The Spectator - 29.02.2020

the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.uk 21

DOUGLAS MURR AY

How Sinn Fein got away with murder

ment in Dublin. True, there have already

been upsets. Soon after the election there

was a Labour-like scandal when it turned

out that one of SF’s new elected representa-

tives, Reada Cronin, had a social media his-

tory that even Baroness Chakrabarti might

have thought fishy. Among other things,

Ms Cronin appeared to favour the idea that

the Rothschild family conspired with Adolf

Hitler to bring about the Holocaust.

Over the days in which Cronin was forced

to do the usual apology tour, I’m sure I was

not alone in feeling that there was more to

say. Have we become so preoccupied with

online crimes that actual crimes have begun

to take a back seat? Or is there perhaps a

certain boredness — a certain tedium —

with stating the bleeding obvious? What-

ever the explanation, while the press were

focusing on one Shinner’s anti-Semitism, a

voice in my head kept shouting: ‘What about

the paramilitary wing? What about the

death squads? What about all the dead —

all the Jameses and Martins and Reginalds?’

A party so unbothered, if not proud, of its

actual crimes will hardly be detained by a

few online infelicities.

True, the party has spent recent years

adapting to the new ‘social justice’ mantras

that have swept Ireland even faster than

every where else in recent years. SF have

almost managed their rebrand from mur-

derous nationalists to social justice inter-

nationalists. Though it has included some

grindingly noisy gear changes. Four years

ago a Sinn Fein senator in the North claimed

that the 1981 hunger strikers died for gay

rights. How I would love to have seen some-

one say to a naked Bobby Sands, sitting in

his cell: ‘So I hear you’re doing all this for the

gays, Bobby?’ For his response would likely

have been neither diverse nor inclusive.

But it is all of a piece. While most peo-

ple weren’t watching, the Shinners dolled

themselves up for a new generation. And the

election results showed how many people in

Ireland were persuaded by this. Deciding in

the process that the past was less important

than the future, as though the two were sep-

arable. So we can now observe a party try-

ing to form a government whose relatively

kindly face is Mary Lou McDonald — a

woman very happy to shout the IRA slogan

‘Our day will come’. The Dail is adorned by

Dessie Ellis, a former IRA man reported

to have been linked to around 50 murders.

Even the party’s younger sparks like David

Cullinane are happy to toe the old line

when it comes to the murderers. Cullinane

concluded his election night address with

all the old slogans, including ‘Up the RA’

[IRA]. Picked up on by the national press

afterwards, Cullinane said he had nothing to

apologise for and in any case, his comments

were about the past, not the future.

The discovery that Gerry Adams is on

Sinn Fein’s negotiating team cast further

doubt on that — curiously, though, Sinn Fein

didn’t announce his involvement in the talks.

Only when the party’s own internal docu-

ments were leaked and revealed that Adams

was on the team did a new generation have

another chance to get used to the idea that

Sinn Fein don’t always tell the truth.

So is it all in the past? Not according to

Ireland’s own police chief, Drew Harris, who

this week said what everyone in the intel-

ligence and policing community knows —

which is that Sinn Fein the political party is

to this day still overseen by the army council

of the IRA. Meaning that the next Irish gov-

ernment could be led by the only party for

miles — or decades — around that comes

with all the advantages that can be accrued

in a democracy from having your own armed

assassination gang.

Perhaps this is what history always feels

like. Politicians lie to gain power. Memories

fade. As the ‘On This Day’ account reminds

us, people get away with murder. But Sinn

Fein’s success is a reminder also of one of the

great mysteries of Ireland, both North and

South: how a people famous for remember-

ing everything can have forgotten so much.

T

he online world should be credited

when it gets something right. And

on Twitter an account titled ‘On This

Day the IRA’ gets something very right.

Granted, it’s not your usual internet fare.

It includes no videos of cute animals sneez-

ing. It is simply an archive-rich account

which records what the IRA did on that

day in history.

Naturally, each day brings more than one

thing to commemorate. On the day I’m writ-

ing, the account records James Keenan and

Martin McGuigan, two Catholic 16-year-

olds blown up by the IRA in 1979 while they

were on their way to a Saturday night dance.

There are also anniversaries from 1977 and

1988, and Reginald Williamson, a 46-year-

old father of two who was killed in 1993. The

girlfriend of the off-duty RUC member was

driving behind him in a separate car after a

night out together. She described the effects

of the under-car bomb going off. A bang, a

scream, and then, as she ran over to her boy-

friend, the first fruit of the IRA’s labours:

‘I looked down and his legs were gone.’

Aside from families, friends and this som-

bre account, few people remember these

dead. Few joined the ranks of famous victims

who emerged from larger, or state-caused,

atrocities. The families rarely got any apolo-

gy out of the IRA greater than ‘Sorry our car

bomb went off early, or in the wrong street’.

If there was any justification for this, it

was that in the North and the South of Ire-

land things needed to move on. For two

decades, such sentiment held because the

peace held. This in spite of disturbing cor-

ners, such as those secret portions of the

Good Friday Agreement that allowed the

loved ones of people killed by British sol-

diers to seek justice, while the families of

those killed by the IRA were expected to

watch their murderers walk free, and some-

times into government.

Now elections in the Republic of Ire-

land have come along to further unsettle

this moral equilibrium. Three weeks ago

Sinn Fein won more votes than any other

party, and as a result the political wing of

the IRA is negotiating to form a govern-

Have we become so preoccupied

with online crimes that actual crimes

have begun to take a back seat?

Douglas Murray_29 Feb 2020_The Spectator 21 26/02/2020 10:21