Michael Clifford: It's Sinn Féin who are the slow learners

In November 1920, 17 Auxiliaries died in an ambush by Tom Barry’s flying column. In August 1979, 18 British soldiers were killed in a bomb and gun attack by the Provisional IRA at Warrenpoint, Co Down.

Brian Stanley is a competent parliamentarian. Not that my opinion matters, but on the basis of minor dealings I have had with him over the years, Brian Stanley is a decent person.

He shouldn’t have been hounded later in the week over another long-forgotten tweet and comments he made at the outset of the pandemic. If they weren’t a big deal then, why now?

Stanley owes his chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee to the success of Sinn Féin in the last general election. That, in turn, is attributable to the party’s positioning on bread and butter political issues, most especially housing. 

I’d wager that the vast majority of those who voted for the party for the first time in February don’t give a fig about Sinn Féin’s obsession with a united Ireland.

Yet the national issue remains the primary focus in the psychology and philosophy of the party. And a central tactic in that respect is to rewrite the history of the Provisional IRA, from under whose wing Sinn Féin in its current incarnation emerged.

One element of that rewriting has been, in this decade of centenary commemorations, to associate the Provo campaign with that of the old IRA which prosecuted the War of Independence. That is precisely what Stanley did in his tweet.

The primary offence committed by the tweet was against the relatives of the soldiers killed at Warrenpoint, along with relatives of Lord Louis Mountbatten, 83-year-old Lady Barbourne and the two teenage boys, Nicholas Knatchbull and Paul Maxwell, who were blown up in a bomb on a boat in Sligo on the same day.

However, the tweet was also offensive to the vast majority of people who identify with the War of Independence but abhorred the Provo campaign. The 1919-21 war had a democratic mandate, as per the 1918 general election. 

By contrast, in 1979, the same year of the IRA atrocity mentioned in the tweet, the organisation’s political wing, Sinn Féin, garnered 2.16% in local elections in the south.

There was more support among Catholics in the North, but never anything like a majority. Most in that community agreed with John Hume and Seamus Mallon, both of whom repeatedly noted that the wrongs they fought against all their lives did not merit the shedding of one drop of blood.

The War of Independence was no glorious march to freedom, as portrayed for decades afterward. Tom Barry habitually cast it in those terms. Others, such as Sean Lemass, were more in tune with the horrors involved and thought best to leave the past where it was.

What did distinguish the War of Independence was its brevity. Mick Collins knew that public support was conditional and temporary. That informed his decision to accept the Anglo Irish treaty. 

It took de Valera another 18 months to realise it, through a civil war that cost hundreds of lives and did massive damage to the nascent state.

The Provos weren’t too concerned with public support. They kept killing for 25 years until they deemed it tactically astute to stop. They raised money through robbing banks, protection rackets, and various criminal enterprises.

They portrayed themselves as freedom fighters but there was a major sectarian element to their killing. They portrayed themselves as defenders of the Catholic community, yet of the 1,800 people they killed around 400 were Catholics.

They targeted anyone whose death they deemed might further their cause, even teenage boys and an 83-year old woman, even Mountbatten, a frail old man who never had any political involvement in this country.

Even more defining of the difference between the old IRA and the Provos was how they behaved once the guns fell silent. 

The founders of the Free State, including de Valera, quickly adapted to democratic norms. They upheld and obeyed the law. 

Thirteen years after first entering the Dáil, de Valera as Taoiseach oversaw the execution of IRA men who had murdered a garda.

Contrast that with the Provos. There is ample circumstantial evidence that the organisation continued to steal large quantities of money for at least a decade after the first ceasefire. What this money was required for is anybody’s guess.

There were also the mafia-style murders over minor personal issues, in which Provo figures killed with impunity because of their status. Robert McCartney in 2005 and Paul Quinn in 2009 are examples of innocents who were singled out for violent death. 

In all this, Sinn Féin people shrugged and issued platitudes, but there was no break with these violent criminals. They were, and still are, part of the family.

As recently as 2017, a Sinn Féin member felt it necessary to get permission from the party hierarchy to speak to gardaí investigating the murder of Detective Adrian Donohoe. It took two weeks for word to come back that he should go ahead. 

There simply is no parallel with those who underwent a rapid transition to democratic norms following the War of Independence.

In the round, it is an insult to the men and women involved in the birth of the southern state, from 1916 right through to 1923, to couple their deeds with those of the morally bankrupt Provos. It’s an insult to Hume and Mallon and the women and men who stood with them to retrospectively claim that they, the Provos, were the true leaders of an oppressed minority in the North.

Sinn Féin’s popularity today is despite, rather than because of its origins, in the Provo campaign. The party has been the beneficiary of the global political upheaval that has unravelled since the 2008 crash. 

They have prospered on the back of hard work, some impressive standard bearers and plenty of money. Their brand of left-wing populism could well be a breath of fresh political air when they arrive in high office.

But the party is still on a journey. Twenty-three years after the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin has yet to complete its transition to a fully grown-up democratic party. 

One day, perhaps when those who ran the IRA no longer have influence, the Shinners will accept the wrongs committed and leave the past alone. 

So far, in that respect, they are, as Deputy Stanley might put it, slow learners.