It
was Karl Marx who made the observation that history
repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
What, one wonders, would old Karl have made of the
obscenity that is now the North of Ireland in this,
the 10th year of the ceasefires as the media and
the three governments struggle and squirm not to
say what everyone suspects and knows within their
hearts: which is that the Provisional IRA was behind
the pre-Christmas robbery at the Northern Bank in
Belfast. Instead a long list of alternative, more
politically acceptable suspects has been trotted
out for inspection - Loyalists, dissident republicans,
criminal gangs and, God help us, "ex-Provos"
- anyone and everyone except the sole organisation
with the manpower, resources, sophistication, experience,
track record, intelligence-gathering capabilities
- and motive - to carry out such a robbery.
Karl
might say that perhaps they were all keeping quiet
for to do otherwise would be to admit that they
were all made fools of during the recent talks about
a political settlement. For if it does turn out
that the Provos did the robbery it means that at
the same time as Gerry Adams was leading his talks
team into discussions with the British, Irish and
American governments, he knew that he and his buddies
on the Army Council had approved a job which if
there was a deal, would throw Ian Paisley's DUP
into turmoil, and if there wasn't, would add a tidy
sum to the "Second Home Fund" set up to
benefit senior IRA and SF leaders and to advance
their political and electoral ambitions. And he
would also know that very few in the media would
dare openly accuse him or the Provos of any involvement
and the governments would wriggle and twist before
admitting their boy could deceive them so egregiously.
Either way the chances were very good that Mr A
would come out top.
Karl
might also say to himself, 'Shit, I have been here
before!' For the truth is that we are now seeing
history repeated in Ireland as both tragedy and
farce. Those with long enough memories can cast
their minds back just twenty years or so to the
days when journalists and politicians with serious,
"believe-me-when-I-tell-you" expressions
on their faces would assure us that there was no
such organisation as the Official IRA, that the
Workers Party had no paramilitary wing and that
all those stories about OIRA arms dumps in Turf
Lodge, drink robberies, building site scams, currency
forging, massage parlours and so on were the product
of malicious and over-excited imaginations.
It
took years and lots of hard investigative journalism
to expose that lie, yet that was a relatively easy
task compared to the job of uncovering the real
truth behind Mr Adams and his friends. Lots of people
had motives to cover up for the Officials; both
governments regarded an armed opposition to the
Provos in places like West Belfast a very useful
weapon in the counter insurgency armory but could
never admit that it existed, while very few in the
media, those who weren't Workers Party members that
is, had the balls to challenge the lie. The proof
that the lie was both tolerated and encouraged came
in the subsidy granted to the Officials and their
paramilitary wing by the British in the form of
drinking club licences awarded in areas where they
had a strong presence, the dishing out of lucratived
building contracts to construction companies controlled
by them and the generous deployment of a Nelson's
eye to investigate allegations of OIRA criminality.
In the South, OIRA allies tunnelled into positions
of influence in trade unions and semi-state bodies
and virtually controlled the news and current affairs
agendas of The Irish Times and RTE.
It
was an Orwellian period in Irish life when all the
major organs of Irish society conspired to propagate
a huge deception and punished and marginalised those
with the temerity to challenge it. Hideous and obscene
as that lie was, it ranks as a child's harmless
fib alongside the monstrous dishonesty that is part
and parcel of the Adams' enterprise. The motives
for turning a blind eye to the Adams' deception
are much stronger than those which inspired the
OIRA lie for the prize is a veritable pearl without
price: the transition of wild revolutionaries to
constitutionalists and a real end to physical force
Irish Republicanism.
The
only people who don't know that - or refuse to see
it - are the IRA's own rank and file who rather
than admit the appalling vista staring them in the
face take refuge in pieces of nonsense and fiction,
that Adams has taken the IRA down this road as a
'tactic' for instance or that it will all work out
for the best in the end when the Big Lad produces
a trick from up his sleeve.
For
this ploy to work it is necessary to give it substance
which is one of the reasons the IRA has gone to
Colombia, raided Castlereagh, smuggled guns from
Florida, spied on the NIO, abducted rivals from
bars and now, raided the Northern Bank. These help
to make the fiction of a subtle strategy credible
and gives Adams the space within which to make more
concessions or, when convenient, to do the opposite
and to argue that the hard men were making life
too difficult for him to move. It is also the reason
why for so long all three governments tolerated
continued activity by the IRA. "Adams needs
to bring the hard men with him", breathless
civil servants would intone after each incident.
