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Ten
years ago today the RUC murdered IRA volunteer Pearse
Jordan. He was unarmed, alone and dazed when surrounded
and shot at point blank range on a busy Falls Road.
On active service at the time and most likely aware
of the range of consequences likely to ensue from
such activity his death was unavoidable only from
the point of view of a strategic need on the part
of the British state to halt an ever growing IRA threat
to commercial property. The British increasingly concerned
at the ability of IRA volunteers to elude the saturation
blanket thrown over republican areas and penetrate
the heart of commercial Belfast opted for lethal force
to deter those in the active service units. Pearse
Jordan fell victim to such considerations. That he
could easily have been arrested was neither here nor
there from the point of view of his killers. Killing
him was the one objective to be secured that day.
Some
years later the European Courts of Human Rights ruled
against the British Government in the case of Pearse
Jordan when it concluded that it had failed to ensure
a proper investigation of state killings.
That
the British were not greatly perturbed by the ruling,
was evident as recently as yesterday evening. Then,
in Belfast city centre the Continuity RUC, in what
takes on the macabre appearance of a morbid celebration
of Pearse Jordan's tenth anniversary, shot another
unarmed republican who, if the reports are correct,
was engaged in a similar exercise to Pearse Jordan.
He was planting a bomb in the mistaken belief that
as a result of his actions the British would ultimately
be forced to withdraw; that Stormont would stay dead
and buried; that the force who were to shoot him would
be disbanded. His leaders could have saved him the
life threatening experience he underwent by telling
him before he went out that there was no chance. And
unfortunately he failed to suss out for himself that
as always within republicanism, just as there was
when Pearse Jordan was murdered, there are leaders
all to too willing to trade freedoms for fiefdoms
and totally disregard or exploit the sacrifices those
on the ground make to ensure that their own political
careers hurtle into even higher orbits.
All
of this, however, in no way negates the obligation
on any state, particularly those claiming to be democratic,
to refrain from murdering its citizens. Yesterday’s
summary execution bid demonstrates that for the British,
physical force republicans are to be denied the same
rights as others and are every bit as likely to be
murdered by the forces of the state in 2002 as they
were in 1992. Most likely the British take certain
solace in these matter from the atmospherics that
now seem to infuse the discourse relating to such
shootings. Noticeably the British state is facing
no clamour from mainstream republican quarters about
engaging in a shoot to kill policy. Mitchel McLaughlin
raised some serious questions but only within the
terms of the new consensus that the British state
now has the moral authority to take on physical force
republicans and jail them rather than resorting to
killing them. The Belfast mayor Alex Maskey indicated
that his concerns would for the most part be put on
hold until Nuala O'Loan had carried out her investigation;
that there may in fact have been good reason to shoot
the unarmed republican who almost lost his life yesterday.
Although the point of expecting O’Loan to settle
such matters will puzzle some in the light of Gerry
Kelly having criticised the ombudswoman’s handling
of the investigation into the RUC assault on the Belfast
chairperson of Sinn Fein. Kelly accused Nuala O’Loan
of ‘actively engaging in a cover-up of the attempted
murder of Paud Devenny.’ If true, why would there
be something other than a cover up in the case of
yesterday’s attempted murder?
It
seems that Sinn Fein’s previous concern with
state shoot-to-kill operations was characterised by
the type of peculiarities once outlined by Edgar Morin
in Le Monde - 'blind moralities … one
way indignations …(and) unilateral forms of pity.’
Given
that the party which benefited most from the sacrifices
made by IRA volunteers such as Pearse Jordan is now
bursting at the seams in its eagerness to embrace
the force that killed him, there is no great surprise
in its discursive shift. As Eamon Lynch writing in
the Irish Echo put it:
Having
accepted the bona fides of the Northern Ireland
state and spent four years as an enthusiastic participant
in its administration, it is farcical for Sinn Fein
to insist that nationalists continue to reject the
state police as illegitimate.
And
faced with the fact that the party has changed in
a way that the RUC has not the question remains as
to who now will stand up and critically question the
right of Britain’s police force in Ireland to
murder those it feels no one will speak up for?
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