Sinn Féin And The Virus Of Violence

To begin with, this: there is a hell of a lot of hypocrisy in the air in relation to the condemnations of Sinn Fein that are currently being flung about like snuff at a wake. As an example, I have in mind those who were involved with the Workers’ Party before they became Democratic Left and subsequently merged with Labour.

We all know that the Workers’ Party was directly associated with the Official IRA. We also know that this organisation was involved in criminal activity on a significant scale. People who were there or thereabouts during that era would do well to keep a lid on it. The Official IRA saw nothing wrong with robbing banks, counterfeiting money, running protection rackets and brutalising and intimidating people. They also carried out their share of murders, if and when the belief was that the cause demanded it. All of that was reprehensible and wrong. It was as wrong then as it is now. But those involved would do well to remember that it is not so long ago that every detail has been forgotten.
That is worth bearing in mind, as Sinn Fein loiters at what is undoubtedly a critical crossroads in the development of the Republican movement. Go one way, and there is the possibility of a kind of redemption. Go the other and they remain in a pact with the devil.
That is not to overstate it. Over the past ten years in particular, there has been much to admire in the way that the Sinn Fein leadership has been striving to bring the party around to a commitment to democratic politics, and in doing so to move beyond the use of what is euphemistically called physical force. I personally do not doubt Gerry Adams’ intention in relation to this, nor Martin McGuinness’. But not everyone in Sinn Fein, and certainly not everyone in the IRA, shares that ambition.
Desperate things were done in desperate times. Some good people were implicated in them. But there was another side to the use of violence that the Republican movement has been slow to recognise, and even slower to address.
You could argue that it achieved a kind of nadir in the murder of Robert McCartney in Belfast recently. In an incident that calls the bona fides of those who have been attempting to involve Sinn Fein in the political process seriously into question, Robert McCartney’s throat was slit and he was left to die in the street. What’s more, the order went out that no one should speak of what they’d seen, that this was IRA business and that anyone who talked to the police or acted as a witness would themselves become a target.
And finally, the pub in which the incident took place was taken over in order to effect a forensic clean-up, so that there would be no evidence on which to hang a charge of murder. In all of this, we can see the latent thuggery and the assumption of being immune to the law of those involved in the IRA – and in Sinn Fein.
But to argue that this was a nadir is to besmirch all of those others who, in the past, have been victims of the rough justice of the IRA. Yes, this murder was transparently brutal and devoid of even a shred of justification. But exercising the power that the gun gives you, and using both actual violence and the threat of violence in this way, has been an essential stock-in-trade of the Republican movement over the past 25 years and more. All it took was for someone to be fingered by the right – or rather the wrong – person and they’d get a bullet through the kneecap if they were lucky, or the head if they were less so.
So much of what was done in the pursuit of taking the struggle for what Sinn Fein defines as Irish freedom to the British was deeply misguided, disproportionate and wrong. But it had the merit, on the face of it at least, of being driven by idealism, however twisted. That was not the case with the brutalisation of those deemed guilty of anti-social behaviour, with the kneecappings, punishment beatings and the occasional murders that were carried out in Dublin, Belfast, Derry and elsewhere.
I remember the way in which Josie Dwyer, a small-time drug dealer, who had contracted AIDS, was hunted down in the street near Dolphin’s Barn and beaten to death like a rabid dog. This brutal slaying was carried out in the name of the community, but the truth is (a) that Sinn Fein activists were involved and (b) that the party has specialised in the imposition of summary (in)justice on people who at the worst are guilty of petty crimes – and who in any event are entitled to the assumption of innocence until their guilt is proven.
There is no doubt that there is a sizeable cohort within the IRA, and within Sinn Fein, who have gained status from performing this vigilante role, and who bask in the associated pomp and notoriety. There is no doubt either that they have come to believe in their own brute power and their ability to end someone’s life with a mere hand gesture if the whim occurs to them.
Confronted with the reality of where all of this leads, in the form of the brutal slaying of Robert McCartney, Sinn Fein has remained in denial mode. True, Gerry Adams has responded by calling on those responsible to give themselves up. But what of all of the others, guilty of crimes of a similar kind? Should they not give themselves up too?
This is not one incident, which stands alone as an exceptional transgression by IRA men, fired up and in a drunken frenzy. No. This is an expression of the way in which the virus of violence has infected the party, and those who gravitated towards it. It is a definition of something rotten that is at the heart of Sinn Fein and what it has come to stand for.
There are good, decent, idealisitic people in the Sinn Fein party. I know this. But they can no longer turn a blind eye. They can no longer hide from the reality of where the culture of violence, and the association with the Provisional IRA, has dragged Sinn Fein.
There is only one acceptable way forward in relation to this. It is to stand the IRA down in any and all of its forms. It is to finally, unambiguously and definitively signal an end to the use of violence. It is to rule out vigilantism, taking the law into any individual’s hands or engaging in any other activity that smacks of bullying, intimidation, threats or law breaking.
Without the hidden extra that is provided by the gun, let the party stand before the Irish people north and south of the border and see how they fare when the votes are cast.
Alternatively, Sinn Fein can remain in its pact with the devil. It can allow the poison to fester for even longer.
Which is it to be?