On
28 January 2007, a Sinn Fein Ard Fheis voted to
support the PSNI and the criminal justice system;
appoint party representatives to the Policing
Board and District Policing Partnership Boards;
and actively encourage everyone in the community
to co-operate fully with the police services in
tackling crime in all areas and actively supporting
all the criminal justice institutions. In November
2006, the party already signed up to the 26 counties
new policing committees. Mr Adams insisted that
"Republicans have always been for policing.
Republicans have always been for law and order."(1)
The
decision was hardly suprising. In a recent editorial
the Irish News noted: "If Sinn Fein
is to complete its transition from a revolutionary
group to a constitutional party which seeks to
achieve positions in government on both sides
of the border, support for policing has always
been essential."(2)
The
Provos had to end what DUP MEP Jim Allister called
their "schizophrenic approach to the rule
of law". The contradiction revolves around
the fact that while the party was prepared to
administer British rule, it refused to accept
British policing structures in the north. The
party cannot have Ministers making the laws and
at the same time refusing to endorse the forces
in charge of implementing them. "This was
an absurd and illogical political position. One
either rejects the legitimacy of a state or accepts
it. One cannot reject the legitimacy of one arm
of the state and accept the legitimacy of another.
Sinn Fein was trying to have its cake and eat
it." (3)
The
1998 Belfast Agreement made it quite clear that
signatories would have to accept new internal
policing arrangements.The Provisional movement
had to accept the state's monopoly of legitimate
violence.
Some
weeks back, Prime Minister Blair stated given
that Republicans "have spent a lifetime fighting
it", a move to support the PSNI and the criminal
justice system would be of "profound significance":
"There
is no doubt that the Sinn Féin leadership
wants to make the commitment on policing (...)
I recall time and again being told that the
IRA would never decommission; they would never
give up violence; they would never commit to
exclusively peaceful means. But they have done
all these things. Sinn Féin has demonstrated
one of the most remarkable examples of leadership
I have come across in modern politics. It has
been historic and it has been real."
(4)
In
an article written just before his death earlier
this month, UVF leader David Ervine underlined
the magnitude of the shift:
"The
endgame was always going to shake up the republican
movement and its supporters. It is, after all,
the final acceptance by republicans of Northern
Ireland as a viable and integral part of the
UK. It is also the final acceptance by republicans
that no authority other than state authority
is either practicable or tolerable. It is worth
consideration that if Adams pulls it off at
the Ard Fheis, a real line in history will have
been drawn."(5)
A
triumphant Ian Paisley jnr already claimed late
last year: "We couldn't kill them but we
can destroy them and their ideology". A republican
who accepts the police is no longer a republican,
he says. "Look whose(sic) under pressure
tonight - the traitors in Sinn Féin, traitors
to republicanism! Rejoice, our enemy is turning
against themselves." In an email to a convicted
loyalist, Jeffrey Donaldson writes: "These
decisions are a million miles away from 1916 and
the declaration of a 32-county republic. In short,
the IRA has lost the battle for a United Ireland."(6)
Alex
Kane of the UUP wrote in the pro-Unionist daily
News Letter:
"The
IRA has ended the futile 'armed struggle'. Partition
has been recognised. Republicans will co-operate
with unionists in Stormont. The ongoing British
presence (along with the new MI5 centre) is
accepted as a fact of life. The PSNI and the
British justice and judicial systems will be
given the thumbs up from Sinn Fein in a few
days' time. Short of burning the tricolour and
hoisting the Union Flag over Connolly House,
there isn't much more that Sinn Fein could do
to admit that Northern Ireland, Unionism and
the present United Kingdom are here and here
to stay."(7)
Yet
for a faction of Unionism, this is not enough.
The East Derry DUP MP Gregory Campbell insisted
that formal recognition and participation in policing
structures was not enough, the Provisional party
would be judged on its work with the police to
stamp out any remaining republican organisation
still engaging in armed struggle against the British
state. When asked if he would call on Sinn Fein
to report so-called 'dissident' activity to the
police, he replied: "That will be a part
of our test for them after the Ard Fheis, we have
a series of things to put into practice to test
them to see if their support for policing means
anything. "They can't turn a blind eye on
criminals because they are former colleagues,"
he said. And that applies to all crime in the
republican community. In particular, Mr. Campbell
said that Sinn Fein must finger anyone known to
be behind fuel laundering and similar crimes,
as well as reporting the killers of Belfast man
Robert McCartney who was murdered in January 2005.
(8) DUP MEP Jim Allister insists that any "mere
verbal commitment" should be "tested
and tried over a credible period". Among
those tests he suggested disbandment of the IRA
as an indispensable part of proof of support for
the rule of law, the return of 'ill-gotten gains',
including the deeds of the Northern Bank robbery,
encouragement to join the PSNI and an increased
conviction rate. (9)
The
Provisional leadership tries to sell the decision
by telling its grassroots that its move into policing
structures represents a new site of struggle,
that it is a strategic advance which will enable
it to wrest power from 'the securocrats' and by
pointing to the possibility of a Sinn Fein Minister
of Policing or Justice when those powers are devolved.
(10)
However,
the transfer of 'counter-terrorist' intelligence
from the police to MI5 means at present that any
such minister would have no effective control
over counter-terrorist operations in Northern
Ireland. Sinn Féin is colluding with the
British state to hide the fact MI5 has been given
an expanded role in the North to take supreme
control of all counter-terrorist intelligence
with virtually no accountability or outside control.
The SDLP's Mark Durkan correctly points out that
the Provisional agenda is in fact allowing the
British Government to set the clock back on policing.
