Thoughts from London

Terrorism, cynicism and lessons for others
A genuine change of heart or a cynical political stunt? Take your pick. Other constructions are possible too, for those who do not see the recent call to de-fang the terrorist Irish Republican Army (IRA) in such stark terms.

However, you read the challenge last week from Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to the IRA to jettison its strategy of carrying the bullet in one hand and the ballot in the other, one thing is very clear.

Pressure from outside and inside forced this statement from Adams who denies charges by British security that he is a member of the IRA's governing military council.

It is international pressure and demands from within the Irish republican movement itself that have evoked the public statement that was directly addressed to those who still carry the gun and believe that power emanates from its barrel.

It is a salutary lesson for politicians who link themselves to terrorist movements or live shivering under their shadow and for sections of the international community that try to mollycoddle such violent groups for reasons of political and economic interest.

It is interesting to read what Gerry Adams said. Those words should be etched in the memories of those who have consciously and indiscriminately murdered persons from other ethnicities and religions and deliberately killed people from their own communities because of perceived rivalry or for lacking loyalty to the cause.

In what has been termed an extraordinary turn of phrase, Gerry Adams who leads what is widely considered to be the political wing of the IRA, said: "In the past I have defended the right of the IRA to engage in armed struggle.

"I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression, or for those who wanted a national republic.

"Now there is an alternative… the way forward is by building political support for republican and democratic objectives across Ireland and by winning support for these goals internationally."

In doing he urged the IRA "to fully embrace and accept this alternative." "Can you take," he asked the IRA, "courageous initiatives which will achieve your aims by purely political and democratic activity?"

Courageous words indeed from a man who is extremely close to the IRA, if not a leading member of it, and the person who is identified locally and internationally as the political face of the republican struggle.

It is easy, of course, to label Adam's call to eschew the armed struggle and pack up its weapons, as a political stunt. After all it came as the British parliamentary election campaign got into swing and Northern Ireland is very much a part of the election process sending members to Westminster.

Sinn Fein and the republicans have suffered political setbacks recently because of its recent involvement in criminality. Last December's £26 million bank robbery in Belfast has been traced to the IRA according to the police. Early this year IRA members killed a republican supporter Robert McCartney outside a Belfast pub. That has caused anger even in republican and Catholic circles in Northern Ireland.

Critics of Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein say that last week's statement is an attempt to recoup some of the recent political losses because of next month's election.

One of Sinn Fein's most virulent critics Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said very bluntly that it was a "political stunt."
The Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was cautious in his endorsement of the statement. While saying that it had the potential of moving the stalled peace process forward, he said it would be judged against how the IRA responded.

"For so many years," he warned, we have had false dawns and dashed hopes." Indeed. So it is déjà vu, as the French might say or we've seen it all before as sceptics here would.

Or is it the genuine 24-carat article this time?
The IRA responded on Thursday night saying that it was considering the call to disarm and enter democratic politics - not in so many words of course.

So whether it produces the end result the people of Northern Ireland so desperately seek or not will depend on what the IRA leadership decides. But it seems to me that there is a substantive difference in previous Sinn Fein statements pledging commitments to peace and democratic politics and this.

That difference is essentially the circumstances that provoked this direct call to the IRA. The IRA's involvement in Britain's biggest ever bank robbery was bad enough. It was the murder of Robert McCartney and the refusal of the IRA to hand over the killers or allow witnesses to the killing to come forward that produced an unprecedented reaction in Northern Ireland.

It became a cause celebre because the McCartney sisters took up the call for justice, castigating the IRA for preventing it. The determination of a family to stand up to the threats, intimidation and coercion of the IRA that lorded over the catholic-republican community which in turn has led to other nationalist families accusing the IRA of murdering their relatives, came to the boil from within the republican community.

Moreover the McCartney sisters took their case abroad and this proved to be a major turning point. The McCartney sisters were invited to The White House and met President Bush.

But Gerry Adams in Washington for St Patrick's Day celebrations at the same time did not have a look in and was generally ignored by leading Irish Americans such as Senator Ted Kennedy.

The McCartneys have also won support from within the European Union for their fight for justice against IRA pressure. Two salient points emerge from this. People who are cowed down by fascist movements must be ready to stand up against repression and be counted. They will at some point. The now notorious "Jeyadevan affaire" in which the LTTE abducted and unlawfully detained him and another Sri Lankan living here, shows that not all are willing to be intimidated and browbeaten.

This grave incident and subsequent events have left the LTTE badly exposed and its credentials as the sole representative of the Tamil people, badly tarnished.

The other significant factor causing tremendous disquiet in militant republican circles is the build of international pressure against the IRA and those associated with it.

If the main players in the international community take a tough and principled stand against terrorist movements without trying to appease them in various ways, as some countries we know seem to be doing by aiding and abetting them, they would not be emboldened as they are now by all the diplomatic kowtowing.

If a militaristic IRA gradually fades away into the night it will be because of the bold and growing opposition of a hitherto frightened community unwilling to be cowed any more and nations committed to international treaties and responsibilities - by deed not by ephemeral words.

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