Taunter Media

After ten years in suspended animation, it seems the dead-enders of Irish republicanism are determined to make a comeback:

• Saturday two soldiers were killed accepting a pizza delivery in their barracks;
• Monday one police officer of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (the former RUC) was killed;
• Today forces are searching for an Omagh-sized bomb believed to have been built in the South and brought to the North.

The “peace process” has always has always depended on a bit of denial of reality.  For years the British government knew well that Sinn Fein and the IRA were one and the same (indeed, if they were not, what was the point of talking to Sinn Fein), but it allowed Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to run free.  In some sense – so the strategy went – they made themselves hostages; if the IRA had ever really hurt the British state, if the attacks on Downing Street or the Bournemouth Conference had hit home, the British would have been able to kill Adams and McGuinness in retaliation.  Knowing this should, at least in principle, have constrained the IRA from Al Qaeda-levels of depravity.

For its part, the IRA faced the problem that however much suffering it caused, it still did not have the support of the population in Northern Ireland.  If somehow it forced the British from power, it would only inherit an unleashed UDA, which would fight for its independence.  With no way to go forward, the challenge was how to move back without making fools of the IRA dead and without interrupting the extraordinarily lucrative criminal enterprises that had grown up to fund the republican movement.  Hence all the focus on not using the word “surrender”, all the emphasis on proclaiming that the battle had stopped with the IRA still in the field.

Unfortunately, as happened when the German Army surrendered with its forces still on French soil in 1918, there developed the myth that there was a sellout, or worse, that the command had no right to end the war.  As John O’Sullivan argues:

[T]he Real IRA and the Continuity IRA claim only the same “right” that McGuinness claimed 40 years ago when he joined the IRA. This right holds that in 1916 the Irish Nation — not actual Irish people now living nor even elected Irish governments, but some mystical Irish nation standing outside history — gave the IRA the duty of driving the Brits out of Ireland. That duty binds Irishmen until Ireland is united. Elected governments have no power to lift it from their shoulders.

Defeating the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA today depends in large part on discrediting the sacred nationalist myth that violence on behalf of Irish unity is mandated by history. Once that myth is removed, much follows: that the cause of Irish unity cannot justify murder; that such unity can be legitimately achieved only by democratic consent; and so it must be accepted that Irish unity, while it may be pursued, may never be achieved at all. Democratic politics can then proceed on a more stable basis.

At some point a revolutionary leader faces the limits of his revolt.  After taking power, he can continue along his path and upend society itself – the course of Mao and Pol Pot.  Or he can become a conservative force and risk being accused of betraying his former cause.  George Washington took this tack when he suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion (recognizing that the America Revolution was not particularly revolutionary; the ruling class of the Americas decided to cast off governance from Britain but otherwise did not want change).  David Ben-Gurion did this when he ordered an attack on a boat supplying weapons to his terrorist allies.

Right now the Sinn Fein/IRA folks are trying to play it down the middle.  McGuinness says:

I was a member of the IRA, but that war is over now. The people responsible for last night’s incident are clearly signaling that they want to resume or restart that war. Well, I deny their right to do that.

However, his denial of their “rights” misses a crucial point: he knows full well who they are.  How could he not – they represent a few dozen people who split off from a group he ran, taking with them weapons he owned, living in communities he controls.  If he picked up the phone and called the PSNI, they could be rolled up quickly.  If he really believes, as he has stated, that they are traitors, he could deal with them as the IRA has always dealt with its traitors.  But he isn’t prepared to make this move.  He would like to sit on the fence.  Well, good luck with that.  Until the republican movement is able to reestablish its monopoly of violence, Sinn Fein is an irrelevant group, unable to provide government services and unable to provide security.  Sheer self-interest will sooner or later require McGuinness to make a stand.  We shall see which way he goes.