The meeting and subsequent handshake between Martin McGuinness
and Queen Elizabeth II has been hailed in most quarters as an historic moment
and yet another stepping stone on the path to peace and reconciliation in
Ireland. Faced with a public seduced by the ‘feel good factor’ of the Northern
Ireland peace process, the media could not have found an easier story to sell.
As the BBC put it, ‘She is a monarch; he is a republican. She was born in a
palace; he grew up in the Bogside of Derry. She is the epitome of the British
establishment; he is a former IRA leader, the paramilitary group which killed
her cousin Lord Mountbatten’.
Despite this rhetoric, the reality is not quite the rosy picture
than devotees of the Peace Process might wish to paint. Ultimately, the
handshake was just the latest piece of political drama to be spawned by an
ongoing theatrical show. With an enthusiastic audience ready to lap up another
performance, it hardly needed to be sold. The media speculation over whether
Martin McGuinness would in fact meet with the Queen was as much theatre as the
handshake itself. No sensible person could have been in any doubt over whether
it would take place. As author and former IRA volunteer, Anthony McIntyre,
wryly put it, ‘British ministers meet British queens’. Spare us the
reconciliation routine. In fact, right-winger Iain Martin from the Daily
Telegraph was more accurate than most of the mainstream media when he declared that, if anything, the moment symbolised the ‘decommissioning of
Martin McGuinness’. Interestingly, he finds himself in agreement with
Republican dissidents like McIntyre, disillusioned with the peace process and
the direction in which Sinn Fein has taken the Republican movement.
There can be no doubt that
Northern Ireland has been transformed into a better place today than it was
before and during the Troubles. The leaders of the Provisional Republican
movement, Martin McGuinness and his colleague Gerry Adams (‘comrade’ is just so
out of touch with the times), were not wrong to make peace. However, their attempt
to revise history by claiming that the Provisional IRA’s campaign was justified
in order to bring about the status quo does not stand up to scrutiny. The IRA’s
stated aim throughout the conflict was to establish a 32 county democratic
socialist republic. They fell miserably short of this target. Ireland remains
divided and the Provisionals instead find themselves striding ever deeper into
the heart of the establishment which they once aimed to destroy.
Those Republican dissidents
who continue to support violence are of course heading down a blind alley.
Armed struggle has proven utterly fruitless in the pursuit of republican goals.
There is nothing more criminal than to prosecute an unwinnable war, but that is
exactly what the Provo leadership did for thirty years, at the expense of
thousands of lives. Not all dissidents, Anthony McIntyre being a good example, support
a return to war, but almost all have expressed disgust at the hypocrisy of the
Provo leadership. When McGuinness labels the current generation of Irish
Republican militants as ‘traitors’, ‘conflict junkies’ and ‘Neanderthals’, he effectively
condemns himself and criminalises all the IRA volunteers who fought, died and
went to prison during the armed campaign. This is after all the man who was
once labelled the ‘IRA godfather of godfathers; the man who made Derry ‘look
like it been bombed from the air’; the man who said that the war against
Britain would ‘always continue until
continue until freedom is achieved.’ The institutions of the Northern Irish
state which constituted part of the casus belli at the Provisionals’ birth in 1969
are still intact, so what other changes can justify retrospectively condoning the
Provisional campaign but condemning the dissident campaign now? It is true that
within the state there is now far greater equality between Catholics and
Protestants, but was that really worth a thirty year war in which thousands
were slaughtered?
To conclude that the
Provisional IRA campaign was unjustified is not to pass judgement on those IRA
volunteers who fought, died and went to prison for the cause of Irish freedom,
demonstrating bravery and commitment. They, who were demonised as
terrorists and psychopaths, are the ones who emerge from a dirty, stinking war
with their honour intact, unlike the ones who led and directed it but have
washed their hands of guilt. While the former face a catalogue of problems such
as lack of employment, readjusting to life outside of prison and rebuilding
shattered families, the latter are feted worldwide as peacemakers and great
statesmen, having swapped armalites for Armani suits. They are quite happy to
justify their ‘political support’ for the Provisional IRA campaign, yet they
will baulk at any suggestion that they were ever directly involved in it.
Martin McGuinness claims to have left the IRA in 1974 to become a purely
political activist, while Gerry Adams, former Belfast O.C. and Chief of Staff,
would still have us believe that he has never been in the IRA.
