…novelty ordinarily emerges only for the man who, knowing with precision what he should expect, is able to recognise that something has gone wrong.
Thomas S. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Every time this storm around Sinn Féin looks like abating, something else kicks it off again. Wednesday’s committee meeting may have been a cynical attempt to strong-arm an Assembly committee into silence, but it also raised an important question.
Is there an impermeable boundary between the First Minister’s civic role as the first citizen of Northern Ireland along with the direct executive responsibilities therein and her political role as leader of the largest political group in the Assembly, Sinn Féin?
This is the logic she used to block a critical question from the chair of the committee as to the real position after the PSNI appeared to confirm last Friday that the IRA Army Council was still in existence and politically directing her party.
The chair’s opening question goes right to the heart of how the Executive Office handles its remit in relation to its responsibilities for…
…support for victims and survivors of the troubles and ending the paramilitarism through your department’s communities in transition and programmes in other areas like TBUK, what reassurances can you give to this committee that this is not the case in terms of determining the priorities nor actions of the Executive Office.
It’s not an unanswerable question. But instead of answering or refusing to answer, the First Minister’s was that the political decisions made by her office are of no concern to the committee. And there’s the novelty that confirms something is wrong.
In fact there are genuine concerns about how funds from TEO under its Tackling Paramilitarism programme in dying days of the 2016/17 TEO may have been targeted on shoring up areas of political weakness more than in tackling paramilitarism itself.
If Sinn Féin is still being directed by the Army Council albeit on a peace footing it would explain why neither the President (Mary Lou) nor Michell as Vice President of the party seemed not to have been informed of any of the issues over past weeks.
It would also explain the seek and destroy tactics being used north and south. For example when Padraig Mac Lochlainn (PML) took a FG deputy to task on the age issue in the Ó Donnghaille case on RTÉ’s Late Debate on Tuesday 15th October.
Looks at the pressure SF tried to bring to bear on matters to keep just one tiny detail out of the press:
Tim Lombard (TL): If you were to read the press statement that was read by Mary Lou we knew regarding what happened to former leader of the Seanad for Sinn Féin, there was no indication whatsoever that he stepped down because he was involved in an engagement with a 16-year-old.
Sinead O’Carroll (SOC): 17, he was 17.
TL: We’ve had different views here. We’ve had different views on the age. There was two different comments on the Oireachtas regarding it.
Colm O’Mongain (COM): All right, but we’re not in the Oireachtas here. And as far as we’re concerned, in the public domain, the issue is 17. It’s been looked into by the PSNI. There is no issue of illegality here. He was suspended as a result of the judgment of employer that it was highly inappropriate.
TL: But I am right to say there was two ages mentioning the Oireachtas today.
COM: You may be correct, but that privilege is not enjoyed in this studio. Let’s stick to the….
PML: By the way, the age he refers to was his colleague in Fine Gael (who) said that age.
Just to be clear, the privilege was abused today on that issue. [Emphasis added]
It’s still not clear why Sinn Féin would go to such lengths as to threaten the law on journalists and rival politicians over the alleged age of the young person. It’s not clear either whether the matter has yet been reported to the Gardaí.
This week’s apologies demonstrate exactly who was abusing privilege, even after the young person himself contacted Sinn Féin last week with his real age. And there’s that politics of concealment kicking again. What was Mac Lochlann trying to conceal?
And what was the First Minister trying to conceal? In 2006 the late Monsignor Denis Faul gave an interview to The Irish Times in which he noted that one of the most corrosive aspects of paramilitarism was its denial of access to law and due process:
“It’s the law of omerta,” says Mgr Faul. “You can’t speak, you can’t go to the police, you can’t go to the courts, you can’t go to the press. It’s barbarous. There is a law, but it’s the law of force. There is an order, but it’s the order of fear.”
No one should infer that things have not moved on since then. Some 470 people were killed in 1972 as a result of the conflict,
which contrasted with 2015 when just two people were killed (albeit one of them murdered by members of the Provisionals).
