The Writing On The Wall

No one puts up graffiti in a Loyalist area unless it has been at least approved by the dominant local paramilitary organisation. And no one puts up graffiti in a Republican area unless it has been at least approved by the IRA. The “RIRA” and “CIRA” graffiti shown on last night’s news speaks for itself: the Real IRA is really the IRA, which is its own “Continuity”.

What is the grievance of the internal dissidents who have been hung out to dry in this way? To answer that, we need to consider what the Good Friday Agreement actually says from their own point of view. It goes beyond accepting that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland cannot be changed without the consent of the majority of its inhabitants, although that alone would have been bad enough for them.

It gives Sinn Féin permanent seats in government, and it thus institutionalises the IRA’s running of Republican areas as fiefdoms in which the Provisional Army Council really may as well be the sovereign body, in return for accepting that that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland cannot be changed without the consent of the majority in both communities.

One of those communities defines itself specifically by its rejection of any proposal for any such change. So that is that: no such change can ever happen. Ever. By definition. In return for guaranteed Ministerial office and a free hand in “their” communities, it is to this that the Republican leaders have signed up.

They face internal dissent. On one level, that is unsurprising. But on another, how can anyone dissent as an Irish Republican from the sovereign will of the Provisional Army Council? Anyway, people do. So those people need, it is held, to be dealt with. Hence their having been allowed to kill soldiers, pizza delivery boys and a policeman, so that they can be ostentatiously turned in, as already appears to have happened in two cases.