For
the same reasons most of the Irish media are witting
allies in the telling of the lie for without them
to trot out nonsense about Adams being under pressure
from his hard men or giving credence to idiotic
allegations of securocrat-inspired sabotage or smiling
indulgently when Adams denies IRA membership then
the lie would be clearly visible for what it is.
But the worst offence committed by the bulk of the
Irish media during the years of the peace process
is simply that it failed to do its job, which is
to dig out the truth and challenge those with the
power and motives to tell lies, no matter how uncomfortable
or unsettling the end result. Instead too many of
them have become court jesters in a kingdom of deception.
Evidence
that this repetition of Irish history is both tragic
and farcical comes in the central involvement of
RTE and The Irish Times in the telling of
the lie, an involvement which almost exactly mirrors
the role these two major media organs played in
giving the OIRA deception credibility in the 1970's
and 1980's. Disgraceful as that role surely was,
it never quite plumbed the depths to which The
Irish Times reached last week when it spiked
Kevin Myers' article on the Northern Bank robbery,
preferring instead to believe an anonymous Republican
source, not even P O'Neill, whose denial of involvement
- "We are dismissing any suggestion or allegation
that we were involved" - must surely rank as
the least assertive and most ambiguously worded
in the history of crime.
Pressed
into a corner those in the media responsible for
refusing to challenge the lie would probably justify
what they do by saying that they are only covering
for Gerry Adams's own lie to his supporters and
followers, that if the truth was told he could not
survive their anger and the peace process would
probably die. Perhaps, but that is not a decision
for the media to make. They are observers not players
and their job is just to tell the truth as best
they can; and as they do their job they can console
themselves with the thought that if the peace process
cannot survive the truth then it will probably perish
anyway.
But
the other problem with this line of reasoning is
that while it may once have had a basis, it no longer
has. Back in 1994 Gerry Adams might well have been
in trouble had the IRA rank and file understood
where his journey would really take them but not
in 2004. The bulk of concessions have been made,
the ideological retreats completed and the dissidents
have long since left and become marginalised while
other malcontents have either departed to get new
lives or accommodated themselves to the new order.
Adams' control of the IRA is now absolute; the reason
for the lie no longer exists.
But
the lie lives on, sustained by three governments
and a docile media - and therein lies a major problem
and a host of questions. The problem is that there
is no reason why the lie should not live on indefinitely,
for there is no sign that anyone has the will or
courage to end it; in fact quite the contrary if
The Irish Times' behaviour is anything to
go by.
But
the questions nonetheless intrude uncomfortably,
evidence that lies eventually corrupt those who
refuse to challenge them: Will Adams and his Army
Council colleagues be allowed to approve robberies
and the like even when they have decommissioned
and are in government because otherwise their rank
and file might conclude they have sold out? Is involvement
in crime going to be a permanent but unacknowledged
characteristic of government in both parts of Ireland
for years to come, even when the Provos join and
back the PSNI? Will everyone else be expected to
join in the lie to cover for Mr Adams and what happens
to those who challenge it? What sort of society
will result when corruption and dishonesty like
this become the norm? Does peace sometimes come
with too high a price tag?
When
Bill Clinton's womanizing practices became public
knowledge and nearly caused his impeachment the
question on every lip was why the President of the
United States would risk so much for so little?
The answer, of course, was that he behaved in the
way he did because he could.
In
the same fashion, Mr Adams talks peace from one
side of his mouth and approves robberies, spying,
trips to Colombia and so on from the other, because
he can - he has been given the go-ahead by three
governments and most of the Irish media. It has
happened repeatedly without fatal results for his
enterprise so why shouldn't he push the envelope
out a little bit more? He'd be foolish not to. That's
why this week the Northern Bank is minus some £22
million and Ireland's politicians and journalists
are performing verbal gymnastics to avoid admitting
what stares them in the face.
Karl
Marx had wise words to say about history. But so
did the Spanish-American poet and philosopher, George
Santayana, words that the people of Ireland would
be wise to heed: "Those who fail to learn the
lessons of history are doomed to repeat them".
