A step we should be grateful for or applaud as historic? Never

ARE we supposed to be grateful? Are we now supposed to flock in our thousands to vote for Sinn Féin? Are we supposed to acknowledge and accept what Martin McGuinness and others call this “truly historic moment”? Well, count me out.

In my adult life, I've lived through too many pieces of their cynicism, too much of their manipulation, and too many of their atrocities to ever find it in my heart to be grateful to the Provos. I welcome what they've done, at last, but I insist that people who gave their all to keep peace alive while the Provos were bombing and murdering are the ones who deserve the gratitude.

If the Provos' disarmament is historic, is it more historic than the Shankill massacre, or the Birmingham and Warrington bombs? If the ones who ordered the killing and the maiming have now decided that it is to be no more, does that entitle them to be revered as peace-makers?

Surely, all it means, at its best, is that the republican movement has caught up with the rest of us, who believe that, with all its imperfections, democratic politics is the only way to solve problems, the only way to build equality, the only way to make economic and social progress. "Building a nation of equals" is the slogan most often used nowadays by Sinn Féin. Building a nation of equals is work that only begins in any meaningful way once you put guns and Semtex aside. The provos are adept at pretending they've been at it for years. And, of course, they haven't been.

I was one of the very first to say (and I got into all sorts of trouble for saying it) that a peace process without Sinn Féin wasn't worth a penny candle. I meant it then, and I mean it still. The central tenet of the peace process has been the need to win over people committed to violence to a better way of doing business. It doesn't work if you leave some of the violent people behind. But that's not the same as saying that the people who give up the adherence to violence have to be treated as heroes, just because their propaganda is more elaborate than anyone else's. If they practice democracy, and mean it, they need to be content to be called democrats, and to suffer the slings and arrows that other democrats suffer.

I was also one of the first to say publicly that it was vital to recognise and accept that the republican army that declared a ceasefire (was it really 11 years ago?) was an undefeated army.

Decommissioning then, as it was demanded by the British government, could only have been interpreted as a sign of defeat. A beaten army gives up its guns an undefeated army (if it is committed to democracy) turns them into ploughshares. The provos did neither. They used the silent weapons to keep a political threat alive.

I've never forgotten that the original ceasefire statement contained not one word of remorse nor sorrow, let alone apology, for the pain and suffering of 30 years. Instead, it praised the "courage, determination and sacrifice" of the "volunteers, other activists, our supporters and the political prisoners who have sustained the struggle against all odds for the past 25 years". To this day the republican movement has always looked inward, has always put its own objectives before any wider sense of the duty they owe the people whose suffering they caused.

The Provos committed themselves to complete full decommissioning four years ago and they have only now got around to it. The intervening period has been used to manipulate politics and the media unmercifully, to try to position the political wing of the republican movement so that it can take over government in Northern Ireland and become king-makers in the politics of the South. If they succeed, it will be because of the gullibility of an awful lot of media people. But, more to the point, that some senior politicians have become obsessed with writing a closing chapter to the peace process, will have played into their hands.

FOR years now, the provos have regarded the peace process as a game with only two players: themselves and the British Government. The Irish Government, whatever its make-up (and despite the verbal histrionics of some ministers) has essentially been a pawn.

The role of the Irish Government (or the Dublin government as Sinn Féin continues disdainfully to refer to it) has been to act as a messenger boy for the provos, ensuring that Tony Blair is at the table whenever he is needed.

The harsh truth is that our Government holds no moral sway over the republican movement, because the republican movement holds government in the South in contempt.

Those who believe, for instance, that Sinn Féin might be a part of our next government, assuming (which looks almost inevitable now) that Fianna Fáil and the PDs can't make up the numbers, are wrong. And they're wrong for this reason: Sinn Féin is not interested not yet. It is pursuing a political strategy which is aimed at making it the dominant political player in both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland. Until it reaches the critical mass it's aiming for, it won't take the risk of participating in government down here. In Northern Ireland it already has that critical mass - not only in terms of its size, but also in terms of the way government is structured. To coin a phrase, no Sinn Féin, no government.

In other words, it already holds the effective balance of power in Northern Ireland. It will not be content and it will not risk entering Government here, until it really holds the balance of power. And it knows that that's going to take more than one more election. After the next election, even if it was to double its existing number of seats and Fianna Fáil was able to do a deal with them, it would only mean a couple of cabinet seats for Sinn Féin.

That's not real power and Sinn Féin knows it.

Sinn Fein has demonstrated, if nothing else, that it is committed to effective control. It has controlled its own communities for years. It operates within a culture of secrecy and hidden chains of command. As the Northern Bank raid, the return of the Colombia Three, and the recent visit by the "leadership" to Castlerea prison all demonstrate, it operates to its own agenda and no one else's. That agenda is about the ascendancy of Sinn Féin in both jurisdictions, and the selling of that ascendancy as the first tangible mark of a united Ireland.

This week's "historic" and long overdue completion of decommissioning is all part of the same thing: the next step in the provos' transition from a totalitarian commitment to power through the barrel of a gun. We shouldn't be under any illusion that the end is still power, but the means are no longer to rely on violence. That's a welcome step, no doubt about it. But one we should be grateful for? One we should all applaud as historic? Never.