That There Be No Doubt

Yesterday, Martin McGuinness was asked in the Northern Ireland Assembly about his oath as a member of the Provisional Army Council of the IRA. That Council remains undisbanded, it continues to claim to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland in succession to the 32-County Republic proclaimed at Easter 1916, and McGuinness made no effort to deny that he was still on it (because everyone knows that he is). Instead, he responded that his "many allegiances" were:

"to my family, to my religious beliefs, to Ireland, to the party that I represent, and to the Executive."

Given which party the fourth of those is, both that fourth allegiance and, in that context, the third allegiance must in fact be to the purported sovereign authority of the Provisional Army Council. So there we are.