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IRA Throws Toys From Pram (But Not Guns)
The IRA announced last night it has withdrawn its offer to put its weapons "beyond use."
In its propaganda sheet An Phoblacht, the terror group said that the British and Irish governments had "tried its patience to the limit" in recent weeks - a reference perhaps to UK and Irish government claims that the IRA was behind December's £26.5 million bank robbery.
The IRA statement continued, "Our initiatives have been attacked, devalued and dismissed by pro-unionist and anti-republican elements, including the British government. The Irish government have lent themselves to this...
"...the two governments are intent on changing the basis of the peace process. They claim that 'the obstacle now to a lasting and durable settlement is the continuing paramilitary and criminal activity of the IRA'. We reject this."
Most pundits outside the IRA's senior leadership see the statement as a tantrum by the terror group rather than a serious threat to the Northern Irish peace process. While Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams claimed that "enormous good work has been undone", Downing Street reiterated its position that the IRA remained the main stumbling block to agreement.
Prior to December's bank raid, it was rumoured that the IRA was close to an arms decommissioning deal: Yesterday's statement demonstrates that the terror group has some distance to go before it is willing to join the democratic process.
In all, it's been an embarrassing (if lucrative) couple of months for Irish republicans and their supporters. First the Belfast bank raid, believed by all but the terror group's apologists in Sinn Fein to be the work of the IRA. Then, in January, Interpol issued warrants for the arrest of three IRA men suspected of training FARC narcoterrorists in Colombia. The men were sentenced to 17-year prison terms but are feared to have fled the country. Despite a well-funded and vocal "Bring them home" campaign run by IRA supporters in Northern Ireland, the fugitives can now be arrested in 189 countries.
The heist and IRA links with the bloodthirsty FARC group damaged the Republican cause among its traditional supporters in Britain and the USA. However, several independent "interventions" haven't helped the "struggle" much either.
In January, a Scottish academic wrote in horror to the BBC to complain about a children's television presenter's declared affection for the red hand symbol. (EDIT: Note how the Guardian slavishly follows the republican line by unquestioningly describing the red hand as 'sectarian.')
Similarly easily-outraged unionists despaired that the traditional symbol of Ulster had become stigmatised by the forces of political correctness in the BBC. Cooler heads - on both sides of the Northern Irish community - pointed out that the red hand was certainly used as a symbol by protestant terror gangs but also by certainly-not-protestant Irish football teams. Besides, the Irish tricolour flag is painted on murals and flown by IRA supporters - should it be banned as a symbol of terror?
Much hilarity ensued, much of it at the expense of the hapless Scots academic. More serious was a gaffe by Irish president Mary McAleese, who appeared to compare Ulster protestants to Nazis.
Demonstrating the traditional Irish trait of installing Ireland's problems above and beyond those of everyone else in the world, ever, McAleese made the remarks before attending a ceremony commemorating the Holocaust, of all places.
Speaking of how the Nazis exploited generations of hatred for Jews, McAleese said that "They gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred, for example, of Catholics, in the same way that people give to their children an outrageous and irrational hatred of those who are of different colour and all of those things."
McAleese later apologised, but not before a barrage of criticism struck, and not only from outraged Unionists - Oliver Kamm was reminded of Conor Cruise O'Brien's remarks on previous comparisons of Irish suffering with attacks on Jews, this time by Ken Livingstone:
"(Livingstone's historical claim) leaves out the fact that the oppression of the Jews in history vastly exceeds that of the Irish, in duration, consistency and intensity, even if no account is taken of the Holocaust at all."
A strange upshot of these developments has been a rehabilitation in some quarters of the IRA's arch-enemy the Rev. Ian Paisley. Rev Paisley, believed in most quarters to be a bogeyman of bigotry, a throwback to early-seventies Ulster, is now the leader of Northern Ireland's largest unionist party, the DUP. Not least thanks to his moderate predecessor in the Official Unionist Party David Trimble's inability to persuade unionist voters that the IRA would fulfil its part of the peace process deal.
The IRA has relied on reports of Paisley's sectarian antics to win sympathy for its cause in Britain and Europe. Indeed, back in the 1980s a story circulated in Belfast that a senior Provo was asked why the terror group did not assassinate Paisley. "Why would we do that", the Provo is said to have replied, "He's the best publicity manager we have."
Much like a broken clock is right twice a day, some observers reckon that Paisley's lifelong refusal to make deals with the terrorists now looks like principled resistance, not least in the face of the IRA's continued campaign and what appears to be an orchestrated endeavour to demean Ulster unionism. Cue, late last year, a couple of almost-sympathetic portraits of Paisley in British newspapers.
Elections are due in Northern Ireland this spring. It is almost certain that the events of the past few months will strengthen support for Paisley's DUP. It remains to be seen how they will affect Sinn Fein's prospects.
UPDATE: Thanks to the reader who mailed to remind us of another IRA - Sinn Fein gaffe. In January, Sinn Fein spokesman Mitchell McLaughlin declared that he did not believe that the IRA's murder of catholic housewife Jean McConville was a crime.
30-year old mother of ten McConville was abducted from her home and murdered by IRA 'volunteers' in 1972, reportedly for coming to the aid of a dying British soldier.
McConville's murder was the best-known of a series of multiple murders carried out by the IRA in the early seventies. These catholic civilians - whose bodies were never returned to their families - became known as "the Disappeared."
McConville's remains were only found two years ago.
Mitchell McLaughlin now concedes that her murder was "wrong" though not a crime. Again, both communities in Northern Ireland - as well as many of the South's media and public figures - have rounded on the terror apologist.
It seems patience with Ireland's terrorists is shortening - and fast. Not before time.
