Most people who want to see the peace process successfully completed are dismayed by the turn of events over recent weeks. There is nothing to exult over. Very serious issues are involved, and no distractions are needed, writes Martin Mansergh
Martin McGuinness's statement on February 3rd that "the people who robbed the Northern Bank didn't give a damn about the peace process" has a ring of truth. The robbery threw down the gauntlet, not just to the two governments, but to Irish democracy. History shows since 1922 that, whenever militant republicanism takes on Irish democracy, however incomplete or imperfect, it loses. Although the bank raid was in the North, most of the police action has been in the South.
The mood in Government and the Oireachtas and amongst the public, with few exceptions, is now one of zero tolerance for paramilitary activity, and of full support for the Garda working with the PSNI and the Criminal Assets Bureau in unravelling the networks involved.
There has been ample forewarning. Repeated breakdowns in the Northern institutions since 2000 centred not only on decommissioning, but continuing IRA activity inside and outside Northern Ireland. It is on the record that the IRA never considered itself fully committed to the Good Friday Agreement or bound by the Mitchell principles. Given the overlap in Sinn Féin and IRA membership, this ambivalence destroys the trust essential to sustain cross-community power-sharing.
The nominees currently on the army council are a matter of intelligence, which is rarely an exact science, especially given the adage, "Those who know don't tell. Those who tell don't know". No one doubts that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were IRA leaders (which Adams will not admit for compelling legal and political reasons), or that they are the leaders of the republican movement today. Opportunities are availed of from the Sinn Féin leader to the newest elected neophyte to identify demonstrably with "the army".
Assuming they will not throw the peace process overboard, the movement must work to protect the gains achieved from peace, and to put the process back on track. No one should underestimate what that now requires.
There are some positive straws in the wind. The new Daily Ireland, to Sinn Féin what the Irish Press once was to Fianna Fáil, carried an editorial on February 21st stating that "those republicans involved in the murder of Robert McCartney have first and foremost committed a terrible crime". It went on to say that their expulsion from the republican movement would not go nearly far enough, and that only their appearance in a court of law can do that. In any normal society, the community would co-operate with the police. It is a terrible commentary that the state of fear prevents people doing that, outside of brave relatives who unprecedentedly have made demands on the IRA.
A columnist in the same paper wrote the following day that it was hard to envisage Pearse, Connolly and de Valera robbing banks or smuggling cigarettes. Michael Collins strongly condemned punishment beatings, John Kelly, former MLA and a founder of the movement, has argued that no one wants to substitute "fascist state" justice for "fascist green" justice.
David Adams, writing in this paper from a loyalist background (February 18th), denounces the casual butchery involved in paramilitary justice, exercised "without any measure of accountability" and "in the hands of those least qualified to hold it". Given free choice, there cannot be many people who would not regard the reformed PSNI or the courts as a better alternative to the ongoing flagrant and demeaning abuse of human rights, British government tolerance of which has been denounced by departing Northern Ireland Human Rights Commissioner Brice Dickson.
While most people, including a clear majority of Northern nationalists, never regarded the aggressive Provisional IRA campaign as legitimate, this State, unlike Mrs Thatcher, at the time of the hunger strikes did recognise in law the concept of a political offence. An alternative description contained in the Extradition Act 1987, which abolished it, was "a criminal matter of a political character". This corresponded roughly to the coy expression "qualifying prisoners", who were released under the Belfast Agreement. No criminal acts committed by paramilitaries since, or those convicted of them, have any concession as to their character. Do republicans who are concerned for the IRA's reputation, such as it was, not see it is high time to draw a line?
Disentanglement from the present mess will not be easy, and will require more than words or affirmations with semantic double-meanings. If paramilitaries want to start building confidence, they could implement a permanent end to punishment attacks. Sinn Féin could negotiate participation in policing. That would in turn entail disposal of remaining illegally held weapons and the unwinding of financial rackets. It should also be accepted that the only act of completion available to those who slaughtered Det Garda Jerry McCabe is completion of their sentences.
Without a radical change of course, the situation is stark. Whatever the short-term electoral impact, North and South, in political terms what has happened is disastrous. The dynamic of change is stalled. The devolution element of the Belfast Agreement is in deep freeze. Unionism has after six years achieved its aim of escaping the hook of semi-imposed power-sharing with Sinn Féin, without having its own bona fides and commitment too deeply tested.
Sinn Féin will be irrelevant to any closely fought election outcome in terms of government formation in Dublin for a long time to come, with only a share of the protest vote available to it. Any progress towards a united Ireland by 2016, on the basis of the twin-track republican approach, with or without green papers, is a pipe-dream.
The SDLP under Mark Durkan had its best conference in years recently. It is a real question as to who can provide the leadership that nationalists urgently require and lever the political process out of its present cul-de-sac. Advice to the republican movement: stop losing the peace.