Have good one all! Slan agus beannachtai!

Is the PSNI really just "soldiers trying to keep our people down for standing up for what is right", as the President of New York's 36,000-strong police union said?

Sinn Fein`s Paul Butler has called for the resignation of the DUP Mayor of Lisburn after he displayed the Union Jack at a Saint Patrick`s event in Seattle.

Secondly is a rather strange determination by the Parades Commission in Kilkeel. Apparently it is non-offensive to parade in the morning but offensive to hold a return parade in the evening!

And lastly...Irish troops in the British Army should today receive fresh Shamrock`s for today`s celebrations.

Some quotes from John McCain's speech via UTV's report -

"Anyone, Irish, American or British who desires and works for the success of peace, freedom and justice must denounce in the strongest possible terms not only the cowards who murdered Robert McCartney but the IRA itself and any political organisation that would associate with them," he said.

"Nor should they tolerate the veiled threat to the McCartney sisters or to anyone else with the courage and decency to speak the truth about the IRA."[emphasis added]

Who could he mean?

In the Belfast Telegraph, Sean O'Driscoll also has a report on John McCain's speech including some of the strongest comments to date from the US -

"There is an endless debate about Sinn Fein and its ties to the IRA but what we all know for years is that there is no place in a democracy for a private army engaged in criminal activity. It is not enough for the Sinn Fein leadership to cut its ties to the IRA, the political leadership should call for the IRA to disarm, demobilise and disband once and for all," he said, to loud applause from the over 2,000 guests at the black-tie event.

The Sinn Fein table remained motionless as Senator McCain said the IRA was hurting the very people it claimed to protect.

"Stealing from banks and slaying men on the streets to settle personal grievances are not the acts of freedom fighters, they are the work of a small minority trying to hold back the forces of history and democracy and they hurt the very people for whom they claim to fight," he said. "Nobody can honestly claim today that the IRA are any better than an organised crime syndicate that steals and murders for its own members' personal interests. There is nothing republican about the Irish Republican Army."[emphasis added]

If, as the Washington Post reports, the American Ireland Fund president, Kingsley Aikins, is correct and This dinner, has become an "interesting barometer" of Irish American relations. "America's giving a hugely strong signal that this won't go on, can't be tolerated.".. there may be an even bigger storm ahead if that signal is not heeded.

Update - A transcript of Senator McCain's speech is available online here. (Thanks to our regular commenter Jimmy Sands)
And the quote I highlighted in the original post is more pointed than had been reported -

"Sinn Fein is faced today with a historic choice. There has been endless debate about Sinn Fein and its ties to the Irish Republican Party. I say let’s end the debate, the charges and countercharges, and recognize what we have known for years – that there is simply no place in a democracy for a private army engaged in illegal activity.

But the DUP stated it was not content with the commission, led by Canadian Army Gen. John de Chastelain, overseeing the process, as had occurred in stages before and had been agreed upon. The IRA then agreed to allow a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest to also confirm the decommissioning. Paisley and his DUP still would not agree, demanded photographs, stated the IRA must wear "sackcloths and ashes" in an act of humiliation, and walked away as the talks ended in failure.

There is no little mention of the McCartney case.

The reason decent Sinn Feiners - and it's useful to remind ourselves at this point that that’s the vast majority - must squirm in near-silence as their party is rubbished by an odious charlatan is that their leaders have been among Ireland's most enthusiastic colluders in this hypocrisy over recent years. Some of us have had the disturbing experience of being told by people 30 years our junior to, "For Christ's sake, grow up" when we've suggested that the jagged contradiction upon which they’d impaled themselves would do for Sinn Fein in the end.

He goes on:

On Tuesday, one dedicated supporter of the party remarked to me, "Jesus, that's the end of it," when word came that Congressman James Walsh of upstate New York had joined in demands that the IRA disband, and pronto. The reason Walsh's defection hit hard was that he has arguably been Sinn Fein's most doughty defender on Capitol Hill over the past decade. He is also one of Congress's most forthright advocates of US aggression abroad, assuring New York station WRVO some months back that not only had the illegal, lie-based invasion of Iraq been a splendid idea in itself, but that, "In time it will be seen as a model."

Above all, the Blair Government still wants to facilitate him. Senior Dublin government sources now openly declare that Mr Blair wanted to sideline the issue of IRA criminality throughout the negotiations which took up most of 2004. The message from Downing Street is still "business as usual". The Prime Minister, a very late convert to the concept of a DUP-Sinn Féin deal to revive the Good Friday Agreement, now believes that he can bring it about this autumn. And there are some in the Sinn Féin leadership and the DUP leadership who still share the Prime Minister's perspective that a deal cannot be ruled out.

It's a difference between the McCartney family's campaign and Sinn Féin's public statements that I've highlighted here before, and it was most evident in the difference in responses to the IRA statement which, ostensibly, detailed the findings of the IRA's own 'investigation'.

With Martin McGunness claiming that -

"I think the [IRA]statement does dispel absolutely the notion that the IRA would protect or cover up for those who perpetrated the murder of Robert McCartney."

While the McCartney family maintained their position -

It is the family`s position that up to 12 volunteers were involved in the cover-up, not the offence in Market Street where up to three were involved. However it was that cover-up which prevented those who murdered Robert from being brought to justice."

Senator Kennedy now appears to have endorsed the McCartney family position and, as the headline on the Guardian report puts it - "Kennedy backs sisters and accuses Sinn Féin of cover-up". Whether Sinn Féin responds directly to that particular comment by Senator Kennedy remains to be seen.

Interestingly, nothing was reported on Slugger the day Bert McCartney was killed, or the day after. At the time Sinn Fein were denying that the IRA had anything to do with the largest bank robbery in UK/European history. His death at the time seemed part of an all too daily occurance on the streets. Trying to extrapolate anything too quickly on a blog like Slugger invariably means you get it wrong.

Time passed. The BBC's cheif security correspondent had picked up rumbles of dissent within the IRA, but saw it primarily in the context of accusations of guilt for the bank robbery in the media.

The first direct reference was a nighttime vigil, at which his sister refused to be drawn on the politics of who had killed her brother. Is it heaven or hell within Sinn Fein? feelings running high in McCartney's home area of Short Strand.

Brian Feeney, previously sympathetic towards the Sinn Fein project, announces that widespread Nationalist support for the IRA's position, viz a viz retaining arms, is now over! There's a motion in Dail Eireann backed by government and most opposition parties calling on Republicans to end criminality.

The International Monitoring Commission warns Sinn Fein:

The leadership and rank and file of Sinn Féin need to make the choice between continued association with and support for PIRA criminality and the path of an exclusively democratic political party.

