On 20 December 2004, a Belfast bank was robbed of £26.5m. Unionist politicians swiftly claimed that the IRA was behind the raid. The allegations have served to put even more pressure on the Republican movement following the failure of talks in December to restore the Stormont assembly when Unionists demanded that the IRA allow the decommissioning of its weapons be recorded on photographs. For the Republican movement this was a step too far – for the moment, at least.
On 6 January 2005, Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable Hugh Orde waded in to support the claims of IRA involvement in the robbery. In doing so, Orde followed in the tradition of the old RUC: he had absolutely no evidence for what he said. Raids on several Republican homes yielded nothing. They showed however that PSNI approach to policing is no different from that of the old RUC. Despite this, the claims have impressed the SDLP and the Irish government, who now also see the IRA as the guilty party. The whole episode has embarrassed Sinn Fein because it needs to sustain its alliance with these bourgeois forces.
Documents released by the British and Irish governments show how far the Republican movement was prepared to go to meet Unionist demands in December. The IRA leadership was prepared to ‘conclude the process to completely and verifiably put all its arms beyond use’ and to ‘move to a new mode that reflects its determination to see the transition to a totally peaceful society brought to a successful conclusion.’ The IRA publicly restated these positions on 9 December. Following this, Sinn Fein was also prepared to endorse and participate in police boards.
During the talks Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams became the first Republican leader since Michael Collins to meet the head of the police of the Six Counties when he travelled to London for a two-hour meeting with Orde on 29 November. Adams stated that ‘we want all these matters sorted out. We want this to work. We are stretching ourselves and our constituency’. The reality on the ground indeed shows how far his constituency is being stretched. On 5 December, an 18-year-old nationalist escaped with his life following a knife and claw hammer attack by a loyalist mob in north Belfast. He required 40 staples to back and arm wounds. Eight days later, a 15-year-old girl was beaten unconscious as she walked home in a vicious sectarian attack by a loyalist gang using cars to scout the area for potential targets.
Discrimination lives on
Since its establishment, the economy of the Six Counties has been propped up by heavy subsidies from British imperialism in order to maintain loyalist supremacy and privilege. The pattern continues to this day. Catholic workers are still nearly twice as likely to be unemployed than Protestants. One in three jobs in the north is in the public sector – the highest proportion anywhere in Britain. The service sector has grown as manufacturing jobs have been lost, and it is now very dependent upon continued public sector growth. Any cut in public expenditure would therefore have a significant impact on employment and with it loyalist privilege. With the Six Counties’ economy under strain, there is a sense of loyalist instability, and this has stimulated the sectarian attacks regularly reported in An Phoblacht/Republican News. Catholic communities across the north cannot allow their guard to drop when confronted by this supremacist tradition in unrest.
Paul Mallon
FRFI 183 February / March 2005
