It Ain’t Necessarily So

By AM Thursday, October 13, 2011

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The things that you're liable
To read in the Bible
It ain't necessarily so
-    Bronski Beat

In a piece that has caused a stir in some republican circles as of late, the former republican prisoner and hunger striker Laurence McKeown explained his discomfort at attending an event to protest the killing of the young British police officer, Ronan Kerr:

I attended because I felt it was the right thing to do. But it felt uncomfortable. I was standing alongside people who had often been condemnatory of the IRA. I wondered if they now felt vindicated, or morally righteous, that republicans now joined them to condemn the actions of other republicans.

No doubt they felt vindicated and morally righteous. They do so because former IRA volunteers like Laurence McKeown feel they have it in their hearts to turn out for such events whereas they do not have to reciprocate. How many of them have ever attended a protest or spoken out against prison staff violence in Maghaberry for example? In their worldview it is only right and fitting that past republican activists should turn up to protest current republican injustices. They see it as a mark of contrition which should be exclusive to republicans, a hair shirt which republicans alone should wear. They are merely protesting what they always protested.  As for current British injustices – well, republicans can turn out to protest against them on their own, and then be lambasted for doing so as trouble makers determined to take society back to a dark past.

I don’t know if those former republican prisoners genuinely angry at the killing of Ronan Kerr, turn out for protests against prison staff violence. It would be puzzling were they not to yet feel able to have a physical presence at a public protest against the wanton killing of Ronan Kerr. That should indeed make them uncomfortable to a greater degree than sharing space with the biased and the blind.  Turning out to condemn all violence is understandable. Turning out to condemn only republican violence but not British violence will raise many eyebrows.

That aside, Laurence McKeown has every right to protest the killing of Ronan Kerr. In my view his opposition to the use of republican political violence stands to his credit.  Whereas we might not all want to share physical space standing shoulder to shoulder with the one eyed moralists, the sentiment is the same, even when we prefer to express our serious misgivings through writing. