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When
Conor Dobbin arrived at my home in West Belfast he
had to be assisted by a friend. He was in a wheel
chair, courtesy of being shot in both ankles in what
has come to be known as a punishment shooting. The
injured man and his helper had both made the journey
from Downpatrick in County Down. Accompanying them
were members of a republican family from the same
town who while severely critical of anti-social activity
in the area felt that the maiming of young men only
peppered the streets with disabled people and did
nothing to clear them of crime.
When
they arrived they tried to ease their palpable tension
by banter - claiming that when they saw the tricolour
festooned working class neighbourhood in which I live
that they almost did a wheelie in the road and make
their way back out again. Momentarily, I wondered
if the middle class areas in which many republican
leaders like to live were as well adorned in republican
symbolism as our own. I introduced myself and asked
them what they wished to talk to me about. I was also
interested in their reason for choosing to come here.
Conor
did the talking. By his own admission a ‘criminal
and thief especially when cash is short’ throughout
his adult life, he had been advised that The Blanket,
while a republican journal, nevertheless practiced
its republicanism by allowing those who disagreed
with republicanism to express their opinion and give
their own explanation of events. He felt that the
mainstream media were not interested in people like
him. The peace process was of more importance than
a few ‘hoods’ and if as a result of their
alleged activities they fell foul of the local power
structures within their communities, better that silence
be maintained than have the peace process questioned.
He went on to explain that he had been convicted on
a number of occasions for handling stolen goods and
suchlike. I probed him: ‘any convictions for
violence against people?’ He shrugged. ‘Just
against cops.’ Stealing a line from Reservoir
Dogs, I commented ‘no real people.’
I
explained to him that while neither I nor those who
work on The Blanket would ever endorse the
activities of the hoods who inflict a regime of crime
on deprived communities and prey on the vulnerable,
there was still a need for open discussion of the
manner in which republicanism responds to such activities:
it being the one way to check the ever increasing
totalitarian trend that is emerging within the once
radical body of thought. All too often I hear the
fascistic view that neither hoods nor their families
should have a voice. While abhorrent, if not expressed
for the purposes of reinforcing social control, I
can at least understand it. As I sat discussing his
case with him my mind drifted back a week to a funeral
I had attended - that of a young man, Rossa Quigley,
his life cut short by thugs as they sped through the
streets of North Belfast undoubtedly aware - they
can hardly submit lack of experience in their defence
- that they were exposing people’s lives to risks
by their wanton violent behaviour. Shooting them in
the ankles seemed five or six feet too low. I worked
to quell those thoughts and the anger that welled
up inside me. They were wholly inappropriate to the
situation in which I was in, listening to the experience
of the young man who sat in front of me. He had not
murdered Rossa Quigley. And as much as I may not like
what he might have to say he had a right to vent what
was on his mind. It is not my place to allocate voices,
merely record them and through the airing of them
better inform public debate of the issues that concern
us.
Conor
Dobbin outlined his story. In it he told me of how
the Provisional IRA had questioned a number of his
friends or associates about burglaries that had taken
place in the locality in which he lived. The organisation
seemed keen to extract information from them about
Conor. ‘You must have been at something to come
to their attention’, I pressed him. He explained
that two years ago he had a conflict with local Provisionals
when he had improvised a mini oil tanker for the purpose
of smuggling diesel which in turn would allow him
to make a quick profit. In his view it was a victimless
scam. They demanded that he hand over his tanker.
He torched it before they could get their hands on
it. Thwarted, Conor feels, they have had it in for
him ever since.
Prior
to Christmas he and three friends were summoned by
the local IRA and told that the organisation wanted
£2000 from them - 500 out of each pocket. They
were informed that the money was compensation for
those from whom it had been stolen in the first place:
if they handed over cash up front their safety would
be assured. In the words of Conor, ‘this was
nonsense. The IRA didn’t know any of the scams
I had been involved in at the time. The money was
not going to go to anybody. It was probably to be
used in one of their Christmas time card schools.’
I asked the republican family who had accompanied
Conor and his friend what was their view of this.
One of them responded, ‘the talk is that the
local O/C is building a new house and is in need of
some money to get it up.’ Years ago I would have
dismissed such an allegation out of hand, but today
it is but one amongst many, all centring on the same
activity: local republicans - many of them unable
for whatever reason to milk the Stormont or community
network gravy trains - seeking to make a quick financial
killing, by fair means or foul. Conor continued:
We
had to pay up. We were not allowed to go and give
it to the IRA. They insisted on coming to one of
our houses. When they arrived they insisted on all
doors being closed and blinds being drawn. Only
then did they take the money. What was all that
about? They were creaming it off for themselves.
