Condemnation of dissidents may be necessary if Sinn Féin is to pull out votes, writes FIONNUALA O CONNOR
THAT DISSIDENT republicans may want to kill Martin McGuinness for calling them traitors, as he said last week, is only the latest problem for Sinn Féin. Condemning violence in the North long ago became a stylised affair, and there is bitter-sweetness for many in seeing republicans tangled in it now. The party’s leading figures spent the best years of their lives, after all, refusing to condemn or excusing the IRA and denouncing the most lavish condemners as hypocrites, apologists for the oppressors.
Words like “oppressor” have dropped out of fashion. “Condemn” is still difficult. In the dark reaches of the communal memory of Northern nationalism, every Sinn Féin utterance now is measured against past sins, of both omission and commission.
The trouble is that moral pressure and persuasion are the only weapons against the last brigade that today’s political republicans have. They thread their way through the intricacies of condemnation, since brute force is not an option.
It must be particularly frustrating that knee-cappings have become more common again, carried out by dissidents to considerable acclaim from communities plagued by increased drug dealing and other crime. Some splinter republicans are immersed in drugs themselves. “Punishing” other “social criminals” is a useful distraction.
Since the IRA now exist as a pure spirit only, they can no longer belt all round them when exasperated. Though other tests have been found for them, perhaps this truly is the ultimate proof of commitment to wholly democratic means. Today’s Sinn Féiners have to hope that the re-made police service can handle the Real IRA and other splinters, with as little recourse to strong-arm methods as themselves. But they also have to hope that their rhetoric hits the right notes and helps preserve, or revive, the old electoral magic. This is where condemnation comes in.
It sorted sheep from goats for decades, at least in some minds. Bombers killed and maimed, the media arrived, and a ritual began. If the IRA had admitted the bombing or were the likely perpetrators, the most senior available Sinn Féin representative was asked to condemn it. They routinely refused and blamed “those responsible for prolonging the conflict,” which clearly didn’t include the IRA. When a bombing killed many, it was often impossible to find a senior figure to face the cameras and microphones.
Unionists condemned the failure to condemn, and claimed the media went easy on Sinn Féin. When loyalists were responsible, there was no Sinn Féin equivalent to be put on the spot. Some unionist politicians volunteered condemnation, others equivocated.
A common unionist line was that loyalists were reacting to republican violence, but primarily unionists felt no responsibility for the loyalists – and security force and British official reaction for decades played down loyalist paramilitarism.
The UDA remained legal until 1992, by which time they had killed 348.
In the instances of violent death or injury caused by soldiers or police – much less frequent than by republicans and less than half as often as loyalists – Sinn Féin condemned, the SDLP criticised, unionists approved or excused.
Senior army and police officers, almost without exception, were asked questions with little heat or open scepticism.
In the worst years, single fatalities tended to meet routine reactions. Those bereaved often said their dead were swiftly forgotten.
In the aftermath of multiple atrocities something strange happened to communal responses. A wave of denunciation was followed, quite fast, by a backwash. Among unionists there was anger at ritual language.
Why wasn’t stronger action taken against republican terrorists, they asked, what use were strong words. Among nationalists, even among those who opposed the IRA and voted for the SDLP, unionist and British official reaction often sounded as though the IRA were to blame for the entire Troubles, exonerating unionism and Britain.
Harsh words lost value early through overuse, or partial use. Some liked to rant about “scum”, “thugs”, “animals”. To storm about mindless killers and psychopaths perhaps relieved distress, but despite the savagery of their crimes it was clear many killers were neither mindless, nor psychopathic.
Martin McGuinness called the dissidents “traitors”, won applause in the wider world, and has been careful not to use the word again.
Is that because too many of his own colleagues are sensitive to the charge that participation in a Stormont gridlocked by the DUP is a betrayal of the republican dead? Last weekend McGuinness traded down to “impostors” who are “impersonating” the IRA, and inserted a deft reminder that his “industrial wage” is the same as that of his driver and of Sinn Féin staff at Stormont.
Cynicism about politics among nationalists in particular, and hopelessness in the teeth of recession, could threaten the votes Sinn Féin needs to pull out next month, North and South. Condemnation of the dissident “micro-groups” may be necessary.
But it is no substitute for policies and practice that make sense in Stormont and the Dáil.