Almost every day, it seems, brings fresh revelations, accusations or even arrests displaying at last for all to see the dirty secret of the Northern Ireland 'peace process' -- that Sinn Fein and the IRA are indissolubly linked, that Sinn Fein/IRA is still committed to killings, torture and thuggery and that by treating Sinn Fein as a legitimate democratic partner the 'peace process' has merely appeased terrorism and been party to an attempt to suborn democracy on both sides of the Irish border.

The crisis was detonated by the robbery before Christmas of £26 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast, and the subsequent discovery by Irish police of a vast money-laundering operation in the Irish Republic using this cash. Subsequently, the police commissioners on both sides of the Irish border, the Irish Justice Minister and the International Monitoring Commission have not only stated that the IRA was behind the robbery but also that Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are members of the IRA army council.Today, the Times reported:

'THE IRA uses Sinn Fein’s Northern Ireland headquarters to hold high-level meetings and to plan terrorist operations and financing, security sources have said.The IRA’s Belfast Brigade has until “very recently” gathered at Sinn Fein’s Connolly House headquarters in republican West Belfast, where Gerry Adams has met international peacemakers such as Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of Cape Town, and American congressmen, intelligence officials said last night. Members of the IRA’s Belfast “Command”, its head of intelligence and one of the most hardline IRA figures in Northern Ireland had held meetings in the Sinn Fein headquarters at Andersonstown they said. One senior source told The Times: “Connolly House was always the focus point of both IRA and Sinn Fein meetings, though they were cute enough to have other meetings at different places that we weren’t aware of.” He said that at the meetings, known IRA figures would discuss “everything from forthcoming operations to who was moving to what position”.

To which one can only say -- what took them so long to make these links known? They were surely the worst-kept secret in recent history. The truth is that everyone from Tony Blair and Bertie Aherne downwards knew perfectly well that Sinn Fein was umbilically linked to the IRA. But such was the self-delusion behind the 'peace process', which was sustained by the fiction that bringing terrorists into the ambit of power turns them into democrats, that murder after murder after kidnapping after kneecapping was simply ignored -- as was the descent into Mafia-style extortion, intimidation and paramilitary punishment which took over parts of Northern Ireland as the emasculated police retreated and the rule of law on the streets was replaced by the rule of law-breakers.

In the light of all this, the presence of Adams and McGuinness as MPs in the British parliament has always been grotesque. Now, in the wake of these revelations, Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland Secretary, has suspended their access and allowances. But the proper response should have been to expel them as MPs altogether. As Ann Treneman reported in her Times parliamentary sketch, Labour MP Frank Field demanded yesterday:

'“Is membership of this House compatible with membership of the Army Council? And, if it is not, what action does he propose to take against those individuals who have a dual mandate?” Mr Murphy sidestepped this question, again and again. Now he was a man in a straitjacket doing a soft-shoe sidestep shuffle. And still the outrage poured over him. The Labour MP Kate Hoey’s voice dripped with disdain as she demanded to know why Mr Murphy did not admit that Sinn Fein MPs should not be at Westminster. “Isn’t it an absolute nonsense?” she demanded.'

Sure thing, Kate. And it always was. Many people of goodwill believed and hoped in the Northern Ireland 'peace process'. They were naive. Now this appeasement process lies in the ruins of its own profound dishonesty. For 'peace processes' are built on a series of lies. The deepest one is that all people are fundamentally good, and that all disputes, however ancient and bloody, can be solved by the application of reason, which persuades lions to lie down with lambs and terrorists to turn into statesmen.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. People have the capacity for good and bad. If bad deeds are encouraged and condoned, this merely provides an incentive for them to multiply. In a fight between good and evil, you cannot split the difference. Good has to win and evil has to be defeated. The most intractable disputes are sometimes beyond reason, rooted as they are in irrational hatreds, tribal loyalties or systematic brainwashing into murderous paranoia and hysteria. To attempt to appease such forces is lethal.

Peace processes -- which I am discussing tonight on BBC Radio Four's The Moral Maze at 8pm -- are a Faustian pact which create their own deadly momentum. Because they become ends in themselves, nothing can be allowed to derail them. Well, in Northern Ireland, that particular delusion has now finally collided with reality.

Posted by melanie at February 23, 2005