It
is said that the evening before the Sinn Fein
ard fheis on policing the IRA was pulled together
and its volunteers told that whatever reservations
they had on the matter, they would have to set
them to the side and vote in favour of the motion
to back the PSNI. One knowledgeable observer estimated
that the IRA contingent would have made up half
of the delegates.
If
so, faced with such a compliant audience, Martin
McGuinness must have felt comfortable claiming
that those attending the conference came from
the IRA tradition; the IRA being the organisation,
he told his admirers, that had fought the RUC
and British Army to a standstill. Watching Mary
Lou McDonald benignly gaze upon him as he spoke
it was difficult to see how his comments gelled
with her Fianna Fail tradition. But there we go.
In a totalitarian world what can be made to count
as true is more of an imperative than what actually
is true.
The
more time elapses since the IRA cessations of
the 1990s, the more people just smile when they
hear the IRA described as the undefeated army.
When the IRA was at war, had its volunteers been
presented with what it has currently settled for,
it would have provoked a reaction from them that
would have left little room for doubt in the minds
of their leaders that they could stick their finely
tuned blueprint for defeat right up where their
heads are today.
Martin
McGuinness likes to put a brave face on the ignominious
debacle he helped lead his organisation to. Since
the ceasefire of 1994 the IRA has been changed
much more than the RUC. But few would claim it
has been disbanded. Considered against this backdrop
it is difficult to argue that the RUC has been
disbanded. McGuinness claims that his nationalist
party is now the boss; it will ensure that the
PSNI will even arrest MI5 operatives who break
the law. Rubbish, all of it.
Let
McGuinness go out and try to arrest a peeler and
we shall see who is boss. The PSNI can arrest
and jail Sinn Fein members but neither McGuinness
or his colleagues can do likewise to the PSNI.
Sinn Fein has been forced to recognise that the
PSNI is a legally constituted force while the
PSNI still claims the Provisional IRA is an illegal
terrorist or criminal organisation. The Provisional
IRA has for the most part been disarmed because
its weapons were judged to be illegal but the
PSNI has been allowed to maintain its armoury.
Just
to underscore the point, within days of the ard
fheis two members of the Provisional movement
were jailed for between six and seven years for
their involvement in the attempted abduction of
Bobby Tohill in Belfast three years ago. Both
men, Provisional colleagues of Martin McGuinness,
had earlier been arrested by McGuinness's new
colleagues in the PSNI after McGuinness had called
on them to hand themselves over to the Diplock
courts so that they could be sentenced to the
time that they are now serving. So far the boss
has not ordered their release.
The
open if unintended invitation from the Derry Catholic
to heap ridicule on his party's claims is being
taken up with gusto by its republican critics.
Slogans are daubed throughout nationalist communities,
Sinn Fein offices have been targeted by graffiti
sprayers, sketches and pictures are flying around
cyberspace as fast as the jokes meeting them come
from the opposite direction. Music aficionados
are being urged to rush out and buy Londongerry's
new hit single, The Men Behind The Liar.
Informers
too, now hard pressed to tell the difference between
their own activities and the leadership which
banished them into exile, are demanding that they
be repatriated forthwith. Raymond Gilmour wants
to return to his home town of Derry. His view
presumably being that as his work to promote the
police is now being emulated by those leaders
who condemned him, he should be welcomed back
as a hero of the peace process. Gilmour, if he
has enough of the gyp about him, may demand that
in the interests of equality, Sinn Fein leaders
should spend some time in exile away from Derry
given that both he and they now share the same
basic assumptions about the British police in
Ireland.
Martin
McGuinness's claim to be a head honcho in the
British state's pecking order in the North is
hot air. At most he shall be a foreman, operating
to the agenda of the real boss, the British state;
a whip hand keeping the underlings in line and
his comrades in jail.