It's not until more than two weeks after the murder of their borther that the sisters start talking to the press (and here) accusing the IRA of protecting his killers. Then Mark Durkan accused both the IRA and Sinn Fein spokesmen of attempting to cover up and diffuse a police follow up action with an orchestrated riot. Speculation follows that the IRA had been intimidating witnesses.

The Belfast Telegraph welcomes Gerry Adams' statement that the McCartney killing was an unpardonable crime. The IRA followed suite with a condemnation of the killers. Nearly three weeks in, they cede the right for the PSNI to investigate the killing.

About this time, Arthur Miller dies.

According to one Sunday journalist in Dublin, the IRA's options are closing. And one senior Northern Irish nationalist warns Sinn Fein that it is playing dangerously on this and the bank robbery. The dead man's aunt agrees.

One southern Nationalist notes how the McCartney killing may denote a degradation in politics towards the purely personal. We wonder where it's all going to end? Editor and journalist Robin Livingstone argues that whatever the political damage, the party's vote will hold.

In the middle of all this Hunter S Thompson dies.

Sinn Fein's bona fides (long taken for granted in the larger part of the British and Irish press) begin to come come under scrutiny. The IRA announces it's held its own court marshall. Eamonn McCann a civil rights veteran compares it to a longstanding Irish nationalist grievance. Martin Kettle is the first to make an early mention of the Adams Arafat comparison. The Irish Foreign minister asks Sinn Fein a choose between politics and armed struggle.

As far as what went on inside and outside Magennis's Bar, the only testimony in the public domain is a detailed IRA statement. The family responded that the IRA were entitled to their own investigations but nothing would replace the transparency of court proceedings. By 10th March eleven men had been questioned, and the police had still not made any arrests. Despite Gerry Adams's appeal to members of his party to help, the sisters continued to assert that local intimidation is taking place.

Despite all of this controversy, the party's support appears to be solid. Though 44% of its core support want to see the IRA disband, and nearly 60% want it to disarm.

In the meantime (for all the media attention) as one of our commenters put it at the beginning: "all we have is a pub murder and a widow and orphans". To that might be added five very determined sisters.

Northern Ireland's Chief Constable has so far resisted all pressure to bring an early prosecution. In doing so Sinn Fein have accused him of playing politics with the McCartney case. However it pans out, this story is like to run a lot longer than one high profile visit to the US.

“Myself and other victims are absolutely disgusted over the stance the Democratic Unionists and Ulster Unionists have taken on Robert McCartney. Why can’t they look at things closer to home? They have failed the people who voted them in.”

Mr McCord, who has spoken out against the UVF men he insists were behind the merciless attack, praised the McCartney family’s tireless campaign.

“I totally support what the sisters are doing. I went to visit them at their house, I’ve been on the phone to them and I hope they get justice,” he insisted.

“But why have people within unionism stayed silent on the murders of our sons? The UVF has murdered something like 30 Protestant people since their so-called ceasefire.”

Even Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has publicly called for the McCartney killers to come forward and give statements to Mrs O’Loan’s office, he added.

“It seems to me that nationalist MPs have no qualms about fighting for their community but within unionism it’s the complete opposite. The stance they have taken, and their hypocrisy, is staggering.”

Brown follows in the inimitable footsteps of Charles Haughey by introducing free bus passes for pensioners while he has also doubled the level at which house buyers pay stamp duty to £120,000 sterling.

No drop in petrol prices so people will still head south to tank up while no drop in corporation tax means foreign investors will still favour the Irish Republic.

Brown also said there would be no further assessment of whether the UK should adopt the euro in this Budget while the 100% VAT refund for renovations to religious buildings has been extended by three years.

A good or bad budget for the people of Northern Ireland or does anyone actually care?

Catherine McCartney's earlier comments are also reported -

Earlier, Catherine McCartney said the family's US visit was aimed at dispelling any "romantic vision" that Americans may have of the IRA's "struggle".

"We are now dealing with criminal gangs who are using the cloak of romanticism around the IRA to murder people on the streets and walk away from it,"

RTE also has a report on the meeting. -

Senator Kennedy said the McCartney's presence in Washington sends a very powerful signal that it is time for the IRA to fully decommission, end all criminal activity and cease to exist as a paramilitary organisation.

Senator Clinton said she was honoured to meet the family who she said had taken an extraordinary step towards finding justice.

Earlier, the US special envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, said his country would do everything it could to support the family.

Mitchell Reiss was speaking after a 40-minute meeting with the family. He said he stood with all Americans in his admiration for courage and determination of the McCartney family to get justice.

Update - Audio, and (jumpy)video, clip of the the news conference held after the meeting.(Click on the Video link, then on the "Senator fiercely criticises IRA" link in the bottom right hand corner of console for the full news conference clip - Real Player 7:30mins)

Worth noting are the comments by Senator John McCain - "we say to anyone who has any ideas that the McCartney family are not doing the right thing or [would] discourage them from doing so - Don't". (Sounds like a warning to me.. around 3 mins in)

The news conference clip includes the comments from Senators Dodds and Hilary Clinton as well as Catherine McCartney.

Also a news report(click on Video link), which includes a brief response from Gerry Adams to the Senators' comments (Real Player 2:24mins)

Robert McCartney was not mentioned but Lynch said:

"Gerry, remember you are on the right track when all others are saying you are not, when the people you are fighting against are trying to get the masses to fight against you."

However, in a sign of the times there were no collection buckets going around for Sinn Fein, ostensibly "to avoid it being made into a contentious issue and a distraction to the necessary work of rebuilding the peace process."

He goes on to make a negative judgement on the Republican movements impact on local civil society:

The IRA and Sinn Fein have long ruled certain areas, protecting residents from hostile outside forces but controlling them with a ruthless discipline not unlike that wielded by the Communist Party in Fidel Castro's Cuba. The IRA is not just a paramilitary organization, but a way of life. Everything from child-care centers to local jobs to youthful misbehavior fall under its purview. Those who stray can be ostracized, beaten or even shot.

Theoretically addressing a future Home Secretary he argues:

He will have no excuse not to: section 2 (1) of the Bill clearly states that the powers can be used against any individual who ‘is or has been involved in terrorism-related activities’ in cases where the director of public prosecutions has advised ‘there is no reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution of the individual for terrorism-related activity’. That description fits the killers of Robert McCartney perfectly. For the Home Secretary to exercise the powers of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill against suspected Muslim terrorists but to refuse to do so against Irish terrorists would be pure racism.

He goes on to berate Tony Blair for treating Sinn Fein as though they represented every Republican in Northern Ireland:

We would far rather, of course, that Mr McCartney’s killers be brought to justice properly, through the courts. This would more likely be achieved were the government to support the growing revolt against the IRA by ordinary republicans. It could achieve this by ceasing to appease the terrorists. The effect of the peace process has been to sideline moderate republican political parties in favour of Sinn Fein. It is with them that all the deals have been done, them for whom the power-sharing arrangements have been made; Sinn Fein has been treated as if it were the sole representative of all Catholics in Northern Ireland. Nothing will change Mr Blair’s starry-eyed view of Gerry Adams and his henchmen: not even December’s £26 million bank robbery in which the IRA was implicated.