The organisation itself never set eyes on that money.
Conor
alleges that on two separate occasions the local IRA
took him to a house where they subjected him to beatings
and made demands for money. He further alleged that
another man who was shot a week before his own shooting
had earlier been told by the local IRA that if he
handed over £1000 he would be okay. The man
concerned admitted privately to Conor that he had
met this demand only to be shot anyway.
The
day Conor was shot the IRA visited the family home
and informed him they wanted to talk to him. They
then tried to tie him up and when he resisted he was
dragged out the back of the house and shot in each
ankle. As part of a process of justifying the attack
on him, Sinn Fein had fed the local paper, the Democrat,
a line that the PSNI had questioned Conor over a burglary
carried out at the home of an elderly couple in nearby
Clough. But the PSNI denied ever having questioned
him in relation to this offence. The Democrat
subsequently withdrew its claim and apologised for
having made it to begin with. However, against the
backdrop of the initial story coming out, people claiming
to be from the IRA visited the Dobbin home on the
day it was published and left word with his brother
that the wounded man was being expelled from County
Down.
After
the shooting his girlfriend, fearful for the future
of the couple and their two young children, contacted
the Housing Executive and asked for a house in Meadowlands.
Within hours of the request being made the IRA arrived
at the Dobbin family home in the Model Farm estate
and left word that Conor would be shot in the arms
and legs if he attempted to move into Meadowlands.
All those with Conor as I interviewed him seemed angry
that people could not raise matters of concern in
confidence with officials of the Housing Executive.
One of them commented ‘somebody there is obviously
running off carrying stories to Sinn Fein and then
the heavy hand comes down on the back of your neck.’
Conor
is now calling on Sinn Fein to have the expulsion
threat against him lifted. But he has been warned
by the IRA not to go ‘knocking doors’ in
a bid to get the matter resolved. The organisation
also told this girlfriend that under no circumstances
was he to contact the media - confirmation of an authoritarian
trend elsewhere identified so long ago by Henry Miller:
'the military clique may bluster, threaten, and clamp
down on everything which is not to their liking'.
Or as Buddy Grizzard responded more recently to Gloria
LaRiva on totalitarian tendencies, 'it's funny how
communists get when they don't control all the information.'
Conor now sees his children but once a week, arguing
that this is no way to sustain a parent-child relationship.
Before
he left for wherever he now resides, Conor hit out
at the hypocrisy and double standards of local republicans.
He spoke of having sold stolen tools to ‘one
of the biggest hoods in Downpatrick’ who in turn
sold them to a leading Sinn Fein figure in the town.
‘There was no way (he) did not know the stuff
was stolen. Yer man never had straight tools in his
life.’
As
republicanism stumbles on from one pseudo crisis to
another, which provide the cover for a leadership
trying to trade it in for positions of power, an adverse
effect is manifesting itself ever more worryingly.
As every principle of republicanism is being jettisoned,
an aimless standing army on the ground is being forced
to inhabit a dangerous moral vacuum. Sufficient evidence
emanating from working class nationalist areas suggests
that republicanism is now seriously afflicted by a
corrosive malaise. Tales relating to the IRA no longer
centre around armed struggle or military-political
operations and are more linked to the phenomenon of
social control, bullying and in some cases corruption
and outright criminality. As this shows little sign
of abating the likelihood increases that more histories
of republicanism are going to be written through the
prism of the present. The outward signs of the struggle’s
conclusion are going to be presented as evidence of
its causes and dynamic. Such a judgement would be
a travesty, casting the shadow of criminality over
a political conflict which saw so many die rather
than submit to a British policy of criminalisation.
Perhaps in a bid to avoid being wound up, grassroots
IRA volunteers, in a futile exercise to demonstrate
their own continuing relevance, are 'remaining active'.
But the type of activism they on occasion pursue is
arming both their own leadership and their adversaries
with ever more compelling arguments for putting the
organisation out to graze. IRA volunteers need to
ask themselves if they want the judgement of history
to conclude that there was no real distinction between
them and Group B - the armed wing of the Workers Party.
Wiser
counsel needs to prevail. Inseparable from the republican
leadership having accepted the British state’s
alternative to republicanism, the IRA stands poised
to be transformed out of all recognition and effectively
dissolved. IRA volunteers should allow that leadership
to take full culpability for trading in an army with
a genuine sense of its own legitimacy and history
rather than helping to convince most people that the
army had so lost its way that a lethal injection was
the only honourable thing the leadership could do.
But it is most likely too late for that. The needle
has entered - the long and final sleep is all that
awaits.
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