IRA Gives Itself a Punishment Beating

The McCartney sisters speak: Irish Independent

Finally, some evidence that refutes the charge that Gerry Adams and his inner circle run both Sinn Fein and the IRA.

Because how could the same mind that delivered the masterful coup d'theatre last Saturday, the imagery of bringing the McCartney sisters into the tent, be the PR-challenged bonehead who wrote the IRA statement last night - "The IRA representatives detailed [to the McCartney family] the outcome of the internal disciplinary proceedings thus far and stated in clear terms that the IRA was prepared to shoot the people directly involved in the killing of Robert McCartney."

The reaction to the offer, which the IRA obviously thought would be seen as offering justice by its own lights, is universally hostile, bar the IRA itself and its most demented apologists in Irish America (and even they look increasingly forlorn). Even Sinn Fein is embarassed.

Paula McCartney, Catherine McCartney, Robert's fiancee Bridgeen, and others were in Dublin yesterday meeting with Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell and female members of the Oireachtas (Parliament) for International Womens' Day. RTE Morning Ireland reports that a formal response from the McCartney sisters to the IRA statement is expected today.

Slugger O'Toole, having undergone its own peace process lately, was back out in front immediately leading coverage of the story yesterday, with better instant analysis than much of the reportage this morning that had the benefit of reflection.

Which is not to say there isn't some very good stuff this morning:

The Irish Examiner's Harry McGee asks, "does the IRA really believe that this skewed jungle justice will provide some kind of assistance or assert its bona fides? In fact, it shows that all the half-hints at challenges and hard choices and pain heard from leading SF representatives over the weekend was bunkum."

The Irish Times reports on its front page that Sinn Fein stood alone in having anything positive to say about the IRA statement. Michael McDowell, as expected, led reactions, calling it "bizarre" and from the "twilight zone" that is the Provisionals' "parallel moral universe".

Sinn Féin said the statement was positive because it instructed IRA members to go before the courts as the family wished. But the party's justice spokesman Gerry Kelly said last night that it would have been wrong for the IRA to have shot anyone. "It did not happen and I am glad it did not happen."

Jon Snow on Channel 4 News last night savaged Kelly, with none of his usual "Aren't I clever and morally superior" pose. This was Jon Snow with no self-consciousness, just unable to contain his outrage. Kelly later backpedalled even further.

Inside the Irish Times Gerry Moriarty asks, "What if the sisters and Bridgeen had said yes? Now there's a thought to make you shudder. Not that they would of course: the moral universe they inhabit is the same as the one populated by most of the rest of the island."

The McCartney sisters: Irish Times

In the Irish Independent, Alan Murray compares the McCartney case with a similar but forgotten one of six years ago:

More than six years ago, the IRA murdered another Belfast man, Andrew Kearney, in not dissimilar circumstances to the death of Robert McCartney. After getting the better of a similarly ranked IRA man in North Belfast in a one-to-one challenge fight outside a pub, Kearney was shot and left to bleed to death in his flat weeks later.
The IRA's structure and apparatus was mobilised, despite a renewed ceasefire, to permanently silence the brawny but unfortunate man who bettered an IRA so-called leader in a fight.
His mother, Maureen - a supporter of the 1981 hunger strikers - lobbied Gerry Adams for his killers to be brought to justice in some way, any way, but the 'Movement' wouldn't hear of it.
She and her family were trivialised and forgotten - just like her unfortunate son whose death mattered not to Sinn Fein or the two governments who were anxious to preserve the concept of unionists sharing power with nationalists, including the IRA's political wing. Wind the clock forward over six years to a cold January morning on the streets of Belfast where a decent man lies with his throat and body ripped open. Same again, the IRA leadership in the city said, just like Andrew Kearney, it will go
away.

The paper's David Quinn compares the IRA to heroin addicts - and suggests that the peace process was like "harm reduction", with criminality being methadone. He finishes by suggesting it's time to go cold turkey. Best metaphor of the day.

British opinion is unusually unanimous on the subject. Jon Snow took top trumps on telly, but in print, the troika of opinion leaders competed on skill of expression.

The Daily Telegraph: "Republicans would give back every penny of the £26 million stolen in last year's Northern Bank raid if they could wipe Mr McCartney's murder from the record. "

The Independent: "Sinn Fein and the IRA have been struggling desperately to get away from damaging associations with criminality, including the McCartney killing, the Belfast bank robbery and a large-scale money-laundering operation. Yet the IRA last night voluntarily provided irrefutable evidence of a violent mindset, just months after it had said it was prepared to go into "a new mode" which was taken as meaning an end to violence."

The Guardian initially thought it a joke: "Within minutes, it was clear that, on the contrary, it was in absolute earnest. If you want to know the difference between most people in these islands and the IRA, you need look no further than that."

The paper's leader finishes strong, pronouncing the message,

"a death sentence. It is a death sentence not to the killers themselves, whom the McCartney family - being normal people - want to see arrested, charged and punished in the proper way. It is a death sentence to the credibility of those who want to live in the IRA world and our world simultaneously. They must
choose. IRA rule or the rule of law. It is as simple and fundamental as that."

Maybe Saturday's performance wasn't the grand coup we thought it was. Maybe it was just brilliant improvisation in the face of the McCartney sisters planning to come down to the Ard Fheis anyway. Maybe this moral blindness is the reality of top republicans' thinking.

Or. Or Adams really isn't running things. And we should figure out who we do need to speak to. Because he's a dangerous irrelevance.

Later: Irish America starts to wake up?

Tags: ireland, Northern Ireland, irish, irishblogs, Sinn Fein, IRA, Robert McCartney