Under the Patten reforms (132 of its 175 recommendations
have already been implemented), the PSNI is obliged
by law to open all its files to the Ombudsman
in any investigation, whereas under the Blair-Adams
deal, the police Ombudsman will not be able to
investigate MI5. (11)
In
fact, the Patten reforms and the Belfast Agreement
offered even less than the Sunningdale Agreement
in failing to provide an all Ireland authority
on policing.(12)
The
appointment of Lord Carlile, who supported no-jury
Diplock courts in the North for each of the last
five years and backed the 90-day detention without
trial of terrorist suspects in Britain vigorously
opposed by civil liberties groups, to a role in
annually reviewing MI5 in the North, was bizarrely
hailed as a victory by Sinn Féin.
(13)
Tony
Blair's statement on MI5 this month isn't "a
very major step" towards getting MI5 out
of Ireland as Sinn Féin claims. In fact,
far from leaving Ireland, MI5 is building brand
new £100m headquarters in Palace Barracks
in Hollywood outside Belfast. 'MI5's role will
undermine the whole point of Patten, which was
to grant some democratic control and scrutiny
over security policies' declared Mark Durkan.
'If the status quo remains, any future Minister
of Justice or Policing will have no access, let
alone control of, a crucial part of security policy'
the Foyle SDLP MP said. (14)
A
policing minister won't have sweeping powers like
running the security apparatus. His/her greatest
power will be introducing legislation, such as
a bill to end 50% remission for sex offenders;
but the policing minister can't give orders to
the chief constable. There hasn't even been a
new breakthrough on the controversial plastic
bullets -there still needs to be a total ban on
those weapons. So-called 'civic policing' under
the new arrangements will not end 'political policing'.
(15)
The
Provisional movement's attempt to change the policing
and justice system from within is congenitally
flawed. An active Republican and former member
of the Provisional movement writes in the Communist
Party of Ireland journal:
"In
many instances of political action it's a case
of not what you do but why you do it. The Sinn
Fein Ard-Chomhairle motion that republicans
back An Garda as well as the PSNI without any
equivalent Patten type reforms is an indication
that a republican endorsement of 'law and order'
is being sought for all the wrong reasons. (...)
Any notion that Sinn Fein or anybody else can
enter the most reactionary institution of power
in the Six Counties while the British maintain
ultimate control and subvert its reason for
existing is naive. (...) As Karl Marx once stated,
'the working class cannot simply lay hold of
the ready-made state machinery and wield it
for its own purpose'."(16)
Experience
shows that once you attempt to create change from
within, the parameters of the system create constraints
which prevent political actors from transforming
it. Once in, the party's room of manoeuvre will
become much more constrained than if it were applying
pressure from without. It is not the British state
which will have to obey Republican rules but the
other way around. Accepting and endorsing the
policing and justice system is not a Republican
strategy - it is a British state and Unionist
demand. They have already determined the rules
of the game. Attempts to change the system from
within will only result in Republicans being stuck
on the other side of the barricade. As Anthony
McIntyre recently remarked, the paradox at the
heart of the Sinn Fein position, is one of claiming
to be Republican while at the same time being
prepared to support political policing that will
put republicans in jails for armed resistance
to the British state. If the party is not prepared
to perform such functions at the behest of the
British state and the DUP, then it will never
attain the justice ministry. Sinn Fein embracing
the British PSNI is not a sign of republican success
but is a mark of its failure.(17)
NOTES
(1) Gerry Adams, Time is Right for Policing Decision,
The Sunday Life, 21 January 2007
(2) Editorial, Sinn Fein right to move on policing,
The Irish News, 29 December 2006
(3) Paul Maguire, Provo Poachers Turn Gamekeepers,
New Republican Forum, 4 January 2007
(4) Prime Minister Blair, Good faith is key to
breaking current peace process impasse, The
Irish Times, 8 January 2007
(5) David Ervine, Let's finish the job, The
Belfast Telegraph, 9 January 2006
(6) Suzanne Breen, Revealed -Bizarre DUP emails
to loyalist murderer, The Sunday Tribune,
10 December 2006
(7) Alex Kane, The DUP has nothing to fear, News
Letter, 22 January 2007
(8) Campbell's "pro policing" test -
Sinn Fein "must turn in dissidents",
Derry Journal, 5 January 2007
(9) Jim Allister, Sinn Fein must prove it supports
the rule of law, The Belfast Telegraph,
9 January 2007
(10) Sinn Fein, A New Beginning to Policing, leaflet
included with The Belfast Telegraph, 26
January 2007
(11) SDLP, The
Truth About MI5: what they don't want you to know
(12) Jonathan Tonge, Northern Ireland,
Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006, p.82
(13) Suzanne Breen, Sinn Fein bizarrely claims
MI5 appointment as victory, Sunday Tribune,
14 January 2007
(14) Henry McDonald, Call for more scrutiny of
MI5's role in Ulster, The Observer, 19
November 2006
(15) Liam Clarke, Covert policing will endure,
so we must learn from errors of the past, Sunday
Times, 21 January 2007
(16) Reader's Reply, Sinn Fein and Policing, Socialist
Voice, January 2007
(17) Cfr. Vincent Browne, Sinn Fein marches onward
into cul-de-sac, Sunday Business Post,
28 January 2007; Henry McDonald, Today the Provisionals
embrace 'Northern Ireland', The Observer,
28 January 2007; David Sharrock, A momentous day
for both the IRA and law and order, The Times,
29 January 2007; Lindy McDowell, So what was the
struggle about? Belfast Telegraph, 31 January
2007; John Kelly, If
MI5 rules, what was the 30-year war all about?
Letters, Irish News, 5 February 2007
