Sunday Business Post
By Colm Heatley
19 November 2006
When Sinn Fein’s leadership became aware of the death threats against them from dissident republicans last week, it marked a fresh stage in the peace process.
When Sinn Fein’s leadership became aware of the death threats against them from dissident republicans last week, it marked a fresh stage in the peace process.
In the nine years since dissident republican groups first emerged, they have stayed clear of any public suggestion of attacking Sinn Fein members.
Although the Real IRA denied there was any intent to kill Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams or the party’s chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness - and claimed that Sinn Fein had ‘‘invented’’ the problem - in Belfast last week, the threat was being taken seriously.
In the context of a Sinn Fein deal on policing and the prospect of power-sharing next March, the murder warning is regarded as an attempt by dissidents to claim the mantle of ‘‘true republicans’’ and emasculate Sinn Fein.
A year after IRA weapons were decommissioned, dissident republicans are attempting to push Sinn Fein off the republican stage.
Just a year ago, the threat would have been inconceivable. A few years ago, it would have met with retribution.
The Real IRA and Continuity IRA still lack anything near a sustainable support base, but they are determined to exploit Sinn Fein’s recent internal difficulties and build on the ‘‘success’’ of their firebombing campaign, which has cost the North stg£25 million (€37 million) since the summer.
‘‘We want to exploit this to the full,” said a senior Real IRA source who is close to the group’s Derry-based leadership.
‘‘Adams and McGuinness are traitors, there is no way around that.
“Even in 1921, the Free Staters didn’t join up with the British war machine.
‘‘We want to put that message out to people and we are seeing defections from Sinn Fe¤ in and the Provos, but the difficulty for us is that you don’t know if they are being sent over to keep an eye on you or if they are genuine.
‘‘We didn’t make a threat against Adams, Kelly or McGuinness, but that isn’t to say that they are always going to be safe either.”
The threat, however, has angered grassroots republicans who regard the dissidents as puppets of the British security system, riddled with informers, offering no viable political alternative, but just meddling in the peace process at sensitive times.
Mainstream republicans have always had a low tolerance threshold for dissidents.
In October 2000, one of the Real IRA’s leaders in Belfast, Jo Jo O’Connor, was trying to assert himself in the west of the city, usurping mainstream republican dominance in west Belfast. He was shot dead by the IRA and significantly no attempt at retaliation was made by dissidents, aware of their vulnerability in republican areas.
The Real IRA feels that situation has changed. However, in reality, it is still marginalised and even its leaders acknowledge that their campaign can’t ext end beyond firebombs in the near future.
‘‘It’s really all we can do at the minute,” said a Real IRA leader.
‘‘The Brits have tampered with our explosive mix, so we can’t set off any bombs until we find a way around it.
‘‘There have been some bombs made, but most of them were abandoned because they are too unstable.
“We have plenty of AK-47s and plenty of ammunition for that, but not a huge amount else.”
The Real IRA claims to have smuggled weapons into the south last year, but says it is having difficulties bringing them north of the border.
‘‘Our strategy at the minute is to disrupt normal life, not to let the Brits and Sinn Fein have it all their own way, and to remind people that true republicans are still in existence offering armed resistance to partition and British rule,” said the Real IRA leader.
‘‘We know it can’t go back to how it was in the 1970s or even the 1980s, but we also believe it is important to continue the campaign, despite its limitations.”
The Real IRA laughs off suggestions that its firebombing campaign, which costs jobs and money, is alienating working-class nationalist communities. One feature of both the Real IRA and Continuity IRA campaign is their lack of attacks on either British Army bases or PSNI patrols.
A fortnight ago in Keady, south Armagh, a PSNI station was attacked with gunfire and a blast bomb, but that was the exception rather than the rule.
In almost a decade, neither the Real IRA nor the Continuity IRA has killed a member of the security forces. The Real IRA argues that if it did attack PSNI patrols, it would be ‘‘shut down’’ within days.
‘‘Maybe we’d get one or two in Belfast, a few in Derry and Tyrone, but after that they would be all over us; they’d be swamping the place,” said the senior Real IRA member.
