Perhaps the most enduringly unendurable characteristic of the Sinn Fein-IRA family is their aggressive infantilism. Like a spoilt brat in a nursery, the only voice they hear, the only desires they understand and the only feelings they respond to are their own. The world is there to attend to their needs. No reciprocation is necessary, no regret at misdemeanours is required. And far worse than this is when democracy bends its knee to the petulant me-me-meism of Sinn Fein.
Three murders - those of Tom Oliver, Jerry McCabe and Eamon Collins, the last two probably masterminded by the one man - remind us of the querulous political reaction of this State to terrorist murder. Not a known IRA house in the Border or west Munster areas should have had its door on its hinges after these acts of evil savagery, yet such houses, and the sleep of their occupants, remained largely untroubled.
Pearse McCauley
There is no more egregious example of state pusillanimity than that which preceded and facilitated the murder of Jerry McCabe. The most experienced terrorist involved in the murder was Pearse McCauley from Strabane. He was free to assist in the McCabe murder because this state made it possible. By rights, on June 7th, 1996, Pearse McCauley should have been in an Irish or English jail, and by those self-same rights, Jerry McCabe should have passed another uneventful day on duty.
Pearse McCauley escaped from lawful custody in England in 1991, where he was being held on a charge of conspiring to murder, to cause explosions, and on firearms charges. During the escape, he or his companion shot down an innocent civilian. Two years later, gardai arrested him in possession of a revolver, for which he was later sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, with a projected release date of February 1998.
But he didn't serve his time. Although wanted in England on outstanding terrorist charges, he was released three years early in 1995 on orders of the Government. Very properly - we have, thank God, a police force in Ireland - he was arrested on extradition warrants as he left prison, and he appeared before Mr Justice Murphy, who refused bail because he and his colleague Nessan Quinlivan had already escaped from lawful custody.
Nine days later, Mr Justice Kinlen ordered the men to be released because, allegedly, it would take 12 to 18 months to hear their appeals against extradition, and the court's hands were tied by the existing legal situation. As we have seen, Mr Justice Murphy had no trouble refusing bail; and would the two escapers not anyway have been in lawful custody for that period, had they not been released by an appeasement-demented Government? Moreover, did the opinion of Det Supt John McElligot, who opposed bail, count for nothing?
Bail law reform
But no doubt the judge was right in law: how vindicated those who declared - and sanctimoniously still declare - that our bail laws were in no need of repair must now feel as they contemplate the death of Jerry McCabe, murdered by a gang led by a bail-jumping terrorist. And how interesting to note that one of the independent bail sureties given for Nessan Quinlivan came from the chairman of Cashel Chamber of Commerce, one Marcus Fogarty: no doubt a matter for much pride in Cashel.
One wonders: did the good Marcus Fogarty stand bail freely, or was he intimidated into so doing? I ask because it was alleged last June that McCauley's two bails-men were intimidated by the IRA into standing surety for him. Whatever about that, there certainly was a festival of intimidation associated with the trial last month of the murderers of Jerry McCabe, peaking in the non-co-operation of prosecution witness Patrick Harty, who had provided a safe house for the IRA gang.
His silence was in such flagrant violation of his duty as a citizen, and the prosecution case against the four men accused of the McCabe murder was so maimed by that silence that the Special Criminal Court sentenced him to 18 months in jail; yet it then released him after a few days later without his ever having purged that So who precisely is boss here? Is it the democratic State which twice released a dedicated terrorist, and whose Special Criminal Court - for reasons I do not remotely understand - even released a prisoner from a prison sentence for a studied and undischarged contempt which fatally damaged the prosecution case against that terrorist? Or is Sinn Fein-IRA, which, far from condemning the cruel and wanton homicide of a Garda officer doing his duty, is demanding the early release of the heroes responsible?
Bizarre aftermath
For that is the truly bizarre aftermath of the trial. I said last week we should welcome Sinn Fein leaders to the democratic process, and I stick by that; but how welcome is anyone to any home who violates that hospitality? Pearse McCauley was twice freed from lawful custody by this State; he rewarded that liberality by unrepentantly participating in a capital crime against a good and honourable servant of this same State. Some advice to Sinn Fein on this subject. A good man lies dead and our stomachs are not strong. If not genuine sorrow, then prudent silence.