There is a significance to the IRA statement of last week that goes beyond the issue of the credibility of the IRA itself or of Gerry Adams. And it is a significance of considerable importance that has been overlooked, writes Vincent Browne.
It is curious this significance has been overlooked, for it relates to a justifiable complaint made repeatedly by unionists and other opponents of the republican movement for the last decade. The complaint has been that Sinn Féin had an unfair advantage in inter-party negotiations in the North for it alone had a paramilitary card to play. It could silently threaten a reversion to violence if it didn't get its way. More relevantly, it could offer "concessions" on the part of the IRA in return for compromises favourable to it. For instance, it could and did bargain for changes to policing, further demilitarisation, changes in security legislation, in return for a start to IRA decommissioning or an end to punishment beatings, the release of the McCabe killers, or an end to the IRA itself. Now that is all gone.
No longer can Sinn Féin play the IRA card. There is no IRA card for it to play and this remains the case whether the IRA continues in existence, whether the IRA ceases "criminality", whether there is total decommissioning.
It doesn't matter. Sinn Féin is no longer in a position to bargain with the IRA card in its hand. That card has been thrown away.
And this change is not dependent on anybody believing anybody. For even if the IRA very publicly continues to rob banks, to beat up people or even resume bombing, Sinn Féin would not be in a position to barter the end to that. Sinn Féin either would have to pretend this was not happening, in which case no bartering, or would have to acknowledge the IRA had broken its word, thereby distancing itself from the IRA, in which case no bartering either.
A crucial part of this IRA initiative has been the unconditional nature of it. The IRA has agreed to end all non-peaceful political activity, but not in return for any concessions on the part of the unionists or either government.
herefore it is not in a position to claim at a later date that the other side had not kept its side of the bargain and it was okay for them to resume "activities".
Actually, the initiative was not of the IRA but of Gerry Adams, which also has significance.
You do not have to believe that Gerry Adams is/was not involved in the IRA to accept this point.
It was Gerry Adams who last April asked the IRA to commit itself to purely peaceful and democratic activity. Quite clearly before he made this request he had a good idea what the response would be. Quite clearly also, given that the response took over three months in coming, there was some internal opposition to what he had proposed. But the fact now is that the IRA has agreed to what he asked them to agree to.
Even if this was all a ruse, that all along Adams knew the IRA would never engage in purely peaceful and democratic means, the initiative would still be of huge significance for, irrespective of his intentions, Adams was depriving himself and Sinn Féin of the IRA card in future negotiations.
How could he ever go back into negotiations and say, by the way, the IRA did not go away, it is still around, still engaged in other "activity", still has hoards of weapons but I can negotiate away all these in return for some further political initiatives? Surely the fact that he has consciously deprived himself and Sinn Féin of this negotiating leverage, and done so unconditionally, goes to his credibility? There is no "out" here for him, in the sense that he can retrieve the IRA card. And he did this entirely off his own bat, entirely unconditionally.
It might be argued he had no option because of the cul-de-sac the breakdown of the December talks, the Northern Bank robbery and the murder of Robert McCartney had placed him and the republican movement.
But is this plausible? Even with that background, Sinn Féin did very well in the May Westminster elections, as they had done in the two by-elections in the South. The party has survived far worse public relations disasters than these - remember how nightly on the television screens there were scenes of searches for the "disappeared" in the immediate run up to Assembly elections some years ago and still Sinn Féin did spectacularly well? But there is a snag, more than snag, a dilemma.
The bar has been set too high for Sinn Féin and the IRA now and unreasonably so. Not that we should much care about the fortunes of Sinn Féin and the IRA but because of the ramifications of this for the political process as a whole.
It is not believable there will be no "activity" henceforth on the part of an organisation that has been engaged in frenetic activity for 35 years. An organisation like the IRA does not wind down suddenly, its activists don't suddenly become quiescent. Is the whole political bandwagon going to come to another halt because one or a few IRA members breach the understanding that this is all over?