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The
International Monitoring Commission has finally delivered
its report. Sceptics, who had long harboured the suspicion
that clarity would succumb to fudge and that, in keeping
faith with the peace process, the body would gloss
over the issues it was tasked to investigate, will
have been pleasantly jolted out of their torpor-induced
resignation. On delivery day Harry McGee in the Examiner
described the finished product as a ‘no-holds-barred
document’, while Stephen King of the UUP suggested
that it should win a plain English award.
As
expected the report was greeted with approval by the
unionists and with a crescendo of howls from Sinn
Fein. The nationalist party, eager to jump into bed
with the elite of the Irish business world and visibly
stung by allegations that it might be associated with
something as unappealing to the business community
as the IRA, has put in intemperate performances. For
those who still feel Sinn Fein has radical potential
consider this: the sharks of the business community
shot Connolly and applauded Adams.
Sinn Fein has been rocked by the report. Even if it
is the work of the apparently omnipotent and omnipresent
securocrats, as the party claims, SDLP leader Mark
Durkan probably best expressed what is widely assumed
- the report confirmed what people already knew: ‘the
IMC report confirms the full range and scale of paramilitary
and criminal activity and it confirms just who is
responsible.’ Bertie Ahern too rejected Sinn
Fein claims that the IMC is not independent: ‘we
accept its recommendations. We accept its conclusions.’
The message here is that the nationalist alliance
that was promoted as an alternative to the armed struggle
has clearly fragmented with the bulk of the nationalists
situated on the other side of the barricades from
Sinn Fein on this issue. Bairbre de Brun may well
argue that 'it is a disgrace that the Irish government
has signed up to the establishment of this body in
the first place.' Decoded, that means that the Dublin
government should have continued with the type of
bamboozling approach highly recommended by Jim Gibney:
If
there is one big lesson coming out of the peace
process over the last ten years, it is words like
'certainty' and 'clarity' are not part of the creative
lexicon that conflict resolution requires if it
is to be successful. Can anyone point to a period
over the last ten years when such words were used
and they helped the peace process here? Words like
'clarity' and 'certainty' are part of the fundamentalist's
political dictionary. They derive from an arrogant
mentality, which assumes legitimacy and moral superiority.
Demanding such words causes crisis and paralysis.
They clog the peace process engine up with gunge.
They box people into a corner. Pursuit of such words
or their equivalent encourages intransigence by
those seeking their use and by those burdened to
produce them. Give me the language of ambiguity.
It has served the people of this country well over
the last ten years. It has oiled the engine of the
peace process. Long may it continue to do so.
Accordingly,
Sinn Fein's real gripe is not that it has been pronounced
guilty as charged but that the fudge, lies, deceit,
dissembling and duplicity which, in the words of Ed
Moloney, lubricated the peace process have come to
the end of their shelf life. The British were prepared
to allow the Sinn Fein leadership plenty of room to
con its grassroots about the ultimate strategic terminus
for the peace process. But once it became clear that
the lubricant had metamorphosed into glue and was
blocking the securing of British strategic objectives,
it was time to pull the curtain down.
In
one sense Sinn Fein's present angst is the result
of cold turkey caused by the withdrawal of the lie
support machine. Because the party leadership lies
like other people breathe it has acquired for itself
a reputation for being totally unworthy of belief.
The IMC report identified the IRA as being behind
the attack on Bobby Tohill in February. Whether true
or not is neither here nor there given that the matter
is sub judice. But if, as Sinn Fein claim, the IRA
was not involved, and the incident was nothing more
serious than a barroom brawl, the party must surely
be asking itself how is it that its take on events
is being treated with the type of derision one would
expect if Bin Laden were to claim that 9/11 was an
air crash caused by drunken Muslims giving vent to
air rage.