In 2007 this code of Omertà was taken in house when the British government issued letters of comfort to members of the provisionals who were worried about possible future convictions and a handful of royal pardons.
By contrast government promised Loyalists £30m in cash for their areas. No letters of comfort, pardons and no positions of authority in government for them. Provisionalism would quietly disappear from the ledger whilst enjoying increased influence.
We swapped chaos on the streets for chaos and stagnation in government. All of what was to follow the poisonous foundations of the St Andrews arrangement put The Office of Executive under the lock and key of NI’s two extremes at the time.
…the flaw here is that Stormont is rigged for “normal” stagnation, disillusion and recurrent crisis at the whim of any supposed partner. The centre cannot hold because there isn’t a proper centre to begin with. What of the next election and the one after that? Chant “more of the same” until supplies of sameness run out? What if Ulster’s general election vote holds the British balance? Chant “chaos is come again”.
And the prophet? Peter Preston editor of The Guardian between 1975 and 1995 who’d see every twist and turn of both Troubles and Peace Process eras. A wily operator who with a practiced eye predicted the following 20 years with unerring accuracy.
The First Minister’s contempt for the chair’s reasonable inquiry smacks less of accountable civic leadership and more of the subaltern carrying out the orders of the Army Council to do what’s needed to keep their secret. [Ah, the third shot? – Ed]
Too late. None of the First Minister’s actions add up any more than Mary Lou’s without the inclusion of this third party operating out of public sight and under cover. And we know they exist, because Brian Rowan’s excellent journalism in 2017.
It’s this unassailability of TEO that’s the problem. Wednesday’s meeting only confirmed what most of us already knew that if you make Stormont subject to joint rule between the two largest parties you have a recipe for poor government and instability.
Without a facility to kick failing governments out there’s no incentive for anyone to take political risks. Talent goes in, but it rarely comes out with any capacity to boast a CV of achievements whilst working in the institutions. Real talent leaves early.
St Andrews was not the review promised at the signing of the Belfast Agreement twenty six years ago. It was as the UUP live blog set up at the time to debrief the world on progress there told us a stitch up that suited both DUP and Sinn Féin.
The DUP dominated until the 2022 elections and now, it is presumed, so will Sinn Féin into the foreseeable future. That’s a conceit that was widely shared amongst political journalists until this crisis. Sinn Féin has by its actions forced a second look.
It’s not only its refusal to answer questions, in the BelTel Sam McBride (scourge of the DUP) notes that there’s a growing sense that in fact Sinn Féin will jump on any passing bandwagon and just as quickly jump off it again when the seat gets too hot.
Yet what’s in the dock along with Michelle’s stubborn insouciance in the face of multiple concerns about how she and her party handle serious issues around safeguarding is the system that has apparently locked her and the DUP permanently into power.
Here, I suspect the public are ahead of her and the DUP. In the most recent survey from Liverpool University a majority (54.5%) of respondents strongly disagreed/disagreed that they were ‘… confident that the Assembly will not collapse again‘.
A mere 19.3% stated confidence. People know now that the institutions cannot withstand a crisis that involves a lack of confidence in one or the other of the two main parties in government. There’s no flexibility to allow someone else to step in.
And yet, the same survey shows a convergence around power sharing. Except for the TUV, at least 66% of all other party supporters agreed that ‘the power-sharing system remains the best basis for governing Northern Ireland’.
On one level how Sinn Féin runs its own business is no one’s business but its own. But it can be and it will be judged on the corollary of how it manages that business when it affects confidence in its ability to carry out its public duties.
The blame for the trail of destruction and chaos over the last few weeks lies at the door of the Felons Club members who are still pursing a failed politics of concealment. Like old reactionary bishops they aren’t yet ready to listen or let the new light of reality.
But it’s clear the public (even SF’s own members) has now copped on to the recurring patterns here. As the difference in how they’re talked about in the south shows SF is not the problem but it is the institutions that keep it and the DUP in power.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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