If the object of the IRA's bellicose utterances, published earlier this week in An Phoblacht, is to strengthen the hand of its Sinn Fein doppelgangers at the Stormont talks, it is a serious miscalculation. There is hardly any surprise in what the IRA has had to say, given its inherent nature, as the SDLP's Mr Mark Durkan has pointed out. An organisation steeped in murder has no natural empathy with the concept of consent. And a body which exists only through the force of its weaponry is intrinsically unlikely to favour its own disarmament. What the IRA statement has done is to underscore the organic linkage between Sinn Fein and a paramilitary body whose principles are fascist and anti-democratic. Sinn Fein spokesmen like Martin McGuinness or Mitchel McLaughlin can parrot the SinnFein-is-not-the-IRA-and-the-IRA-is-not-SinnFein line for as long as they have breath. Nobody believes them. There is hardly a Garda or an RUC detective who has not seen their membership step in and step out of each others' boots as circumstances have required. There is not a politician or an official or a journalist who swallows this cant.
It is true that within this seamless garment of the Provisional movement there are variations of extremism and differing opinions on tactics and strategy. It may be that what is signified by the statement in An Phoblacht is a reminder by the hard-line militarists that they remain part of the calculus and that they have not, in Mr Gerry Adams's words, gone away. But Sinn Fein cannot be allowed to believe that it can gain acceptance within the talks process on the understanding that it speaks for the IRA while its counterparts within that organisation declare their own opt-out clause.
Recent weeks have witnessed a remarkable and courageous endeavour by the leadership of the Ulster Unionists to bring the party into the Stormont talks process. The IRA statement threatens to cut the ground out from Mr David Trimble, confirming the correctness of his critics within the UUP who argue that it will be disastrous to engage with Sinn Fein in any way. It may be that the IRA statement has scuttled Mr Trimble's endeavours and there will be some close to him who will argue today that now is the time to withdraw. The temptation to do so must be great. But he must stay the course. Notwithstanding Mr Gerry Adams's article in this newspaper today calling for all parties to be represented, for the UUP to walk away on Monday would be to give the IRA and Sinn Fein the best gift they could wish for - to be left on the high moral ground, claiming their democratic mandate, standing unchallenged within the walls of Stormont and purporting to seek a peaceful and agreed settlement. Far better that the unionists are there, confronting them and well-placed to tell the world the true nature of what they face across the table. Far from raising Sinn Fein's stock, An Phoblacht has reminded us all of the reality behind the neat suits, the smiling faces and the soft words.