What
is so truly astonishing about an organisation like
Sinn Fein having a British spy of 20 years standing
within their ranks?
In
truth, there is nothing astonishing about it at
all. It doesn't particularly matter that Denis
Donaldson was a high-ranking member of Sinn Fein
for some decades. It does not really matter that
he had been an IRA man who had served a considerable
period in jail for his trouble.
It
does not really matter that he had been turned into
a traitor, allegedly to save a family member from
a lengthy jail sentence. Neither does it matter
that the hiatus and crocodile tears about those
comrades he may have sacrificed through informing
have filled our newspapers for days. Neither does
it matter about the ridicule and scorn that his
family name will forever have heaped upon it by
Republicans.
However,
I don't think that 'Donaldson' will become an entry
into the Republican lexicon the same way the surname
of Raymond Gilmour did in Derry 20 odd years ago;
that is, a derogatory substitute for the word tout.
It
doesn't matter. Life goes on. Nobody should truly
give a flying fuck. Shocking on Day 1 perhaps, boring
as hell this Christmas Eve as I write this from
my work computer half way through a shift as productive
as a two-week holiday should be. Times are different.
Too much water and blood under too many bridges
to go back. Too many bodies in unmarked graves to
matter anymore.
In
different circumstances, a mere five years ago,
the deliberate unmasking of a British spy in the
ranks of the IRA, would have resulted in a quick
'debriefing' in a barn in South Armagh, a summary
execution, body dumped and maybe booby trapped by
the side of the road: Headlines for An Phoblacht
already written before the shot was fired and all
back to buzzing Belfast to celebrate the undefeated
army, in military or intelligence matters. Is it
the case that while IRA volunteers fought the battles
that British intelligence was winning the war?
Spin
the dog, wag the tail, or is it the other way around,
I keep forgetting. Does it really matter about reports
that Donaldson we are told is still co-operating
with Sinn Fein over his deeds in the last two decades.
I don't think so.
That
this was a deliberate and timed outing of Donaldson
is not in dispute. Things are too quiet politically,
too stagnant to let it go any further. Something
needed shifted. Unionism has taken too many blows
of late, time to kick the Fenians in the balls for
a while. Admittedly it was quite a way to do it.
Payback for the Northern Bank job perhaps? Don't
rub your master's hand in the dog shit of the media
circus, the hand may slap your jaw hard without
having been washed.
It
was a nice test for the IRA statement of unilateral
decommissioning at least. Did somebody rush to shoot
him despite general orders only too find that the
cupboard really was actually bare?
Surely
a honourable mention in the next ceasefire monitoring
report is called for. Article 1: Sub-section 4:
All paramilitary groups must resist the temptation
to plug touts no matter how much they have fucked
you off!
The
one irony is that a British spy, spied inside a
British Parliament on a nationalist party willing
to administer British rule in Ireland. For all the
good the damn place did us, the irony yields to
comedy.
It
begs the question why the British found it necessary
to keep Donaldson employed at all past 1998? They
were aware that his usefulness as a direct route
into the upper echelons of either Sinn Fein or the
IRA had long gone, or perhaps never existed. The
upper ranks of both organisations had long since
ceded to a minority but extremely powerful and cohesive
dictatorship. It was not as if they did not know
the mindset of these men, their long-term goals
and philosophy. For God's sake they had signed a
piece of paper in April 1998 outlining it as clear
as crystal.
The
answer is simple. It was a media trick, a dirty
trick, call it what you will. Touts should never
deserve any succour. Invariably they never receive
it either especially from those they are passing
information too. It is the nature of the beast.
Sinn Fein needed to be brought down a peg or two.
The 'OTR' legislation was getting too contentious
and unpalatable. Have we an ace up our sleeve? I
do believe we have old chap. Time to play him, I
think old boy!
The
nonsense really began when Francie Brolly and Seamus
Mullan were nicked for the Claudy bombing. The proverbial
dogs in the street laughed loudly at that one.
Next
week the vinegar stains will fade the glasses from
Donaldson's face in the Daily Ireland and The Irish
News. The next bout of recrimination and feigned
victimisation will undoubtedly follow swiftly afterwards.
The roles reversed again as the Unionists get another
slap in the chops.
And
all the while we stagnate. The nationalist parties
tearing strips out of each other on the way to political
nullification and electoral implosion. Sinn Fein
trying to retract the OTR legislation because it
lets cops and soldiers off the hook. What, prey
tell, the fuck did they expect? A monument to the
hunger strikers erected in the great hall at Westminster
and all the brigands of the RUC and UDR and Parachute
Regiment executed underneath it?
The
'real United Ireland party' the SDLP arguing that
the OTR legislation was offensive and not inclusive,
when the only thing really nipping at their partitionist
arses is the fact that they had been left out again
when the Brits did another side deal with the Shinners.
And all the while we stagnate. The puppet masters
sing with glee this Christmas Eve.
Nationalist
councillors will not speak to each other in the
Derry City Council chamber, while Derry dies through
economic strangulation. ILEX, the discredited economic
regeneration forum, reconvened for another farcical
attempt. The first thing that they did was to appoint
a new committee of consultants to appoint another
director who will be paid £100,00 to tell
us that we need another shopping centre in the area
vacated by the British Army. The bright hotels and
shopping malls of Derry City crammed with visitors
while locals can only afford to work for slave wages
inside them or scuttle past them in the littered
peripheral streets.
The
Electronic HR fiasco that was the Accenture episode.
Hundreds of underpaid, unaccountable outsourced
civil service jobs promised on a nod and a wink
by NIO mandarins to gullible Derry Burghermeisters
removed to Belfast at the last minute.
The
unbelievable situation that after a concerted campaign
to save the rail link between Derry and Belfast,
the Northern Ireland Transport Company (NITHC),
that oversees the management of transport in the
North was reappointed without any North-West representation.
Mark Durkan fumed that he would raise questions
in the House no less! He withdrew his plans for
questions in the Commons when the SDLP discovered
that no one from his party or any other had bothered
their arses to apply for the NITHC!
Denis
Bradley pounded about the head with a baseball bat
for keeping an eye on an unaccountable policing.
But no one seems to be able to stem the tide of
rising crime, thuggery, robbery, drugs, boozing,
street violence and general abandonment of decency
that pollutes the once clean 'Derry Air'.
So
you see, it does not matter about Denis Donaldson,
it does not matter at all. The damage to credible
nationalist representation had long since been done.
Debriefing him over an espionage career of 20 years
is as useful to Sinn Fein as a chocolate teapot,
unless history is about to suffer another bad bout
of minimalist revisionism! Giving it credence only
serves the puppet masters well, it recognises their
success.
It
does not matter if another substantial informer
is unmasked. It wouldn't matter if it was Gerry
Adams, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Kelly, Martin Ferris,
Slab Murphy et al: The damage was done 20 years
ago in an interrogation centre in Antrim. No one
could legislate for that. Stop bitching about it.
2005 is as dead as the people Donaldson may have
sentenced to death.
There
will be no declaration of Provisional IRA intent
for the coming year on the walls of Derry this Christmas
or in any other year in the future. Remember, you
tell politicians what they should be doing, not
the other way around. Get your fingers out of your
fat arses and make sure that there is no need for
any more Denis Donaldson's or the society that
bred him.
