There
was no great surprise at the end of it. Who expected
a different result? Watching the ard comhairle
on TV as it assembled for its leader worship fest,
it was instructive to see a former republican
prisoner nod his head enthusiastically. It was
as if he had been practicing all week to get the
nod right so that on the day his nod would be
noticed by the President of Lies as being more
vigorous than the other nodding heads.
Amongst
the assembling throng could be seen those who
had promised there would never be republicans
in Stormont, but who nodded their heads when it
came to pass; those who had ostracised members
of their own family because the latter had the
perspicacity to forecast decommissioning, and
then nodded their heads when the act that would
never happen did; those who swore never to be
in the party if it endorsed a renamed RUC, but
who could be seen practicing the nod yesterday.
A
former member of the ard comhairle once likened
its meetings to a shop front where on show are
nodding dogs to be displayed in the back windows
of cars. The type of obsequities delivered to
the President of Lies are said to resemble that
made by the sycophant Ali Hassan al-Majid at the
1979 extraordinary Baath Party convention: 'everything
you did in the past was good and everything you
do in the future is good. I say this from my faith
in the party and your leadership.'
There
is a photo in today's front page of the Irish
Times which depicts the President of Lies beneath
an oval light. It produces the curious effect
of a halo. Few will express shock if next Thursday's
Dear Leader column in the Irish News offers it
as proof of canonisation and then goes on to tell
us that Dear Leader fed the entire gathering until
they were sated from one boiled egg. That he turned
the water into illegal vodka will not be mentioned.
The
one disappointed face after yesterday's ard comhairle
meeting belonged to Gerry Kelly. He must realise
now that for all his manoeuvring to become a peeler
the justice ministry is beyond him. The President
of Lies' on air compliment to him for having led
the policing negotiations is poor compensation
for the loss of a prospective ministerial career.
It may also be the beginning of the long predicted
heave ho. Gerry Kelly was merely a pawn in the
wider power play; just as he was used to robustly
sell the 'not a round not an ounce' stance. Unionist
observers first sensed that decommissioning was
for real when they saw Adams place his arm around
the shoulders of a disconsolate Kelly at Hillsborough
after a round of negotiations at which Sinn Fein
fatally undermined the IRA's insistence not to
move on the weapons question. Up until then Kelly
had been assuring the rank and file that only
the terminally stupid believed decommissioning
would occur. The unionists watching the arm around
the shoulder routine believe that was the moment
Kelly discovered he had been conned. Yet his ambition
prevented him doing anything about it. The President
of Lies intuited his weakness and ruthlessly exploited
it.
Given
the course the Sinn Fein leadership charted for
republicanism, the destination was never going
to be anywhere else but into the arms of the PSNI.
The outcome was guaranteed once it had decided
to abandon republicanism and embrace a reformist
strategy. This was flagged up for even the blind
more than a decade ago. Once Adams and his army
council colleagues ordered the termination of
the Provisional IRA ceasefire in February 1996,
the stated objective of the re-launched campaign
was no longer a British withdrawal. It was to
secure all party talks which ruled out any change
in the constitutional position. A republican united
Ireland was on the way out and a reformist internal
settlement with all its accoutrements, including
policing, on the way in.
Yesterday
Martin McGuinness announced that the struggle
for equality would continue. He sounded like Oliver
Napier circa 1973. Napier to his credit had not
filled graves in order to sound as he did. And
the equality McGuinness calls for is to be firmly
ring fenced inside a British constitutional framework.
That was nowhere more evident than when Gerry
Kelly a few weeks ago, needled by Nigel Dodds'
dismissal of any suggestion for the devolution
of policing and justice powers, protested his
right to parity of esteem. Which amounted to a
plea to Dodds by Kelly for himself to have the
same right as any unionist to jail republicans
who plant car bombs at the Old Bailey in London.
To
bring the North to this point was not worth one
drop of blood, republican or any other. The SDLP
gained more in 1974 and its leadership, like Napier,
killed nobody.
Great
anger has been aroused within the republican grassroots
over the embrace of the police. None of which
makes any sense. The grassroots may complain all
they want, but they were complicit in the project.
Denied any input they nevertheless abdicated their
obligation to monitor the activities of their
leadership, preferring instead to endlessly issue
blank cheques without ever receiving a republican
return on any of them. Did the grassroots ever
seriously believe the peace process could arrive
at a different terminus? In the long tortuous
demise of republicanism, accepting the right of
a British constabulary to police Northern nationalists
and jail Irish republicans, is the final not the
first step.
