Back and forth

Two British soldiers were killed on Saturday night in the first republican attack on military personnel in Ireland since 1997. The attack on Massereene barracks in County Antrim may have had all of the technical hallmarks of old-fashioned, 1970s-style street confrontation but the establishment, now including Sinn Féin, seeks to exaggerate its significance.

Media coverage of the killings has been mawkish in tone. While the deaths are tragedies for the victims’ families, they are also being wrung for meaning that simply isn’t there. Commentators are lining-up to talk darkly of the threat to peace in the North of Ireland while journalists and politicians have piled-on to issue condemnation after condemnation.

British prime minister Gordon Brown, Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and leading DUP politicians such as Peter Robinson and Jeffrey Donaldson all came out to talk about the tragedy and how it would not be allowed to derail the settlement in Northern Ireland. Their outrage was only exceeded by that of un-elected talking heads. The Daily Mail shrieked about “IRA assassins” and “fanatical republican fundamentalists [...] responsible for an increasing number of shooting attacks on policemen”(1), while the Guardian editorialised that the assault was an attack on peace. (2) Former editor Peter Preston worried, “10 years on, is the process just a dark hole in which, malignities untended, the old monsters can still squirm and grow.” (3)

Few stood up to say the unsay-able: the killings were not just tragic, they were pointless and had no broader political significance. Instead, the death of two soldiers in a relatively small and opportunistic attack became the focus of endless tub-thumping.

Journalistic hyperbole should not be overlooked but there’s more to what is going on than that. For the authorities and opinion-formers the fatal attack is the perfect opportunity to use death and suffering to cement the Northern Ireland assembly in place. Gordon Brown gave the game away when, while visiting the scene of the attack, he said: “The political process is now unshakeable.” Fear about the tiny Real IRA (RIRA) splinter group and similar organisations can be blown-up to hysterical proportions.

Admittedly, Sinn Féin finds itself in a difficult position. The party is compelled to condemn the attack while at the same time bemoaning the presence of British troops on Irish soil. (4) This bizarre pantomime reaches its zenith in Sinn Féin exhortations that republican sympathisers should “grass-up” the perpetrators to the police. This is the inevitable logic of Sinn Féin’s retreat from republicanism: British troops are unwanted, but the other arms of the state are fine, especially those like the police that Sinn Féin has the possibility of controlling.

The party is not about to hand over the mantle of republicanism to another group, however. As such Sinn Féin must go on a political offensive. Writing in the Derry Journal, socialist commentator and former civil rights activist Eamon McCann noted that Sinn Féin has been referring to dissident groups as criminals: “If they are criminals, it’s not “touting” to provide the PSNI with information on their activities, has been the recent Sinn Fein line.” (5)

Sinn Féin has already been trying to ensure that it is seen as the one true voice of republicanism, this at the same time as finally accepting the apparatus of the British state in Northern Ireland. Happily for the party, their exhaustion of republicanism seems to have emptied the broader republican movement of meaning.

The dissidents tacitly admit support is low and their operational capacity is minute. Speaking to the Belfast newspaper, the Irish News, a spokesperson for a group calling itself Óglaigh na hÉireann, the traditional Irish name for both the IRA and the defence forces of the Republic of Ireland, said: “We will also not be leaving bombs in town centres, Irish republicanism couldn’t take another Omagh, nor would anyone want to revisit that period in history. As far as we are concerned our targets are those in the security forces.” (6)

Saying, “Every time Hugh Orde speaks these days he mentions Óglaigh na hÉireann, there is good reason for that, he knows we are a very real threat and he is right to be concerned,” the spokesperson’s comments sounded more like insecure braggadocio than anything else.

Unfortunately, it is a game that the all sides are happy to play: playing-up the dissident threat at every opportunity will undoubtedly help the political process, increasingly divorced from daily life, to keep on keeping on.

(1) The Real IRA and an atrocity just waiting to happen, Daily Mail, March 9, 2009
(2) Peace under attack, the Guardian, March 9, 2009
(3) Is the peace process derailed?, the Guardian, March 8, 2009
(4) Sinn Féin is walking a tightrope, the Guardian, March 9, 2009
(5) Who’s spinning whom?, March 8, 2009
(6) ‘Explosives experts recruited into ranks’, Irish News, February 16, 2009