nelis that unionists who believe what they have
read in Ed Moloney’s new book may be tempted
to claim it is Pinochet-types whose eviction they
seek from Stormont. Perhaps no provision was ever
made in the Good Friday Agreement for a Minister of
Silly Statements simply because the competition for
the post would have been too great to administratively
cope with.
All
this aside, it is common knowledge that political
espionage of some variety has long been part of the
staple diet for Northern politicians. The DUP has
for years been receiving supposedly sensitive material.
Ian Paisley in 1975 was producing classified British
Army documents which alleged that Mountjoy escapee
and IRA chief of staff Seamus Twomey was living in
Belfast and that the military were prohibited by government
instructions from apprehending him. Nationalists watching
the events up at Stormont will probably feel that
it is better that politicians pilfer each others documents
than have a political vacuum that may be filled by
violent activity on the streets, given that they are
much more likely than others to be the recipients
of such violence. While probably finding republican
protestations that securocrats have been at their
skulduggery unpersuasive, they will wonder why such
a police presence has never been seen in response
to the ongoing UDA campaign against Catholics. A number
of loyalists have indeed been arrested lately but
this seems to stem more from internal loyalist rivalry
than it is related to attacks on Catholics. And when
loyalists are caught with documents itemising details
of Sinn Fein's Mitchel McLaughlin, there is a momentary
blip on the media radar and then it is on to other
business. If the chattering class is to be sent off
elsewhere to mumble and mutter about the gravy train
going off the rails then at least their exorbitant
wages, which they should no longer get, could at last
be put to something useful such as protecting nationalists
from UDA attack.
Some
within the nationalist community may take a more nuanced
approach than that which simply dismisses everything
as a grand unionist/PSNI/securocrat conspiracy. They
may feel that the contempt they believe they are held
in by sections of unionism is possibly being replicated
within their own political camp. Most of the media
focus and political commentary is on the affront to
the rights and sensibilities of the unionist community
resulting from whatever illegality was allegedly going
on at Stormont. But nationalists are also owed an
honest explanation as to why republicans may have
fashioned a rod for their own backs which the unionists
and British are now using with some dexterity. If
unionists were going to bring down the institutions
as many anticipated why was it made so easy for them
not only to do so but also to emerge on the moral
high ground?
Moreover,
getting booted out of government does not mean that
Sinn Fein’s problems are not going to be restricted
to the institutions in the North. Bertie Ahern and
cabinet are most likely sitting down pondering the
future consequences of being in a coalition with Sinn
Fein while the IRA still exists. Cynics that they
are, there is little chance of them, regardless of
how they posture publicly, believing a word from Sinn
Fein as to what really happened. Senior Fianna Fail
figures will most likely be asking themselves how
do they manage the political fall out if gardai raid
offices in the Dail, search the homes of office staff,
seize copious amounts of allegedly stolen government
documents and then claim that one branch of government
is using a private army to spy on cabinet colleagues?
It
is rapidly becoming clear that that it was never intended
that the institutions were going to survive the IRA
or even co-exist alongside it for too long. Sinn Fein,
if they want the Good Friday Agreement to succeed,
must have known for some time that keeping the IRA
in existence as some form of extra-parliamentary aide
was only going to be a short term measure. Years ago
Sinn Fein was an embarrassment to the IRA. Now the
IRA appears to be an embarrasment to Sinn Fein. This,
coupled with the logic of the agreement, suggests
that the IRA will have to be dispensed with.
Part
of the dilemma for Sinn Fein is that it has never
been honest with its supporters as to exactly what
the peace process entailed - that it was about the
defeat of republicanism. Where people talk about the
agreement being a historic compromise, this is a mere
sweetener to allow a partitionist pill to go down
all the easier. Unionism compromised as a means of
securing the defeat of republicanism. If republicanism
compromised at all rather than capitulated, it is
a compromise that sits much closer to the defeat end
of the victory-defeat continuum. Maintaining an IRA
has made it easier for the republican leadership to
feed its grassroots this otherwise bitter tasting
meal. Now the grassroots are about to find out that
there is to be no sweet dessert.
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