However, such tactics harden suspicions among mainstream republicans that dissidents are controlled by Special Branch and MI5, who are content to allow a certain amount of low-level attacks go ahead to create political instability.
But the message from dissidents, enjoying their greatest period of success, is that they are not going away and they will continue to disrupt the peace process, which they regard as a sell-out.
Republicans continue to agonise over PSNI move
While news of the dissident threat against Sinn Fein’s leaders was circulating around the North, the party was in London making final submissions to the British government ahead of Thursday’s announcement on the St Andrew’s Agreement.
The past month has been one of the most turbulent in Sinn Fein’s recent history. Internal debates have centred on the policing issue and, according to senior party sources, emotions have run high.
Even the debates over decommissioning and the standing-down of the IRA caused less rancour among the grassroots than the current argument over whether Sinn Fein should endorse the PSNI and pledge to uphold law and order in the North.
‘‘People have brought a lot of emotion to the debate,” said one senior Sinn Fein source.
‘‘It is an emotive issue, but what we have been trying to emphasise is that it needs to be seen in a broader context.”
In any event, last Thursday’s announcement by the British government that a pledge to uphold law and order is to be taken after elections in the North on March 7 next year, have stalled the debate. In Belfast, Gerry Adams moved to reassure republicans that the pledges would only take place then.
The issue of policing is one of the most emotive for republicans, who perceive the police as the armed wing of unionism with an inherently sectarian agenda and deep roots with loyalist paramilitaries.
Nationalists argue that the policing problem pre-dates the Troubles and can be traced to the formation of the state.
Republicans also point to evidence that strongly implicates the PSNI - and its predecessor, the RUC - in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
For its part, the PSNI said it had made the break with the old RUC and said the Patten reforms had created an accountable police force with more inbuilt checks than any other in Europe.
The message which Sinn Fein’s leaders have to sell the grassroots is that ‘‘the political detectives’’, as it dubbed the PSNI at its last ard fheis, have changed, or at least that endorsing them will bring about change.
That task is not made any easier by the fact that the timetable for the transfer of policing powers to a revived Stormont Assembly, a key Sinn Fein demand, has been kept deliberately vague and won’t be reported on until 2008.
The British government also has plans to have MI5 take the lead security role in the North. Work has started on their new headquarters on the outskirts of east Belfast.
The Patten Report, which sought to reform the RUC as part of the Good Friday Agreement, recommended 175 changes to the police force to make it more accountable and more acceptable to nationalists.
However, less than half - about 75 - of those proposals were implemented.
One of the report’s authors, Professor Clifford Shearing, complained that Patten had been not ‘‘cherry-picked’’ but ‘‘gutted’’.
Sinn Fein, which always regarded Patten as a compromise, agreed and subsequently refused to take its place on the Policing Board or to endorse the PSNI.
However, over the past year Sinn Fein has slowly prepared its grassroots for a deal on policing, arguing at its ard fheis that it must go ‘‘toe to toe with the political detectives’’.
Gerry Kelly, Sinn Fein’s policing spokesman, has told republicans to prepare for ‘‘hard choices’’ in the future.
Since the PSNI came into existence, it has been required by law to recruit Catholics and Protestants on a 50/50 basis.
This has provoked anger from unionists.
Throughout the Troubles, the 13,000-strong RUC, was 94 per cent Protestant. That figure has dropped to around 80 per cent for the PSNI today.
The PSNI has also been scrutinised by the Police Ombudsman, who is in the final stages of preparing what is expected to be a critical report on police collusion with loyalists in Belfast in the mid-1990s.
Among other things, the oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth has been replaced with a more neutral oath.
The force has also been reduced in size from 13,000 members to around 7,500.
Sinn Fein has always argued that such changes are cosmetic and has criticised the SDLP for taking its seat on the Policing Board, which it describes as ‘‘toothless’’.
For Sinn Fein, the key test is whether it can wrest control of the PSNI from London and make it directly accountable to a Stormont Assembly. Unionists oppose that idea.
A final decision on policing is not imminent and, between now and the new year, hard political bargaining will take place.
Among other things, Sinn Fein wants assurances about MI5’s proposed new role in the North and a timetable for the transfer of policing powers.
Until then, it is unlikely to call an ard fheis to endorse the PSNI.