Sinn Féin unequivocal support for PSNI the real test
The International Monitoring Commission's report that the IRA (Provisional) continues to recruit members and train them in the use of firearms and explosives is disconcerting, even when allowance is made for the reliance that body has on intelligence from the PSNI, An Garda Síochána and British intelligence sources. Members of the Commission are capable of sifting information from those sources, weighing and assessing it. While Sinn Féin will remain scornful (they would, wouldn't they?), the rest of us must take note.
It is six weeks now since Gerry Adams invited the IRA to consider its reasons for existing. In our view, that appeal was of enormous significance whatever its motivation. In making such an appeal unconditionally he was throwing away a card Sinn Féin always carried in negotiation, whether it showed that card of not. The card being that if concessions were not made, the IRA might be displeased with unknowable consequences. No longer can Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin now offer the disbandment of the IRA in return for anything, they have raised the prospect of the disbandment of the IRA in return for nothing at all.
It is fairly certain that a person as cautious as Gerry Adams did not take this initiative had he not the expectation the IRA would respond favourably. That is not to say he was certain of a favourable outcome, rather that he was confident there would be such.
He certainly tested the waters within the IRA before going public. He showed his proposed statement to senior figures in the movement and took their advice to avoid asking explicitly for IRA disbandment. But the public was given to believe, certainly by Martin McGuinness, there would be an early substantive response to the initiative. There must be some concern with the delay.
We understand the IRA is debating the issue internally and there may be arrangements in place for what is called an IRA Convention to sanction a positive response to Gerry Adams. That certainly would take time to organise and convene, which might explain the holdup. But one way or another the response had better come soon and had better be favourable and had better then be followed through by complete and verifiable decommissioning and other signals that the IRA has gone away.
Realistically, those currently in the IRA are not all going to forsake at once that which they are good at. There will be a continuance of criminality on the part of those now or recently in the IRA, there may even be criminality in support of Sinn Féin's electoral endeavours.
Pat Rabbitte, Eamon Gilmore, Liz McManus, Prionsias de Rossa and Joe Sherlock now of the Labour Party but formerly of The Workers Party could tell us of the tortuous road involved in a paramilitary organisation going away entirely. The Workers Party was aligned with the Official IRA, which, we were told, went out of existence in 1972. But right into the 1980's and early 1990's (at least) remnants of the Official IRA remained in existence and engaged in a range of criminality, including murder, beatings, robberies and counterfeiting. And the Workers Party of which the above mentioned were members, benefited from the fruits of some of that criminality, whether they knew it at the time or not. Indeed the reason these broke with the Workers Party finally in 1992 was precisely because of unease with continued hankerings for paramilitarism on the part of a few remaining in the Workers Party.
And so too it will be with Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA. There will not be a clean break, expectation of that is unrealistic.
But what will matter most, by far, is whether Sinn Féin gets drawn into support for policing in Northern Ireland. If it does, then we can test their credibility by the absence of equivocation on their part in urging the entire community in Northern Ireland to cooperate fully with the PSNI in the detection of all illegality (a better word than "criminality" in those context because of the interpretation Sinn Féin places on the latter). Thus they will be expected to urge their own supporters and others to report the whereabouts of illegal weapons, to report all illegality, robbery, assaults, murders. Also, any recruitment for illegal organisations, illegal training in firearms and explosives. The lot.
If that happens, then the death-throe flailings of the IRA won't matter or should not matter. The way ahead for a lasting settlement will be cleared, even if it takes a while to get there.
Vincent Browne