Blair and Ahern demonstrate the melancholy outcome of the appeasement that the peace process has become. In the end the appeaser becomes so committed to the process of appeasement that he cannot hold the aggressor to account for his aggression. So, naturally, his aggression continues. Unless Blair and Ahern learn courage from the McCartney women and firmness from Bush, the Addams Family will continue to frighten, maim and murder for another decade or two.

In an elegant signoff he says:

It is difficult to share power with people when you do not know whether remarks such as "I really don't think you should pass this bill" should be interpreted as useful political input or a threat to your kneecaps.

Initially, the IRA and its political associates disclaimed any role in or knowledge of McCartney's killing, even as it quietly promised the usual treatment (death) for any of the 70 or so people in the bar who might have been thinking about speaking up. It has since developed that a Sinn Fein candidate was in the pub, although she initially denied it and says she saw nothing.

When mounting evidence made its denials of involvement untenable, the IRA, reverting to form, calmly offered to murder at least some of its members who had taken part. Even after years of IRA's violent outrages, politicians in Britain and Ireland were left virtually speechless. The reaction has properly washed across the Atlantic.

It notes Adams' warning in New York that the IRA should be allowed a dignified exit:

Adams, with his own long history of association with the IRA, can harbor any fantasy he likes about how the murderous gang should depart — just so long as it goes quickly. That point should be made clear to Adams in a private meeting still scheduled for today at the State Department with Mitchell B. Reiss, Bush's special envoy on Northern Ireland. The rationale for the meeting is that lines of communication need to remain open. Fair enough. So long as Adams gets the right message to take home and acts on it once he is there.

The Times has picked up strongly on the theme of Sinn Fein's finances, unsurprisingly, claiming the party has "murky financial arrangements".

The Times claims that "the British Government has set a deadline of the end of this month for a plan to stop the party from benefiting from millions of pounds of foreign donations".

Michael Evans and Helen Rumbelow report:

Paul Murphy, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, last month extended the special exemption that allows Sinn Fein and other parties in the province to raise money in the US for another two years.

This allowed Sinn Fein to continue to raise funds in America, which security sources said had netted them between £15 million and £20 million since the ban on such activities had been lifted by President Clinton in March 1995.

Over at sicNotes, Richard Delevan takes a hard line:

If it really wants to go the whole hog, the Bush Administration can close the Friends of Sinn Fein office (the US fundraising/PR arm that has to register as a "Foreign Agent") and shut down that money pipeline. It can make it illegal for US citizens to donate money to Sinn Fein. But the Brits will save them the trouble by extending the ban on foreign funding to Sinn Fein - perhaps with an exception for the Republic.

However, as a US official said a few months ago, money can flow like water - if there are obstacles put in front of it, it flows around them to get to the same point. The British move only comes after their hand was essentially forced - which makes their recent decision to allow the NI exemption on foreign fundraising to continue look quite silly .

A BBC report also claimed the IRA was be behind the smuggling of millions of pounds of contraband across the Irish Sea in co-operation with UK gangsters (audio).

The sisters and fiancee of Mr McCartney will present a dossier of his killing to Mr Bush tomorrow when they meet him in the White House. It will chart events leading up to his murder in a Belfast bar six weeks ago, and name the men who killed him. It details everything that has happened since January 30, the events leading to Robert's murder, the people involved and events since," Ms [Cahterine] McCartney said before flying to Washington yesterday.

The Guardian has a copy of the McCartneys' Washington itinerary - they'll be at the Irish Embassy on St Patricks night along with Gerry Adams.

His analysis is harsh:

Mr Adams has every reason to feel aggrieved. He has laboured long, if not hard, to bring Irish republicanism into the political fold. His conversion from terrorist to ballot box politician has been hailed by London, Dublin and Washington. The ostensible reason for this week’s snub was no more than a bank raid, of which Mr Adams appears to have known nothing, and a dime-a-dozen killing in the Short Strand enclave of Belfast. What is new?

He reckons this is just one in a long line of occasions when the outside world has tried to interfer with Northern Ireland:

Outsiders have been meddling in Northern Ireland since the start of the present troubles 35 years ago. It got nowhere. Presidents Clinton and Bush have visited the Province and been photographed. Emissaries such as George Mitchell and Richard Haass have come and gone. Nobel prizes have been distributed. The de facto "ceasefire" negotiated by the Major Government has held, but most observers felt that by the early Nineties the lust for violence was waning.

Though in condemning Blair, Bush and dozens of other outsiders, he doesn't let the IRA off the hook:

Paramilitary bosses were ageing and their members grown rich on cross-border smuggling, robbery and money laundering. As charted last month in The Times, the IRA is regarded by MI5 as "one of the largest and richest organised gangs in Europe".

Extract from an Address by Dermot Ahern TD, Minister for Foreign Affairs, 'Ireland: Adapting for Success in a Changing World', Harvard University

Members of the Center for European Studies, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Weatherhead School for International Affairs, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to have the chance to say some words in such distinguished company. It is a special pleasure to be introduced by an eminent Irish scholar, Louise Richardson, whose contribution to the study of terrorism is of immediate relevance to our world today.

The Consul-General advises me that this year the Centre for European Studies is marking the centenary of Jean-Paul Sartre. If Sartre's most famous words - "Hell is other people"- were true, then the life of a Foreign Minister, which is all about making human connections, would be grim indeed. But as a practising politician I would prefer to take inspiration from something else Sartre said: "Our importance comes from the decisions we make."

This is a year of potentially crucial decisions – about the Irish peace process, about the future of the European Union, about the reform of the United Nations. As John F. Kennedy said on accepting his party's Presidential nomination, "the times demand invention, innovation, imagination, decision."

In a moment I will say something about each of these challenges. But first, a word about why I am here.

As you can probably guess, the timing of my visit to the United States is not entirely accidental. St Patrick's Day has been marked on both sides of the Atlantic for many years. From one angle, it seems like a fixed point in a fast-moving world. But in recent years, as our sense of what it is to be Irish has developed, St Patrick's Day has been celebrated in new ways in Ireland and in new places all around the globe.

This blend of change and continuity also marks how Ireland relates to the world. I won't rehearse in this setting how dramatically the world has changed in the past ten or fifteen years. But Ireland too has changed remarkably in that time. I don't know how many of you have been there recently. But the extent and speed of the transformation have been staggering.

Not long ago, we were one of the European Union's poorer member states. Now we are one of the richest.

