Sick
to the back teeth of all the machinations, double-speak,
lies, counter-lies, accusations, recriminations,
bitterness, threats, false piety, meaningless apologies
and abject shite talking in the nationalist political
arena over the past while, it has been a year since
I felt it necessary to put pen to paper. In the
ensuing gap, I haven't become sufficiently disenchanted
not to keep a watch on the various jaw dropping
developments that have befallen my disbelieving
eyes and ears, but I am now sufficiently appalled
to react to what I feel are the most pertinent aspects
of what has been going on.
On
the heels of attending the Bloody Sunday commemoration
in Derry on Sunday Jan 30th 2005, a section of the
crowd returned to their native Belfast to continue
the boozing that they had begun some ninety miles
away. Whatever theory you subscribe to about the
ensuing debacle in Magennis's bar one fact is utterly
unchangeable. Robert Mc Cartney lay dead as the
result of a horrendous physical attack.
It
was wrong. Horribly wrong. It was wrong no matter
what. It was wrong no matter how, where, when and
why it happened. It was wrong no matter who carried
it out. It was wrong no matter which organisation
those involved belonged too. It was wrong because
those members of that organisation believed that
their membership of that organisation entitled them
to a licence to kill. It was wrong because not sufficiently
assured of the validity of that "licence"
it at least supposedly allowed them to clear the
scene of all evidence and commence the intimidation
of those who may or may not have witnessed the events.
It was especially wrong because it robbed a family
of a father and a brother for no more reason than
he had the balls to answer back.
Most
Irishmen have been there, whether as the initiators,
or the undeserving recipients of a slap in the chops
whilst the worse for drink in a facile argument
over football, women, or politics. It is I suspect
in Belfast, as it is in Derry almost a rite of passage
for males between 18-50 years of age. Most Irishmen
however get to home with a busted lip, a black eye,
a sore groin and dented pride. Most men in this
position are to blame themselves and are not dragged
outside by a dozen members or associates of a corrupt
element within a militia and executed in the most
gruesome manner imaginable.
To
be perfectly blunt as I watched the news that Sunday
teatime, I expressed no more emotion than I normally
would when it was reported that a man had died as
a result of a stabbing in a Belfast city centre
bar. In itself this was not that shocking, it was
hardly the first time and regrettably it will not
be the last. In truth I only pricked up my ears
next morning when the BBC reported that a "leading
republican" had been arrested as a result of
the murder. I only watched the news that evening
purely to see the size of the crowd that had attended
the Bloody Sunday rally.
I
had made a point of not attending for the first
time in many years. Despairing of the Provisional
movement's hi-jacking of the rally for their own
purposes and to be honest the cringe making carnival
like events management apparatus surrounding it,
its edifice now decries anything to do with civil
rights. The management of the rally in future years
should be swiftly removed from anything to do with
that party before it further besmirches what that
rally actually means, especially after what was
to transpire later that afternoon in Belfast. IRA
members and associates or members of Sinn Fein travelled
to Derry to remember the lives of the individuals
executed in cold blood thirty-three years ago and
then went back to their own city and did the same
thing to one of the same people. Yet, given the
choice, I would have gladly taken the swift release
of a paratroopers bullet than the animalistic slaying
afforded to Robert Mc Cartney.
The
mechanisms set in place by the killers of Robert
Mc Cartney to cover up their heinous barbarity were
actually more insidious and purposefully malevolent
than the outcome of the Widgery tribunal in 1973.
We came to expect this treatment from the British.
The total negation and disregard for life callously
waved aside by one stroke of a Whitehall pen. Unfortunately
for Robert Mc Cartney the pen was not mightier than
the knife. His killers and their ilk have come to
represent everything in Irish nationalism for which
I have an unaffected and highly distilled scorn.
I suppose the family of the victim can only be grateful
for the fact that there are no beaches in the area
of the bar otherwise they could have been denied
the dignity and scant solace of burying their brother.
The
too little too late response from Sinn Fein in the
wake of the killing has landed them in a great deal
of trouble. Following on so rapidly from the frankly
hilarious keystone cop escapade of the great Northern
Bank heist of '04 it has provided the titanium underpinning
for Unionism and the British & Irish governments
to indulge in never ending verbal swathes of "we
told you so".
Sinn
Fein went from establishment darlings back to the
spectres at the feast in one fell and swift swoop.
Pillioried and banished from every worthwhile banquet
room in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington,
Gerry Adams ploughed a lonely furrow across the
eastern seaboard. In the world of American politics,
you are in trouble if you are Irish and Ted Kennedy
won't talk to you never mind if you are the supposed
bulwark of Irish Republicanism. Yet I suppose Adams
would have known that his number was up if Kennedy
had spoken to him and then offered him a lift across
one of Washington's bridges.
Meanwhile
back in Ireland a hawkish sounding Martin Mc Guinness
made a balls of almost every interview he gave.
Showing the attitude which reveals his true colours
a snarling Mc Guinness tied himself up in verbal
lashes. Even as late as last Sunday's Dimbleby interview
he has been trying to extract himself from the mire.
With
nothing but admiration for the family of Mr Mc Cartney,
I as every right thinking person have welcomed their
guts and determination not to let this go. Obviously
highly intelligent, erudite, articulate and a naturally
honed sense of press relations and fantastically
savage in their honesty, these women have been a
beacon of contempt towards the omerta laden world
of mainstream republicanism. How strange it is that
whilst Mc Guinness warned the sisters Mc Cartney
to stay away from the political arena lest they
were manipulated that it should not go unnoticed
that these women, self-confessed Sinn Fein and IRA
supporters, would grace the party mechanism, better
as they are than the vast majority of insipid, be-suited
sycophantic careerists being offered as radical
emissaries for reunifying Ireland.