That
the British Government which delayed and censored
the Cory Report, subtly subverted the Barron Inquiry,
wiped its prints at every turn from the Pat Finucane
murder, would commission the IMC report is bad enough
from Sinn Fein’s point of view. That it actually
had the power to do so reveals a lot about the way
the republican resistance to British rule concluded,
in fact crumbled. A perusal of Sinn Fein’s response
to the report is instructive. Mitchel McLaughlin says
it is ‘little more than a tool to be used by
the British government to undermine the electoral
mandate of Sinn Fein.’ Gerry Adams commented,
‘the commission is not independent. That much
is obvious from its remit, its membership and the
fact it bases its decisions on reports from the PSNI,
the British Army and securocrats.’ Alex Maskey
said, ‘we will not be accepting these sanctions
if they are to be imposed upon our party, although
we may not be able to do much about them.’
This
is all very well. But taken together, these statements
are a damning indictment of the truth status of the
claims made on behalf of the Provisional republican
struggle to have seriously altered the power relationship
between the population in the North of Ireland and
the British state. Yet, Sinn Fein fails to explain
why it entered into a process which left the British
state with such power vis a vis republicanism. Those
who emerged dominant, the British, have now shown
that they can dictate the terms. And they are making
it clear that the North’s largest nationalist
party is to be denied even the benefits of the internal
settlement it signed up to - a place in government.
Furthermore, the British have the party right where
it wants it, terrified of defending the IRA and its
activities in public.
The
fine recommended by the IMC is of course paltry if
measured in strict financial terms. Seamus Mallon
said it was ‘risible’ and ‘an embarrassment.’
This is true only if punishment is measured in terms
of the potential for an economic sanction to curtail
a party. Its real effect lies more in the symbolism.
The IMC implied that Sinn Fein was now more about
avarice than ideology and would be penalised in kind.
It was a penalty oozing with utter contempt; a disdainful
slap in the face and ultimately more humiliating than
a clench fisted punch. The Sinn Fein president may
have taken some solace from dismissing John Alderdice
as a failed politician. Alderdice would have taken
considerably more from being in a position to humiliate,
as he would view it, a failed revolutionary.
Claim
as he might that the report is 'not just about the
IRA' the BBC's Brian Rowan is less than forthcoming
when demonstrating that it is about anybody else.
While the IMC clearly show that the loyalists have
been responsible for the bulk of the violence, this
report was never primarily about loyalist violence.
It was specifically designed to address a crisis of
legitimacy for the Good Friday Agreement caused by
debilitating disputes over the presence in government
of martial politicians. In this sense Sinn Fein has
been a victim of its own electoral success. Armed
with a mandate which would allow it a place in the
seat of government, Britain permitting, Sinn Fein
as an integral part of the British state's alternative
to republicanism - in a way that loyalism is not -
is being compelled to yield to the logic that goes
with being a serious contender for government. The
party is therefore right when it argues that the IMC
was specifically designed with itself in mind. It
has, however, been less than frank when explaining
the motives behind the establishment of the IMC.
It
is not, as Mitchel McLaughlin claims, to curb Sinn
Fein’s vote. The British are not alarmed about
the vote of a nationalist party that has succumbed
to the consent principle and supports the long standing
British terms for disengagement. Whitehall never worried
about an increasing SDLP vote. The purpose of the
IMC is to lubricate that slippery slope which Sinn
Fein itself built, and which will ultimately see the
IRA slide down the chute into oblivion. The Irish
Independent view, reinforced by Frank Millar in
the Irish Times, that the report of the IMC
has been accepted more in sorrow than in anger by
both the Irish and British governments makes considerable
sense. Rather than seeking to triumphantly punish
Sinn Fein, both governments wish to cajole the party
into delivering on its undertaking to eradicate the
IRA. In this context, the targeting and isolating
of Sinn Fein makes eminent strategic sense within
the framework of the peace process. It is not about
undermining the process but driving it to its logical
denouement.
Last
May after the British had suspended the Stormont elections
the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams responded by asking
'what part of ''no activities'' does the British government
not understand?' Dick Kerr, the former CIA operative
on the IMC who has been empowered by the British to
bring Sinn Fein to heel has made it clear that 'no
activities' is something understood only too well.
He warned, 'we'll be back.'
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