We were a country of dole queues. Now we are close to full employment.

We were a country of emigrants. Now, as our population rises to levels not seen in over a century, we are witnessing major net immigration.

In the last thirty years, the number of third-level students has risen five-fold.

Agriculture was once the largest employer and the greatest source of national wealth. Still important, it now lags well behind both services and manufacturing. And we are now mostly an urban – or even suburban – people.

The Catholic Church, though still profoundly important and central for very many of our people, has gone through a deeply traumatic period.

Though there are still major problems to be resolved, the paramilitary violence which scarred the northern part of our island for 25 years has largely ended. And our relations with Britain have never been warmer or more balanced.

These changes are for the most part welcome and exciting. But they also bring with them fresh challenges. In the field of foreign policy, that challenge is two-fold. First of all, we need to re-examine our basic principles and assumptions. And, secondly, we need to recognise that others now see us differently – some may expect more from us, others may be afraid that as we change we will lose sight of some of our core values.

I believe that Ireland's external interests have not in fact changed significantly in their essentials. The broad directions of the past several decades remain largely the right ones.

If the fundamentals of our foreign policy are sound, the question is how to translate guiding principles into meaningful and constructive action.

Northern Ireland

Looking first closest to home, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was the collective work of courageous and visionary men and women – unionist and nationalist, British and Irish - who refused to accept that the Northern Ireland problem was impervious to political resolution. Instead, they set about designing a template for a new beginning. They committed themselves to a fresh start working on the basis of partnership, equality and mutual respect. The Agreement was overwhelmingly endorsed in referendums in both parts of the island.

However, on the day the Good Friday Agreement negotiations ended in 1998, their chair, Senator George Mitchell, warned that it would be a greater challenge to implement the Agreement than it was to negotiate it. He was certainly right. Considerable challenges still remain – the most pressing of which is the need to bring all forms of paramilitary and criminal activity to a definitive end.

However, in focusing on the challenges of the remaining journey, we should also acknowledge the great distance we have already covered. By any measure, life in Northern Ireland has been positively transformed as a result of the peace process over the last decade. Since the Good Friday Agreement, considerable progress has been made in normalising many difficult issues. In particular, the positive agendas of change in regard to policing and criminal justice have been substantially advanced.

A conflict that was previously regarded as zero-sum for either side can now be seen as win-win for both. However, we must not rest content until the vision of the Good Friday Agreement is fully achieved. That will not happen until all sides fully live up to their commitments. 10 years after the ceasefires of 1994 and nearly 7 years after the conclusion of the Agreement itself, the political process can no longer tolerate a dual- track strategy of political engagement linked to paramilitary muscle. This destabilising ambivalence is not what the people of Ireland voted for in 1998.

At the core of the Good Friday Agreement are equality and partnership. Equality requires all democrats to engage with each other armed only with the strength of their mandates and the persuasion of their arguments. Those who are associated with force, the threat of force or related criminality are in defiance of this basic principle of equality. Similarly, partnership requires all concerned to feel comfortable and secure about the activities and intentions of their prospective partners. Paramilitarism and criminality corrode the trust and confidence necessary to sustain partnership.

Making peace is not an event. It is a process. However, if it is to achieve the objectives of partnership, equality and mutual respect set out in the Agreement, that process must have an end-point. It is now time to complete the work that was so courageously started on Good Friday, 1998.

The obligation rests on all sides. This includes the unionists, who will need to demonstrate that they genuinely and fully embrace partnership politics and will constructively engage in all of the institutions of the Agreement once they are re-established. Let me also be clear about the determination of the Irish Government, in partnership with the British Government, to do all it can to move to full and definitive implementation of the Agreement. We recognise the democratic mandate of Sinn Féin, and we know that it is an indispensable partner in inclusive institutions. A sustainable settlement which does not have the support and the engagement of parties representing majorities in both communities is not possible. So we do not want to exclude Sinn Féin. Far from it.

But Sinn Féin itself has to face facts. And the reality is that it is in a crisis of its own making. To try to blame others – to claim that this comes out of partisan political rivalry – is simply nonsense. The main onus at the moment is on the Provisional movement. If it wants to start to rebuild trust it must take the first bold steps. We will, of course, do what we can to help. But it has to take a hard look at itself, and ask itself where it is going and how it has to change. Those in the Provisional movement who wish to be part of the inclusive institutions must make the difficult decisions necessary to bring all forms of paramilitary and criminal activity to a definitive end.

There is a recognition in Sinn Féin that the IRA must sooner or later wither away. I say that it has to happen sooner, in the interests not just of political progress but of the communities it purports to serve and which have been given a new voice by the heroic McCartney sisters. The Irish Government, as always, will not be found wanting as we try to take the process forward. But it is now time to decide, and it is now, emphatically, time to move on.

Thanks to Duncan Shipley Dalton, who now enjoying his new status as a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard.

He has one interesting quotation I'd not spotted before:

"...the IRA-man, inebriate and sometime wit Brendan Behan (a kind of Irish Dylan Thomas with explosives) could observe that he "really could not see why two small islands off the coast of Europe required four capitals". "One is enough," he said, "and we should live off the better one, which is in England."

The biggest problem with Moloney's theory is that it presumes Adams will remain in control of events. It's one thing to manipulate your allies into doing your bidding when they are members of a famously disciplined organization like the IRA. But democracies are different. They're messy and unpredictable. Adams could hardly have predicted McCartney's grisly murder outside Magennis's Bar, and he could not have foreseen the popular anger over the IRA's cover-up. As anti-Sinn Fein momentum builds, it's looking more and more like things are spinning out of control for the master tactician. If Adams brought the peace process to this tenuous point thinking it would inevitably lead to IRA disarmament, one can only hope that at least that part of his master plan remains on track.

And thanks to Slate and Scott for the links to Slugger!

That does not mean that the current crisis does not have the potential to cause the movement serious damage.

The bad headlines around the world are not good to read. It puts limits on Sinn Fein's provenance as a legitimate political party. It's certainly not good for a domestic audience that's become accustomed to much richer pickings in the post ceasefire world. But, so far as it is possible to see, it has not actually damaged the party's standing with it's own substantial support.

So far the party has ridden a viciously turning tide reasonably well. Much to the consternation of its many critics, it clearly has a deep well of good will to draw upon. The Northern Bank robbery (if indeed it was an IRA operation) has a high degree of tolerance on the lines of the old Robin Hood myth. The McCartney case is different.

In the same way we know nothing definate about the bank robbery, we have nothing definative in the public domain about the events that night. The one account we have is an IRA statement that recounts all the lethal events as having happened outside the bar.

There is currently no evidence available directly from Brendan Devine although, significantly, the McCartney sisters claim that his throat was cut inside the bar. And to be fair, the IRA's statement doesn't directly rule it out: "...after the initial melee in Magennis's bar, a crowd spilled out onto the street and Robert McCartney, Brendan Devine and two other men were pursued into Market Street".

