Under the Tony Blair government, the quest for peace in Northern Ireland got further than many people had dreamed of because British premier managed to pull off a remarkable coup. He persuaded the Unionist community to be patient and trust him while he bent over backward to include Sinn Fein in the political process in the hope that the IRA cease-fire would eventually be transformed into the promised disarmament and an enduring peace.
Though viscerally distrustful of anything to do with Sinn Fein, the Unionists under their leader David Trimble went along with the deal. Yet Sinn Fein-IRA’s commitment to peace and democracy was repeatedly put in question. Three IRA men were arrested in Colombia accused of training the ruthless FARQ terrorists. The FBI uncovered IRA attempts to buy more weapons. IRA continued murdering and handing out punishment beatings. Gangs of rioting youths were put onto the streets by IRA organizers. Each time Trimble grumbled and warned the British government that it would soon have to act to enforce the Good Friday Agreement. But he and his party kept ranks. Then, last month, aware that a broad range of Unionist voters was now, like his fellow Unionist legislators, fed up with Sinn Fein-IRA delaying tactics, Trimble broke ranks with London. Unless real progress was made within a month, he and his party would quit the Northern Ireland Assembly, effectively bringing its existence to an end.
In the light of this ultimatum, the events of the last few days are remarkable. Police raided both Sinn Fein’s headquarters and parliamentary offices and seized documents. As a result, one of the party’s top aides has been charged with receiving confidential papers from an as yet unnamed source within the British government’s Northern Ireland Office. There are also suggestions that the raid may have produced evidence that Sinn Fein-IRA was behind the raid on a British security base which netted highly sensitive documents on informers and security arrangements. Sinn Fein has of course protested but it was perhaps significant that the response among the republican community at large has not been particularly vociferous. Could it be that republicans who had trusted Sinn Fein to bring about its promised peace, are now losing faith? Is this, therefore, a turning point? Sinn Fein-IRA would seem to have a lot of explaining to do. Sinn Fein’s leader Gerry Adams had once famously announced that he had a ballot box in one hand and an Armalite rifle in the other and that “The Boys” had not gone away.
Now that Sinn Fein-IRA has been caught spying on the British government which has so doggedly supported it. Can London pretend any longer that it has not been taken for a dupe? Or have the British perhaps been playing a long and clever game, giving Sinn Fein and its terrorist masters more than enough rope with which to hang themselves? How long, for instance, did London know that there was a mole in the Northern Ireland Office and who put that person there in the first place?
Many, including the American administration, are going to be fed up that the republican extremists have betrayed the trust placed in them.
