A moment's silence for the Queen Mum, intoned one member of the IRA Army Council. God bless her, murmured another. Out of the depths we have cried to thee oh Lord, murmured a third. The IRA has good reason to be grateful to the Queen Mother, writes Kevin Myers.
Her death has effectively obscured its raid on the Special Branch headquarters in Castlereagh. Thus the IRA has pushed further on the parameters of a peace process which had anyway been tailor-made for its demands from the outset. It is a process in which there is no memory, in which there are no common rules, in which there is only selective consequence, and in which obvious whoppers are treated as universally accepted truths.
So the two governments in practice have accepted the right of terrorist organisations to exile people from Northern Ireland, even as those organisations demand the right of return for their own members. So naturally, the IRA involvement's in the largest armed robbery in Northern Ireland's history, on the very day that three members of the IRA Army Council were elected to Westminster, didn't even earn a day's suspension of Sinn Féin from the Executive.
Eamon Collins
Nor were there any repercussions for the murder of the former republican terrorist Eamon Collins, who was sadistically knifed to death by the IRA. His murder must have been authorised at the very highest level in the Republican movement, but it was nonetheless spared any consequence for it, either individually or corporately. And constitutional parties, by refusing to insist on any punishment for Sinn Féin for this murder, became passive accomplices to it.
But even "allowing" for such murders - I apostrophise the term advisedly: Sinn Féin-IRA seems to be allowed an annual ration of murders before it is called to account - there was something particularly craven and unprincipled about the lengths to which Alliance went to spare Sinn Féin-IRA the need for further decommissioning. Alliance members personated Unionists in order to re-elect David Trimble as Chief Minister, because in the absence of substantive decommissioning, he didn't have enough support from his own party. By bending already rigged rules to protect Sinn Féin-IRA from the consequences of their own deeds, Alliance provided yet another dreadful reminder of the moral degeneracy' the peace process has engendered in Irish and British politics.
The shameless falsehood, since defended with an odious sanctimony by Alliance representatives, not merely enabled Sinn Féin-IRA to get away with their token act of decommissioning, but it has also probably signed Alliance's death warrant, as next year's elections will almost certainly - and deservedly - show. And perhaps the worst consequence of the Alliance lie was that it further boosted Sinn Féin-IRA's belief in what they could get away with - which, it now seems, is anything.
House of Commons
And they're right. They can get away with whatever they want, and neither government in Dublin nor London will punish them: hence their arrogance simply knows no bounds. What fun Martin Ferris must have had when he joined Gerry Adams on the House of Commons terrace for afternoon tea last week. Did they joyfully discuss Gerry Adams's angry complaint to Tony Blair about the "British" involvement in the raid on Castlereagh police complex, during which vital intelligence documents were stolen?
I have heard of effrontery, but I have truly heard of nothing like this. For we now know that the raid which Gerry Adams was lecturing the British prime minister about was not by rogue elements of British intelligence but by the IRA. It was such a complex operation that it seems unlikely that it was not authorised by the Army Council of the IRA - of which Martin Ferris, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Pat Doherty have been named, in the House of Commons and in the Northern Ireland Assembly, as members.
So Gerry Adams was vigorously complaining to the British prime minister, to his face, and in his own office, that British soldiers had committed crimes which in fact had been perpetrated by the IRA, either with his consent, or even worse, without it, which must mean the IRA is now outside his control.
Go on. Do you know the words to describe the brass neck required for this kind of allegation, and the unbelievable nerve involved? What? You do? Well, good for you; because I bloody well don't.
Here, now, are the consequences of this raid. The stolen discs contain the names and addresses and personal details of most, if not all, the Northern Ireland Special Branch. The RUC/PSNI intelligence services are now hopelessly and irretrievably compromised; and very many vital informers within the IRA are also compromised, possibly even fatally.
Crown jewels
By this single stroke, the IRA has achieved a stunning coup of Bletchley Park proportions. The crown jewels of MI5, RUC Special Branch and Garda intelligence will be laid before the IRA, gem by gem, name by name, as the Castlereagh discs are decrypted by all those bright young computer students the IRA has recruited in the Republic in recent years. In other words, an utter catastrophe for the rule of law.
So, despite all that the peace process had given Sinn Féin-IRA, it was not enough. And who in Dublin, London or the NIO is now saying to Sinn Féin-IRA that this is a studied and irreversible rejection of the peace process? Who is warning the republican family that unless it finally abandons violence for good and all, it faces life on the iceberg? No one is. Sinn Féin-IRA don't take our democrats very seriously; and by Jove, I think they're absolutely right.