The details of exactly who was in Magennis's Bar is emerging on a painfully slow drip feed, which is not entirely under the control of the Republican movement. With two former candidates and a former Belfast City Councillor, now placed inside the bar, it appears this killing is far from a simple military matter.

Martin McGuinness's warning may have simply been a legitimate response to an electoral threat should one or more of the McCartneys decide to stand in the coming council elections. In these circumstances, it is (and has been) open to other interpretations. It may not be the best way to handle that threat in the context of a worsening PR situation.

All the information we have come across suggests that both the party and the IRA have told witnesses to testify, to the police if necessary. But the longer the ambiguity hangs over this case, the more damaging it is likely to be for the credibility of the whole movement.

In the meantime Ian Paisley's notorious sack cloth and ashes remark seems less and less like an unreasonable pre-condition and more and more like an accute form of prescience.

By Alex Kane

It has been an interesting week for opinion polls. One in The Times last Monday indicated that almost 80 per cent of respondents disapproved of negative campaigning and believed that the Conservative and Labour parties spent more time "attacking each other rather than explaining their policies".

The DUP and UUP would be well advised to take note of this level of disapproval, for at the moment they seem to do little more than cut and gut each other at every opportunity. Day in and day out they accuse each other of hypocrisy or treachery, rolling out the same old arguments and clichés in order to make exactly the same points. The contents of the letters pages and press releases are stuffed with the same phrases and ya-boo-suckery, as each side tries to have the last word.

And to what end? It is quite clear that the pro-Union electorate are switching off in droves, with each election indicating a downturn in registration and voting. People are so sick of the Punch and Judy knockabout which passes for political debate within unionism, that they are voting with their backsides and refusing to make the trip to the ballot box.

Are there not more important issues for unionism to concern itself with other than incessant score settling and "slagging" off? The DUP's only goal appears to be the destruction of the Ulster Unionists; and the UUP, meanwhile, fearing electoral meltdown, is trying to outflank Dr Paisley in the hardliner stakes. But neither approach will reach out to, let alone win over, the growing numbers who have tuned out of the babble and bombast.

Another opinion poll this week put the Ulster Unionists at 16 per cent in terms of voting intentions at the next election. This figure suggests the pitter-patter of the Death Watch beetle crunching its way towards Cunningham House. It is the lowest figure the party has recorded in an opinion poll and it is also the first time it has found itself in fourth position. Most worryingly of all, though, the figure comes at a time when the party has no public split, and when its PR wing has been targeting hundreds of thousands of potential voters in an ongoing leaflet campaign.

One can argue about the reliability and accuracy of opinion polls (although the company which conducted this one has a good track record in these matters), but it would be a very cavalier strategist who would pretend that there isn't a problem for the UUP. Putting it bluntly, there are too many voters wondering if it is worth voting for a party led by David Trimble.

Only he can provide the answer to that question, for whether he likes it or not, the fate of the party now rests upon the public's very personal response to his leadership and legacy. Putting it even more bluntly, the UUP is not going to be judged on leaflets, manifestos or campaign gimmicks; it is going to be judged on Trimble and Trimble alone. Only time, and the contents of the ballot box, will tell if he remains the electoral asset he was in 1998.

Yet another poll found that 72 per cent of the public thought that political parties and the media exploited certain individual cases for party advantage, rather than because they cared about the individual. I sense that much the same thing is happening to the family of Robert McCartney. Governments and parties are falling over themselves to heap praise upon the courage of his partner and sisters, but I suspect they are doing it simply to wrongfoot Sinn Fein. Once the election is over, however, and the whiff of fresh talks is in the air, I have little doubt but that the media, the governments and the parties will quietly drop the family and pick up with Mr Adams exactly where they left off last December.

The ultimate opinion poll, obviously, is an election. The fact that so many people don’t now bother to vote is a clear sign that political parties have lost touch with public opinion. And, sad to say, I think that six out of ten of that public don’t actually give a damn about the political parties, either. That’s bad news for democracy, but good news for the dictatorial cabals who now run those parties. Of course, that’s just my opinion!

First published in the Newsletter on Saturday 12th March 2005

RTE reported:

Gardaí are searching for a gang of armed and masked men who kidnapped a Dublin family, held them overnight and robbed more than €2 million from a security van.

Gardaí are also trying to establish whether this was the work of a criminal gang or a subversive organisation.

UTV Internet reports former US Envoy Richard Haass saying:

"The risk is that over time they will suffer the fate of people such as Yasser Arafat of being ostracised," he said. "Gerry Adams does not want to become Yasser Arafat, and decide between the olive branch and the gun."

Mr Haass said that time was running out, and that the snub from the White House was a clear message that the US had zero tolerance for groups using force for political ends.

The BBC reported that Gerry Adams told the invited audience at a New York event attended by Richard Haass that the Sinn Fein leadership was determined to see the political process succeed.

"I haven't heard anyone saying we want to go back to conflict - that's the key," he said.

He said that despite any political "jockeying" or "nervousness", the "strength of the process is in the popular will of the people back home and the Sinn Fein leadership is totally wedded to making it a success".

But when? Haass seems prepared to wait:

"No-one as yet is ruling out dealing with Sinn Fein, but with the passage of months or even years, that could very well happen," he said.

"Mr Adams and, more broadly, the republican movement, has to make the choice 100% to play by democratic rules, to play a political game only."

While Haass will be accused of hypocrisy by many local Irish republicans, how will the message - likely to repeated over and over - be received in America, and more specifically, Irish America?

Paula McCartney, sister of the murder victim, said the other SF candidate, Caara Groogan, had a duty to present any evidence she may have before a court. Given that her statement appears not to have even reached the Police Ombudsman yet, what use is SF's 'help' right now, except to itself alone?

"The fact that it has been six weeks and she is only putting that statement in now, with the full knowledge that a solicitor is an inadequate way of gathering knowledge," she said.

Ms McCartney added that the fact Miss Groogan had waited so long to come forward had led the family to wonder about how many Sinn Fein or IRA members were in the bar on the night of the murder.

The sound on my PC appears to have given up, but I'm told that there's an interview by the BBC's Gareth Gordon here (for today anyway) with one of the McCartney sisters that's worth listening to. It's 32 minutes into the show.

Under the law, terrorist activity is defined as:
Seriously intimidating a population,
Unduly compelling a government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing an act.
Seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a state or an international organisation.

The HRC believes the definition adopted is impermissibly wide and runs the risk of categorising groups opposing dictatorial or oppressive regimes, anti-globalisation, anti-war or environmental protestors, or even militant trade unionists, as terrorists.

Maybe this is the objective.

