Difficult times for provisionals

As Gerry Adams admitted in London today, republicans will agonise long and hard over the IRA decommissioning. They will feel real, emotional pain.

In the formative years of the Provisional IRA nearly 30 years ago guns would have been used to settle differences. But not anymore.

Punches may be exchanged in the pubs and clubs of east Tyrone and south Armagh, but given Sinn Fein’s powerful electoral mandate and the discipline within the ranks of the IRA, there is hardly likely to be anything more than bloody noses. The days of the bitter in-fighting and shooting wars are over.

But these are difficult times for dye-in-the-wool Provisionals none the less.

Mr Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said: ‘‘It is okay to be against this move but what we have to be is united and strategic and looking to the future and committed to our republican cause,’’ he said.

‘‘This is big because it does cause pain to republicans. Republicans, as agents of change, are prepared to take pain on themselves and strain on themselves in order to loosen up and free up a movement which can resolve all of the issues that need to be resolved.’’

He added: ‘‘The IRA is immune to pressure from any quarter except from its own base. The IRA could have hunkered down and simply sustained its cessation.’’

Jim Gibney, one of Gerry Adams’s closest associates and a key party strategist and Anthony McIntyre, another former IRA prisoner, once stood shoulder to shoulder behind the republican leadership.

But not anymore.

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement they have moved in different directions - Gibney confident about the way forward for Sinn Fein, McIntyre disillusioned with the movement he once belonged too.