Divided they stand

National Review, March 10, 1997 by Thomas McArdle

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, on January 30, 1972, thirteen Catholic protesters were shot dead and thirteen others injured by the elite 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment, "the Paras," during an unapproved civil rights march in this grim but beautiful city. None of those hit were wanted by the security forces, and the British Paras' mayhem on "Bloody Sunday" cannot be excused, as Britain then half-admitted. Indeed, Prime Minister John Major promises a new enquiry if given new evidence.

New evidence arrived this year: Eye-witness Bloody Sunday: The Truth, compiled by Don Mullan, a longtime human-rights activist. It contains over a hundred contemporary eyewitness accounts of the Bloody Sunday tragedy, almost all of which dispute the troops' claim they were simply returning heavy fire. Mullan also believes he has evidence of a non-Para British sniper firing from the high ground at the Derry Walls. If true, that would suggest a pre-meditated army assault, with little regard for life, in order to regain control of the Bogside. In the immediate aftermath it succeeded.

In the longer term, however, Bloody Sunday proved to be a propaganda victory for the IRA. This year, I traveled to Northern Ireland with a group of over a dozen Irish-Americans for its 25th anniversary. Our trip was essentially an agitprop tour which culminated in thirty thousand marchers retracing the steps of the original civil-rights march. British Army cruelty was often on the lips of my companions.

But while Sinn Fein/IRA demand apologies from the British, where are the apologies for their many atrocities? On Bloody Friday, for instance, the IRA set off 22 bombs in Belfast's city center, killing 9 people and seriously injuring 130. The larger truth is that of the more than 3,200 killings in Northern Ireland since 1968, 59 per cent have been of Catholics. Close to 2,000 were victims of the IRA, the Irish National Liberation Army and other Republican groups. By comparison, less than 400 have died at the hands of the British Army and security forces.

Murder is only the extreme end of a pervasive IRA brutality. In West Belfast, the IRA is the Mafia, financed by weekly levies from bars, night clubs, taxicab companies, and the construction trade, and by millions of dollars' worth of tax fraud schemes. It punishes petty crime like teenage joyriding by "kneecapping," shooting the flesh near the joints of the knees, and for repeat offenders the ankles and elbows as well -- a "six pack." A "50-50" is a bullet in the spine, with the victim's chances of survival about even. The recent IRA ceasefire dictated modifying these punishments. Victims are now beaten with nail-studded baseball bats and iron bars. (Loyalist terrorism, to be sure, is at least as savage -- but is at present on hold.)

No wonder that in the 1994 election, Sinn Fein got less than 30 per cent of the votes of those who want to leave the United Kingdom. Even in hardcore Republican areas like the Falls Road in Belfast, Sinn Fein gets only about half the vote. But distance lends enchantment to those Irish-Americans who support the IRA. If my own case -- a Bronx teenager with immigrant parents from the "Bandit Country" near the border -- is any guide, only living in Ireland can cure it.

There is an eerie sense of calm before the storm in Northern Ireland today. The IRA is brilliantly exploiting the respectability it gained from its brief and now abandoned ceasefire. A long-sought-after objective -- the end of Radio Telefis Eireann's 25-year-old ban on broadcasting terrorists -- having been secured, the Southern airwaves are Gerry Adams's for the taking. Renewing the ban is seen as too "reactionary" and "threatening to the peace process" for the South to consider. The peace process must continue, no matter how many people get killed.

For the image-conscious and besuited Adams is no longer a lone anomaly in Sinn Fein. Caoimhghin O'Caolain (Kevin Keelan in English) will be running for a Dail Eireann seat in the Cavan -Monaghan constituency in the Republic's border country. His appearance belies the reality of a militant IRA apologist: bald, bespectacled, chubbier and shorter than average, and sporting a wispy, trimmed pepper-and-salt beard. But even more out of kilter is his manner: soft-spoken and intellectual with an almost affected bookish accent -- surely no hardcore Irish Republican but the late film actor Donald Pleasance. O'Caolain is someone who, even more than Adams, could woo the Al Gores and the Teddy Kennedys. If O'Caolain wins --and Monaghan today casts a plurality of votes for Sinn Fein -- it will be the first time since 1957 that Sinn Fein has won a seat in the Irish Dail. That would be a major breakthrough.

But the IRA's dark side is never far away. Another elected Sinn Fein councillor in Monaghan is Owen Smith, a former IRA prisoner, who after a few drinks in Derry the night before the march was bragging that he owned a Koran personally presented to him by Qadaffi during his terrorist training in Libya. He may even be telling the truth.