Transcript of O'Doherty's speech:

Moments of sudden and overwhelming change occur in life. We may not expect them yet often after they have happened we can look back and see the progress towards them and wonder how anyone including ourselves could have failed to see in advance that they were inevitable.

Yet we live our lives by pushing aside the contradictions and the difficulties until they can be ignored no longer and then we write our history as a history of contradiction and difficulty rather than as a history of denial.

Divorce lawyers know this better than anybody. They say you never really know somebody until you have divorced them. Estranged partners attest that all the time, that they were taken by surprise. She never seemed to mind me having a drink then one day I came home and all my clothes were on the doorstep.

You live with somebody and you ignore the bad temper and the drinking and the smelly feet, treating them as lapses from basic civil decency, until one day all you can see is the anger and drunkenness and the pollution of your bed. The offensive one may be genuinely surprised that you have flipped but there is no talking you out of it this time. What enrages you now is not last night's bad behaviour but a lifetime of bad behaviour and the marriage is over.

There is nothing more pathetic than those who plead for the offender, as if there has only been one offence, except perhaps those who insist on the innocence of the offender when it is clear that the offence was entirely in character and was only going to be repeated again if forgiven again.

That is where we are now with the Provisional movement. The flip has happened and it cannot be reversed and those who conduct their politics on the basis of the thinking that preceded the flip will be annihilated.

Sinn Fein in January urging Bertie Ahern to get back into talks to see if that one little hurdle could be resolved - the DUP's unreasonable demand for a humiliating photograph of weapons decommissioning - was as pathetic as the drunken husband going back to the house next day, with his clothes in bin bags, to reassure his wife that he had come home late the night before because he was out buying her a birthday present.

The rest of us look back on all the efforts to get Sinn Fein into a political deal and feel simply that we have been humiliated, that we were just too blind to see the obvious, that they never wanted a deal. And that fresh conviction accords so well with the facts as we know them that we could not be talked out of it. The Northern Bank robbery did not set Sinn Fein back just one round of the negotiating process. There is no conceivable possibility that they could acknowledge it, apologise for it and pick up where they left off before it. What has been damaged, indeed convincingly refuted, is their entire credibility as serious players in a quest for democratic resolution.

That is not to say that others will not try to make it work. Tony Blair is very much a schemer out of the same mould as Gerry Adams and probably understands Gerry Adams a lot better than you or I do. He may well try, like some deft and charming poker player, to rope us back into another round and to assure us that he will protect us from the cheater. Be extremely careful of that, because those who go into another game may lose the next game and achieve nothing but taking the blame on themselves for the next breakdown.

Bertie Ahern seriously believed last December that the DUP's requirement of a photographing of decommissioning was the only obstacle to the completion of a deal. One cannot be overcautious of someone as naive as that.

1What went wrong?

What went wrong was that the peace process was regarded as a project outside the rules of ordinary politics. It was regarded as a quasi religious project. People who knew better encouraged us to believe that a spiritual transformation was occurring inside Northern Ireland and that people who had been brutal and manipulative leaders of ethnic cults and death squads were undergoing a change of heart.

Do you remember the Northern Ireland office ads: a man of 50 comes out of prison, reflecting on his own paramilitary past to see that his own son has become a killer too. I'm a lot like you, Dad.

At the time, I thought those ads were directed at the leaders of the paramilitary organisations themselves to try and coax them to see that they faced the tragedy of their own children being condemned to reliving the troubles. Now I realise that those ads were aimed at all of us, as all ads are, to coax us into believing that a change of heart had come over the paramilitary leaders and that they were now ready to settle terms for the sake of a pipe and slippers and the odd night in the pub with their sons.

The idea that the peace process might be a spiritual event was imported from South Africa. South Africa had a leader who was revered worldwide as a man of superior conscience. Without scrutinising the details of their peace process, we could see that the massive civil war we had anticipated through the Eighties had been miraculously averted in the Nineties. Well that was in keeping with the spirit of the times. Walls had come down all over Europe. Soviet Russia had been opened up by an imaginative leader that Mrs Thatcher could do business with. We must not blame ourselves now the for agreeing to believe that a global miracle was occurring and that we were part of it, though you would think that the Balkans and Rwanda would have reminded us that the pendulum swings the other way too.

The peace package was sold to us by politicians pretending to be saints and the chief of these were Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Mo Mowlam and Gerry Adams.

Much of the inspiration for this approach came from South Africa. I remember an introduction to a South African diplomat by the Northern Ireland office. The South African explained to us that a major breakthrough had occurred during peace talks there when one of the delegates travelling to the venue in his helicopter diverted to help an injured child, the child of a delegate on the other side.

The diplomat told me: when our people saw that their people loved children too it made a big difference to our perspective of them.

This patronises and infantilises people here and their political differences. We should have laughed at those who told us that unionism and republicanism would find common ground through personal relationships. No one argues that Tony Blair and Michael Howard would learn to moderate their language at Question Time if they got to know each other's wives and children.

It also played into the hands of those political leaders who wanted to avert discussion of the issues which divided them from their enemies. Gerry Adams, at staged rallies on the Falls Road, personally lifted small children onto the stage to advertise himself as a decent and gentle human being. It was all beside the point. Who doubted that the man was capable of ordinary human civility? That was not in question. But if children got blown to smithereens in IRA operations sanctioned by him he seemed well able to retain his composure and resolve.

Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein routinely used language which referred to South Africa and implied that he was the Mandela figure of Northern Ireland and that all would be well if he only had a de Klerke settle final terms with.

Much of the media bought this.

Then, God help us, we had Mo Mowlam.

The woman was a complete nincompoop.

Mo was the apostle of anti politics. She was also the glove puppet of Tony Blair. It was clear at times of intense negotiation that she was extraneous. Her function had been to treat us like children and to set aside all consideration of real political issues. Through Mo, our conflict would be presented to Britain and the wider world as essentially infantile. The problem was not that we had impassioned and committed political leaders asserting incompatible communal positions; it was that we just didn't know each other well enough to get along. This was a variant of a very old idea about the Irish, that they are immature and driven too much by their passions. Those who believe this and are not Irish themselves are enabled to feel very good about themselves in contrast with us. Those who are Irish and believe this must prefer to be pampered than to be treated as adults. And those who recognised the strategy and saw that truculence would be indefinitely indulged, and who saw themselves as outsmarting the imperialist, had a point.

Even last week I was on a radio programme arguing with another journalist who thought that one of the great contributions to peacemaking in Northern Ireland had been the publishing of joint editorials by the News Letter and the Irish News. This was of course entirely inconsequential and pure propaganda. It was propaganda for the myth that all we needed was a change of heart and that a change of heart was already underway. We were being coaxed out of thinking politically. The one thing we must never lose sight of: politics! Politics!

