Pub row murder a much bigger blow to SF than Belfast bank raid

SINN FÉIN and the Provisional movement generally are facing one of their most difficult tests ever.

The murder two weeks ago in Belfast of 33-year-old father of two Robert McCartney has unleashed forces within and without nationalism which are much more potent and more troubling for the republican movement’s leadership then those unleashed by the Northern Bank raid controversy.

Details of the horrific murder have been put together second-hand by Robert McCartney’s sisters.

On January 31, he was out for the night with a friend, Brendan Devine. They called into a city centre pub for a pint on their way to a birthday party. In the pub there happened to be some IRA members, including a local commander who had previously had a low level run-in with Devine.

On the pretext of alleging he had insulted some women in their company, a group including the IRA commander picked on Devine and, when McCartney intervened, they were both attacked. They were taken outside and beaten with sewer rods and set upon with a knife. Devine had his throat slit and is still seriously ill in hospital. McCartney sustained a stab wound to the stomach and he died of his injuries the next day.

After they had left the two injured men outside, the IRA group returned to the pub and engaged in some kind of forensic cleaning of the scene of the assault. They also ordered everyone in the pub not to make phone calls - not even for an ambulance - and threatened that if anyone told of what had happened, all would be severely punished.

There were more than 70 people in the pub, many of whom would have been able to identify some of those involved. However, the Northern media say that, to date, no official statements have been made to the police by anyone in the pub on the night.

Neither the family nor the police are claiming that the IRA sanctioned this murder, but they do contend that leading members of the organisation in Belfast were involved and have since been working to frustrate the murder investigation.

In a dramatic and brave move, the sisters of Robert McCartney, and his partner, went public last weekend. In a series of moving and powerful media appearances they have sought to break through a wall of silence which they say the republican movement has built around the event. The family have been unequivocal in calling on anyone who knows anything about the incident to go to the PSNI. They want statements made to the police which can ground evidence in court. They want charges brought, convictions obtained and imprisonment to follow for the perpetrators.

This story has run extensively in media on these two islands while Mark Durkan, who is in Washington this week, has ensured that the story of the McCartney murder has even got prominence in several media outlets on the east coast of the US. The impact of this story, the details of which are only beginning to register with many, has the potential to be very damaging to Sinn Féin.

Even more worrying for the republican leadership is the reaction in the nationalist community in Belfast. In the Sinn Féin heartland there has been growing disgust and anger at the fact that the local Provisional leadership has sought to protect those who perpetrated this murder. McCartney was a well-loved local personality and a vigil followed by his funeral attracted large crowds.

In the days after the murder Sinn Féin MLA Alex Maskey criticised the searches and arrests conducted as part of the police investigation.

Some have even alleged that Provisional elements were responsible for organising a sham children’s riot and attacks on the police in order to prevent them from accessing items of evidence relevant to the case.

However, this week, the McCartney family’s media campaign has forced Sinn Féin to change its tone. Both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have issued trenchant, if belated, denouncements of those who carried out this murder and have called for anyone who knows anything about it to “pass it on to the authorities”.

I have no doubt that people like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are horrified at the murder of Robert McCartney - one would be less than human not to be. However, although they condemn this barbaric murder, Adams and McGuinness must also realise that they carry some responsibility for it. The events of the night of January 31 are the inevitable consequence of the ganglord vigilante system which the Provisional movement has long operated in many parts of Northern Ireland.

IN the same way as they have condemned the murder of Robert McCartney this week, Sinn Féin and the IRA also condemned the Omagh bombing in 1998 and continue to condemn dissident republican activity today. However, they also bear much responsibility for this activity.

The Provisional IRA, like the other paramilitary groups which have operated in Northern Ireland over the last 30 years, has been responsible for the training, grooming and arming of many violent people. Those who planned and executed the Omagh bombing, for example, did not learn their car bombing skills or their reckless disregard for human life from thin air. Most of the key players in the Real and Continuity IRA learned their gruesome skills within the Provisional movement. That movement today carries some similar responsibility for last month’s murder of Robert McCarthy. The IRA leadership per se may not have sanctioned this murder, but they created the monsters who perpetrated it.

The thugs who directed and carried out the murder of Robert McCartney included experienced Provisional IRA operatives; men who had perhaps gained experience in the use of gruesome violence in punishment beatings or protection rackets or other disciplinary or fundraising activities for the organisation. They did so in circumstances where they felt no fear of any public or state authorities and presumably believed they would enjoy similar immunity for this murder.

For the IRA, and for many in Sinn Féin, the use of violence is seen as justified not only for ‘political’ purposes but also in the enforcement of internal discipline and in order to ‘police’ certain communities.

As a result, for many in the IRA violence has become a way of life. The availability of such regular opportunities for violent activity inevitably attracts or generates psychopaths.

The IRA also gives authority to local commanders over operatives and communities in a defined area and sanctions the use of violence to maintain control therein. In that set-up it becomes almost inevitable that some of those local commanders on occasion will deploy that violence in personal rather than ‘political’ disputes.

The IRA is certainly not the only paramilitary organisation in the North to breed psychopaths, but to a significant extent the murder of Robert McCartney is just the most recent piece of the Provisional movement’s violent legacy. For that reason, and for many other reasons, Sinn Féin must now realise that is it is time to turn off the violence.