Not a proud record

By Stephen King

The Republican project as prosecuted by the Provisionals lies in ruins. There is now no attempt to distinguish between Catholic, nationalist and republican. Far from being even a source of embarrassment, it is a determined policy of the Adam's faction. There is no conversion strategy aimed at Protestants and dissenters, only a questionable conviction that Catholic birth rates will break the connection with Britain, such is the poverty of ideas.

Behaving as Catholic sectarians, the modern-day woodkerne, would be excusable, in a sense, if it was any more successful. In spite of the undoubted sectarian nature of the campaign - Kingsmill, Enniskillen, Teebane, Frizell’s fish shop - the claim to be the effective defenders of the Catholic population is a poor one. The British Army and the RUC saved many more lives than did the Provos.

Neither truly republican nor truly Defenderist, the Provos have had two successes. They have succeeded in grabbing a slice of the Stormont action - and on the evidence so far - used it for good Catholic purpose.

More disturbingly, they have produced a new class of the permanently enraged demanding Catholic power. When this new breed’s great expectations are disappointed and Ulster remains stubbornly apart, the seeds of more mindless violence will germinate.

The truth, carefully glossed over, is that the Provos failed to win a degree of cross-Border harmonisation equivalent even to that in the Frameworks Documents. Moreover, by refusing to acknowledge the relative failure of the campaign by its own lights - or face up to its total disproportion to the sins visited on republicanism, by decommissioning, the Adams strategy of winning power North and South and using it to republican ends is in tatters.

Three thousand five hundred dead, a new Stormont, a cross-Border food safety promotion agency and the Union in place. A record to be proud of. I think not.