For some the peace process was a means of taking us out of stagnant politics into no politics.

The presumption of their thinking was that we are not fit for a political engagement here. Those who have most affected to be concerned for our welfare have been among those most patronising of us and most persuaded in themselves that we are not ready for the high risks of a functioning democracy.

There are people in government positions and in diplomatic positions who think that Northern Ireland has yet to evolve politically into the maturity of responsible civic commitment. Before that, if we are to go through a phase of corrupt politics, polluted by gunplay and espionage, well sure that's normal, they tell themselves. Belfast in the 21st century will be like Boston in 19th, with its ward bosses, its bribery, occasional violent pruning and its crime links. And out of this will emerge the power blocs which will determine the political shape of future decades as the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys emerged out of the hustling, the dealing, the killings of the 19th century in Boston.

Be aware that that political environment is what many of those who say they are nurturing us towards peace think is all we are fit for.

And those who would seek to give us that kind of politics are very happy to indulge the patronising fantasies of those who think it is all we are fit for. What else is going on when Sinn Fein says that it must demur on the prospect of entering government, taking ministerial seats, assuming responsibility for devolved policing powers and making important decisions for the future of the electorate because those lot over there, yes themuns, insist on a photograph of decommissioning procedures which have already been agreed?

People believe that that was a legitimate reason for scuppering devolution because they believe we are children here and that we don't yet understand how politics functions in the real world. They believe that that was the real reason for the collapse of talks because they cannot contemplate the possibility that they are simply being outmaneuvered, for goals they can barely conceive of, by the very people they have been presuming to patiently educate.

Their presumption of our political immaturity is the present-day equivalent of their long held assumption that we are passionate, unreasoning and -- a late 20th century addition this -- quaint.

It has come to be thought of as a stinging insult to tell a party here that it is electioneering and politicking with the peace process. What, in under God, is a political party for if not to fight elections and play politics? Yet this is now regarded as low motivation in the context of the peace process. It seems only one party is allowed, by the rules of peace processing, to fight for votes, and that is Sinn Fein.

When Bertie Ahern accuses Gerry Adams of bad faith in sanctioning a bank robbery during a talks process, Gerry Adams has one ready rebuke at hand that will shut him up: you are turning this into party politics because you are afraid of our vote: as if he wasn't doing exactly the same thing himself. But can Bertie accuse Gerry of electioneering on the back of the peace process? No because the rise of Sinn Fein is provided for within the process itself. There are few who would not regard it as a setback to the peace process if the Sinn Fein vote fell and their supposed journey from violence to politics was seen to be unproductive for them.

We are living in a changed political context. That change came with the shock of disillusionment felt after the robbery of the Northern Bank. Now most of the media is concentrating on the McCartney sisters and their campaign for justice but that campaign has been relatively successful in attracting media attention and political sympathy because of the changed context since the bank robbery.

There are two myths which are accompanying much of the journalism about the McCartney sisters' campaign. The first of these is that the IRA has changed from being a principled defender of the Catholic community into an organisation more barbarous and less politically astute.

The second myth, related to this, is that the Catholics of Short Strand live in perpetual danger of being overwhelmed by tens of thousands of Protestants living in East Belfast.

These myths cushion the shock of the changed context for people like those who read the Guardian for guidance on Northern Ireland. These myths reassure people that they were not wrong to trust in Gerry Adams and the IRA through the decade since the first ceasefire. They allow people to imagine that, had Robert McCartney been disembowelled seven years ago that would have scuppered the Good Friday Agreement.

It would not have damaged the Agreement at all.

The McCartney sisters would have gone up to Stormont or Hillsborough and Mo Mowlam would have lent them a hanky to dry their eyes with and gone back inside to discuss the way forward with Martin McGuinness. Do you think it is crass to suggest this?

Three months after the Good Friday Agreement, in circumstances remarkably similar to those in which Robert McCartney died, an IRA man who had quarrelled with Andrew Kearney sent a squad to his home in a block of flats on the New Lodge Road. They shot him in the legs and left him to bleed to death, ripping out the phone so that help could not be summoned and jamming the lift so that no one could get to him.

Maureen Kearney, Andrew's mother, was a Republican from Twinbrook. She picketed the talks at Stormont in 1999, when Blair told us there had been a seismic shift in IRA attitudes, and Tony Blair drove past her, Bertie Ahern drove past her, no one paid a blind bit of notice.

Why the McCartneys and not the Kearneys? Because the entire political climate is different now. When Maureen Kearney sought justice for her son, the broad political consensus was that the best way to put an end to violence was to complete the political process. By the time the McCartneys were calling for justice, all faith in that project had virtually collapsed.

Charlie Bennett. Trussed and shot in the head. In July 1999, on the eve of a review of the agreement chaired by Senator George Mitchell. Mo told us that to the IRA ceasefire had been breached but not broken.

Consider the broader implications of the changed context.

One is that the IRA is seriously challenged to go away. It is responding to that challenge with increasing bullishness. It can only go so much further in asserting its legitimacy and its right to kill who it pleases before it will have to end the ceasefire.

Maybe that bullishness will cost Sinn Fein votes.

Consider the implications if it does not. If Sinn Fein ascertains that it does not need to get rid of the IRA in order to thrive electorally, it will never get rid of the IRA. It will be free to argue that the IRA itself has a mandate and that argument will be more plausible the more visible the IRA has been in the run-up to the election.

Remember 1996. The IRA ended its ceasefire in February and went on to fight four elections: to the Forum, in Westminster, local government and the Dail and it raised its vote in all four. That enabled Republicans to argue with their colleagues that the IRA was not an electoral liability and for all we know it was to test this very question that the ceasefire was suspended and not for the much less plausible myth presented at the time, that John Major had ditched the Mitchell principles, which he hadn't.

Our peace and welfare may depend on Sinn Fein suffering a reversal in the coming elections.

If the Catholic majority vote for Sinn Fein, knowing that the IRA is in bullish form, that will be taken as an expression of a lack of civic responsibility on the part of that community. They will have voted for spy rings and robbery.

What brought the Catholic community into assertive protest politics was their sense of being alienated within Northern Ireland. Brookeborough had asked if it was wise to have one about the place. Others will be asking the same question now in a new environment of suspicion and fear.

There is another implication of the recent political collapse which would be exacerbated by an increased Sinn Fein vote. Catholics came into political discussion in Northern Ireland from a position of disadvantage and moral authority. As the people who had been discriminated against they were the ones with the prior claim to have the political setup adjusted to their needs.

If the majority of Catholics vote for Sinn Fein -- that party having scuppered every political prospect available to it in defence of the IRA's right to carry on -- where then will be the moral authority of a disadvantaged people?

