Short of yet another murder, it would be difficult to imagine a more provocative response by the IRA to last week's adjudication on its ceasefire than the issuing of so-called "expulsion orders" against a number of youths in Dungannon and Belfast. It has to be seen not merely as a direct snub to the Secretary of State, Dr Mowlam, but as an attempt to raise the ante in the present atmosphere of political confrontation and an affront to all parties committed to the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
The Secretary of State suspended her critical faculties to make a declaration that the IRA's ceasefire has not broken down. She committed herself to continuing the programme of releases of republican prisoners, setting aside the requirement that the organisation to which they belong must have suspended all acts of violence and all preparations for such acts. It was a calculated and pragmatic demarche, looking beyond the reality of the facts in order to allow the Mitchell review to go ahead next month. Dr Mowlam's critics and supporters alike warned that she was, in effect, sending a message to the IRA that a ceasefire is what they say it is. According to that message, as long as murders or mutilations are committed for internal reasons or in order to control anti-social elements, they do not amount to "violence" as the term is understood in the Belfast Agreement or under the Sentences Act. And now it appears that the IRA has taken her at her word. Seven youngsters have been told they will be shot if they do not leave Northern Ireland. All, apparently, have left or are making preparations to leave.
It is impossible to say that the Secretary of State did the wrong thing in letting the IRA and its political wing, Sinn Fein, off the hook last week. Reliable analysts still believe that the predominant elements within the republican movement are still anxious to secure a political settlement and to participate in a power-sharing executive. To shut the door on such an eventuality at this point would be folly. And that precisely could be the effect of suspending prisoner releases or seeking to exclude Sinn Fein from full or immediate participation in the review process.
But it is also clear that the republican movement does not consider itself obliged at this point to choose, as Mr David Trimble put it, "between the party and the army". While Sinn Fein prepares to negotiate, its sponsoring body, the IRA, continues to assert its dominance through the gun and the baseball bat. The "expulsion orders" against these seven youths declare baldly to the politicians, the governments and the wider world that regardless of politics, the IRA is the authority in nationalist areas, backed by force of arms and threats of violence. The politicians cannot fail to recognise these threats for what they are. The republican movement has been appeased, cajoled, sweetened, courted and accorded a range of privileges which would have been unthinkable two years ago. It has succeeded, beyond its furthest expectations, in broadening its political influence without having to relinquish its capacity to kill and maim when dialogue fails to yield the results it wants. These classic, fascist tactics cannot be allowed to continue for if they do they will poison irreversibly the democratic basis of public life throughout the whole island. There may be room and time for one more attempt by Senator Mitchell to bridge the gap between the sides. But no credible solution is possible if Sinn Fein says one thing while the IRA continues to do the opposite.