This lack of transparency is
the hallmark of Sinn Fein today; a party of paranoid control freaks, imbued
with a totalitarian mentality and unforgiving of even the mildest dissent. In a
recent interview, former Sinn Fein MLA, Billy Leonard, paints a truly Orwellian
picture of the contemporary Provisional Republican movement. He describes how ‘(Sinn
Fein) elected representatives didn't hold the real power, rather it was held by
a blend of ard chomhairle (Sinn Fein National Executive Committee) and (IRA) army
council members: everyone was meant to be equal but in classical terms some
were more equal than others.’ It was this Stalinist degree of control which
enabled Adams and McGuinness to perform their volte-face with the minimum of
dissent from within the movement.
Rather than accommodating
voices of dissent, Sinn Fein has collaborated with the British establishment to
clamp down on then. The fruits of the Peace Process have not been extended to
those who would dare to express an alternative opinion. Harassment,
intimidation, arrest, internment without trial and death in custody is the
order of the day for them instead. Marian Price is one such case in point; a
former IRA volunteer who bombed the Old Bailey at the age of nineteen in 1973,
she was force-fed while on hunger strike for 200 days and released in 1980,
weighing five stone and suffering from anorexia and tuberculosis. Today, despite serious health problems, she
once again languishes in prison, accused of encouraging support for the Real
IRA, after she held up a piece of paper for a masked man to read. Unlike Adams
and McGuinness however, there is no evidence that Marian Price has been
involved in committing, planning or directing any acts of violence since her release
from prison. Although she continues to justify dissident Republican violence,
that is not a crime. Her real ‘crime’ has been her vocal opposition to the
Peace Process and the direction in which Sinn Fein have taken the Republican
movement. Of course, one can suffer a worse fate. Take Joe O'Connor for example, a Real IRA member whose life ended in a hail of bullets in 2000. When Anthony McIntyre publicly accused the Provisional IRA of the murder, he and his pregnant wife incurred their wrath and ended up with their house being picketed by a Sinn Fein mob.
A significant recent development threatens to muddy waters further. A US court has ruled that researchers at the Boston College must hand over an interview conducted by Anthony McIntyre with former IRA member Dolours Price, sister of Marian, which may shed light on one of the most notorious killings of the Troubles, that of mother-of-ten Jean McConville who was murdered and 'disappeared' by the IRA in 1972 for acting as a British informer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18765606). Previously, interviews carried out with the late Brendan Hughes, once a close friend of Gerry Adams and a high ranking IRA member, by McIntyre for the Boston College Belfast Project, caused a stir when they were released as part of a documentary and book entitled 'Voices From the Grave'. In his interviews, Hughes claimed that the McConville was executed by an IRA squad labelled the 'unknowns' which was under the direct command of Gerry Adams. Price's testimony however promises to be more explosive, as it is believed that she was directly involved in the murder, having been the driver of the car which took McConville away to be executed. In addition to this, prosecutors are also demanding that interviews with seven more IRA volunteers are handed over. With the potential to incriminate not only Adams but other senior members of the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein, there are fears that the release of the tapes could turn the peace process upside down. Unsurprisingly, McIntyre has expressed grave concerns over potential retribution from his former colleagues in such an event.
In addition to this recent development, the paramilitary threat posed by the likes of the Real IRA and other dissident Republican shows no sign of subsiding. As unjustifiable as dissident
Republican violence is, anyone who thinks that the militants are going to go away any time
soon under current conditions in Northern Ireland are living in Cloud Cuckoo
Land. Sinn Fein's failure to deal honestly with the past and
their Stalinist intolerance of dissent have provided a fertile breeding ground for
such activity. The dissidents may be blind to the futility of violence, but they
certainly aren’t blind to the hypocrisy of Sinn Fein and how Republican ideals
have been sold short. Their actions serve as a reminder that Martin McGuinness
shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth II is just the latest episode in the ongoing
peace process show; a grand gesture that will not solve the underlying economic, social
and political problems that the people of Northern Ireland still face. Irish unity, republicanism
and socialism were meant to be the answers to these problems. All three have
been cast to the wayside as Sinn Fein march inexorably down the path of
convention and respectability. It was said that power corrupts and absolute
power corrupts absolutely. No truism could be more apt in the case of Sinn Fein
and the Provisional Republican Movement.