When it came to it, even Ian Paisley was ready to make a deal that would put IRA leaders into government. It was Republicans who were found wanting and if their failure is endorsed by the electorate, then it will never again be possible for nationalism to refer to its history of disadvantage and discrimination in arguing for political change.

The negotiations between Nationalism and Unionism will be weighted as a simple contest of arguments, a contest of ideas not inherent principles or ancient grievances.

I don't think for a moment that this reality has sunk in with either Sinn Fein or the SDLP. In a divided society both sides harangue each other. The SDLP and Sinn Fein routinely attacked the Unionists and the DUP for their obstructive approach to the Agreement. But it would be a cavalier reading of our recent history that would say that Republicans were ready and Unionists were not.

Now, where does that leave those of us want to defend the middle ground?

It leaves us better positioned to say that the case is no longer moral or historical but rational and political.

The Alliance party is not going to take power in Northern Ireland. I suspect you already know that.

No one is going to take power in Northern Ireland. The credibility of Sinn Fein has been squandered. Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair would, no doubt, like to take Gerry Adams by the hand into a new round of talks. There is no point.

The SDLP insisted that will not take part in any executive which is not inclusive. It announces therefore that a vote for themselves translates into a vote for lying, scheming, murdering Sinners in office. Mark Durkan tells his colleagues that to negotiate an executive without Sinn Fein would be political suicide. But none of them has seen fit to persuade him emphatically that it will simply be impossible to negotiate an executive with Sinn Fein. Seven years ago I imagined that the middle ground would be secured by the SDLP and Ulster Unionists working together. They hadn't the bottle for it. Today there is only one middle ground party of any importance and that is yourselves.

None of you will ever be ministers in Stormont but neither will any one else from a local party.

In this new political context in which society is polarising and parties that we could once invest hope in are falling apart, it will not be by electoral office that people of political imagination will influence others. It will be by argument.

The Stepford Sinners will go on reciting their robotic party lines and those who believe them will do so by choice motivated by nothing other than sectarian solidarity.

The DUP will be insufferably smug, having been let off the hook. In private they may reflect on how much damage they would have sustained had they blundered into an agreement with Sinn Fein and the bank robbery had then gone ahead. They will not risk that again.

And you?

You will have to be a vehementally anti sectarian. You will have to assert the primacy of political thinking in the political world. Never again should we be asked to suspend our political faculties by the likes of Mo Mowlam and Tony Blair and Gerry Adams and to put our faith in some kind of spiritual transformation instead.

But after such a long drain on our reason this society will need to be educated in politics and responsibility.

Look around you. If these are the only people fit to speak sanely, and with untarnished credibility in a political wasteland, then so be it.

On former combatants now turning to criminality, McBride, who has been compared to Gerry Kelly (though obviously McBride has gone much further on his journey than the former IRA bomber), says:

“There are people on both sides, white establishment and ANC, who were given military training but have never fully recovered from what went on pre-1994.

“If you ignore them and exclude them, then of course there is a danger they are going to turn to crime."

This is something many people, particularly unionists, find it difficult to understand in Northern Ireland, where it is seen as rewarding crime by some or terrorist appeasement by others. Nevertheless, other comments by McBride will be at least as difficult for some republicans to buy into:

“The only reason policing works is because we achieved a political settlement first.

“Former combatants who find themselves involved in a new police force have to be doubly committed to making it work."

In Northern Ireland we do not have an "acceptable political settlement". In fact, under the current circumstances, it is unlikely that will be possible, since the Assembly depended upon a level of trust and confidence that doesn't exist. Indeed, it has been argued by some that constant crises are manufactured for party political gain.

But for those who think former enemies couldn't work together in a single police service, McBride's colleague - an officer from the old South African police regime - said:

“He has won the trust of his officers, black and white, because he has shown that he is only interested in protecting the community.

“Judge Robert McBride on what he is doing now, not what happened in the past.”

For a critical examination of McBride's previous intervention in the debate on policing and republicanism, this article by Anthony McIntyre suggests that "being a peeler on behalf of a black elite was palatable in a way that was unthinkable under a white elite".

This, McIntyre argues, is because in South Africa the old Apartheid regime has gone, yet in NI the 'old' regime remains in control. For him, the 'settlement' was too close to the status quo; the regime change never happened and the settlement was always unstable anyway.

With his usual cynicism about mainstream republicanism's motivation for supporting such interventions, McIntyre adds that it "is consistent with a well-established leadership practice of neutralising potential key opinion formers, particularly those from within the ex-prisoner community."

ADDS: Norman Tebbit joins the charge from the right.

The calendar of events over the next week include over 30 events throughout Ireland.

Do we need anti-racism initiatives to have a North-South reference as advocated by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities or is this just a case of northsouthery for the sake of it?

ADDS: It looks like the circus has just started.

Latest political reaction to McCartney case here.

A new weekly paper based in Coleraine will be launched the same week.

Under its "Let Scotland Flourish" plan, the SNP plans to reduce corporation tax by a third to 20%, a policy that would have an even greater effect in Northern Ireland, which is in direct competition with the neighbouring Irish Republic, where the rate is just 12.5%.

Why the urgency?
Scotland has struggled with the lowest long-term growth rate in the European Union over the last generation. The result is a predicted loss of half a million people over the next 40 years.

The growth gap between Scotland and the UK has grown to 30% and the SNP say something that could be said about how NI politicians look to solve the same problem there.

"Our opponents would have us focus on block grants from the
Treasury, chasing bigger shares of public spending to combat growing social problems. But we need more than just plans for spending; we also need plans for the kind of growth that will allow us to fund our social democratic ambitions for Scotland. In short, it is time for us to stop talking about social democracy in Scotland and start earning it."

The paper also includes specific actions such as lower corporation tax, lower business rates to below the English level and institute a proactive immigration policy that welcomes ‘new Scots’ and encourages people to move back to Scotland.

"In 2002, the growth rate over the last 25 years showed Scotland lagging significantly behind the UK, which in turn was
outperformed by small European nations and dramatically outshone by our nearest neighbour, Ireland."

25 year average annual growth rate (1979-2004)
Scotland: 1.8%
UK: 2.3%
Small EU countries: 3.1%
Ireland: 5.2%

The most pertinent paragraph in my view is:

"The role of government in an increasingly globalised economy is to create the best climate for economic growth by ensuring that policies are carefully tailored to the specific circumstances of the nation."

How can the politicians of Northern Ireland deliver the climate necessary to make the region competitive if they are so content to remain under direct rule?

One woman remarks on the behaviour of some IRA volunteers:

They have been conditioned, schooled all their lives, in fear and how to intimidate. Violence and physical abuse and murder are what they know. The leader does surround himself with lapdogs and sidekicks, people who have been involved in attempted rape, paedophilia, wife battering. Racketeering. They don't work, these people. They get up to all sorts of Mafia-type activity.