The
madness in this is that despite media furore surrounding
the murder that the killing, as they all do, was
coming to the end of it's news worthiness until
the IRA released it's statement saying that it had
offered to award those involved the O. B. E. --
that's one behind the ear for those unfamiliar with
this grim parlance. This impetus coupled with the
fact that the family waited and then prudently revealed
that they had been personally made aware of the
offer prior to the release of the statement was
a masterstroke of public relations. It set in place
a chain of events that we are all aware of and resulted
in an extraordinary display of futile damage limitation
from the most ebullient and self-confident of Irish
political parties. An enduring image of Irish political
life in the twenty-first century will be Adams'
strange attempt to court favour by personally leading
the Mc Cartney family onto the floor of the 2005
Ard fheis. The almost palpable but silent disdain
displayed by the Mc Cartney women during the Sinn
Fein presidential address was as magnificent as
it was brave.
As
sick as it is, these events will, I believe, eventually
enhance Adams' et al case to get where they want
to go and now really need to go. This will illustrate,
as if illustration was required, that an army without
a enemy willing to engage it, and an army administration
sold on accepting a political alternative to war,
has no raison d'etre. The IRA's very existence is
now it's reason to exit stage right. Without a designated
target the soldiery of the IRA have become the enforcers
of sea-changed ideology. All aboard the good ship
partition and woe betide detractors, especially
those you were sworn in to supposedly protect in
the first place. Not that the dreadful situation
in which Robert Mc Cartney was killed would fit
into anything as lofty as an ideological argument.
That
particular brand of argument was raised also in
an attempt at damage limitation during this furore.
I witnessed with contempt that various ex-prisoners
branches had been on the streets in the wake of
the bank robbery holding aloft large posters of
the 1981 hunger strikers posing the question, were
these men criminals?This has continued in the wake
of the Mc Cartney killing.
This
self-serving repudiation of criminality with the
Provisionals is a disgraceful use of public relations
within a long redundant argument. The fact that
the ten men died in a fight against criminalisation
and paid the ultimate price for that Phyrric victory
means that that particular question need never be
raised again. Some seem to take particular umbridge
at the wounds that this crass use of the dead men
has invoked. The answer is NO these men were not
criminals, the problem lies in the question posed
by the Sinn Fein party. To juxtapose those who died
spurning criminality with the current debacle is
abominable. Any activity that can be even loosely
deemed as criminal by the actions of the IRA has
on this occasion been created by themselves. They
have criminalised themselves. When the two governments
insist on the removal of criminality to shift the
current political impasse they are not talking about
the battle that took place in the prison system
from 1976 to 1981, they are referring to the actions
of an army apparently in cease fire mode since 1996
and more exactly the Northern Bank robbery and the
fatal assault on Robert Mc Cartney.
As
an aside to this point I recently read Richard O'Rawes
"Blanketmen" and it further makes a total
nonsense of placing the ten dead hunger strikers
of 1981 within this current criminalisation argument,
given the controversial claims that the author makes
particularly concerning the path taken by the IRA
leadership in the run up to the death and after
the demise of the fifth man to expire, Joe Mc Donnell.
The memories of these men have been abused enough
I feel.
No
external factors foisted upon the IRA by the two
governments forced the republican movement into
a corner with regard to these incidents. Arrogance
and a belief that this type of activity would go
unchallenged by governments and their own supporters
ad infinitum has now ceased forever. Over playing
the dual card of politicisation and militarism has
eventually caught the republican movement out. Having
your cake and eating it was only ever going to work
for a limited time span. The best before date has
long since past. But what ill effect the out of
date this latest offering will have on an angered
and wavering republican electorate remains to be
seen. I would suggest that sufficient time will
have past before the forthcoming elections to minimise
any permanent damage. In addition the lack of any
real electoral alternative to Sinn Fein in political
and electoral terms is still appallingly lacking.
If the SDLP believe that they will gain any ground
back before of these events it at the very best
will be a temporary state of affairs.
If
for example a war situation still existed within
the confines of the "war zone" of the
six counties, all of us would be praising with glee
the actions of an IRA capable of robbing £26
million from a bank to continue the fight. In a
war situation, as uncomfortable as it may seem,
many would excuse the killing of Robert Mc Cartney
as something else. How many of us remember or have
used the words, well he/she didn't get if for nothing,
when when we knew deep down that it many cases,
he/she did get if for nothing. By current Sinn Fein
logic, the IRA viewed Jean Mc Conville as a criminal,
an informer, but her senseless murder apparently
was not an act of criminality. So what changed between
1972 and 2005 to make the difference so great between
a mother of ten and a father of two?
Nothing
changed except the definitions used to justify murder
within the shifting sands of the metamorphic political
arena. With the acceptance of Northern Ireland as
a live political entity Sinn Fein have still not
accepted that they are prone to a degree of openness
and transparency that cannot be the domain of a
clandestine fraternal organisation and furthermore
cannot use that organisation either as a bargaining
tool for further gain nor to eradicate those who
come into conflict with it even down to the outbreak
of a fracas with out of control power addled members
of that organisation.
How
ironic it will be if the killing of a Catholic nationalist
from Belfast's Short Strand will herald the eventual
dishonourable demise of the IRA. As ever the winners
in this are the British, able now to stand back
and wash their Pilate hands and point and say that
we did to ourselves again. The IRA claim to be the
guardians of Irish unification. It is a pity that
they do not have a broader understanding of the
term unification.
