IRA/Sinn Fein is in trouble.  Its supporters in America have finally understood that the Peace Process was not a peace process in quite the sense they thought it was.

In his 1995 book, Rebel Hearts, journalist Kevin Toolis explained …

Since the late eighties the IRA has been involved in a complex political process to align the Dublin Government and their electoral rivals, the SDLP, in a pan-nationalist front to negotiate a British withdrawal. By politically dissolving the border so that the mass of nationalists in Ireland can be consolidated into one powerful negotiating bloc, Republicans hope to reorder the political stalemate that has marooned them as a minority within the Catholic minority inside the boundaries of a hostile Protestant majority-dominated state.

The aim of the current republican leadership’s pan-nationalist strategy is to achieve a ‘historic handshake’ with the Crown, like that between South African President De Klerk and Nelson Mandela before his release from prison in 1989 which indicated an intention to negotiate political change The ANC did not overthrow the apartheid regime overnight or map out an exact plan for the transfer of authority but from that moment on power flowed steadily De Klerk to the future President Mandela. Similarly in Ireland power would at first trickle, then flow from the Crown into nationalist Ireland until the balance of power was so weighted in the nationalist/republican’s favour that a section of the Unionist community would break away and strike a political deal with the ancient enemy.

Well, we can now look back upon the last decade and see this strategy for the failure it is.  Whilst the IRA/Sinn Fein’s partial suspension of violence has extracted many valuable concessions from the British government - the release of IRA prisoners and the gutting of the Royal Ulster Constabulary being the most serious – neither the development of pan-Nationalism nor a flow of power to nationalist Ireland has happened.

Far from fracturing, Unionism has moved towards the Paisleyites.  The British government, having gone the last mile several times over yet secured no movement on arms decommission, is at one with its Irish counterpart.  With no risk of contradiction from Dublin Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy can say, “As far as the political process is concerned, to all intents and purposes we are not talking about any future negotiations or discussions until the issue about criminal activity on the part of the IRA is addressed”  For mention of “criminality” read “existence”.

Most worrying of all for IRA/Sinn Fein, the years of prosperity and inter-communal peace have changed the expectations of its own republican base.  Catholics have had enough of the “hard men’s” reign of terror.  Now the McCartney sisters, “those brave souls”, are the local heroes.

But signs of hope for decent people bring desperation to immoral men, and in desperation lies danger to us all.  Any terrorist organisation which aspires to some form of legitimacy depends upon popular support for both it and its cause.  IRA/Sinn Fein cannot afford to lose that and will, as a matter of survival, do whatever it must to prevent it.

So it is that, with a general election on the mainland perhaps six weeks away, The Observer carries a report of briefings by Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit.  Irish terror groups ‘to hit London’, booms the headline.  “Reporting,” it continues, “indicates that dissident Irish republican terrorists are currently planning to mount attacks on the UK mainland.”

“Dissident” is an interesting word.  The Real IRA – who bombed Omagh - and the Continuity IRA, supposedly formed by IRA members who rejected the cease-fires of August 1994 and September 1997 respectively, are not necessarily meant here.  As Jim Hoagland made clear in his St. Patrick’s Day article in the Washington Post, there are other, equally plausible interpretations.

Drawing comparisons with the PLO he writes, “Violent “revolutionary” movements attract criminals and psychopaths as well as idealistic justice-seekers and sincere nationalists. The longer the revolt continues the more likely it is to become a criminal enterprise essentially devoted to self-perpetuation. That clearly has happened to the IRA, as it did to the Palestinian movement under Arafat.

“Put to the test at Camp David in 2000, Arafat went on autopilot to insurrection. The Northern Ireland process has at a minimum served a similar purpose: It has helped establish and clarify the fault lines between the IRA’s criminal bosses and those in the organization who would accept the rule of law and a new political order based on compromise.”

Compromise in Northern Ireland has now reached the stage where the criminal bosses must “go away”.  The IRA must disband.  Can criminality accomplish such a feat?  It may, instead, attempt to harden British hearts and thereby solidify its support.  It’s always worked before.

If Irish terrorism really is to revisit London or Manchester or Birmingham – and succeeds in doing so - then, impotent, we will once again be forced to reflect upon the twisted logic of men who value their nationalist dreams above children’s lives.  And if a mainland campaign succeeds in uniting republicans behind such bloodshed?  Well, Jim Hoagland talked of fault-lines.  The real fault-line in IRA/Sinn Fein’s long campaign of life-taking runs between decent people and people with rock-hard, ice-cold shit in their hearts.  At least this time we begin with all the decent people, in America as well as Ireland north and south, on the right side.  To bowdlerise IRA/Sinn Fein’s favourite and most oft-quoted catch-phrase, we can fight with an olive branch in one hand and MI5 in the other.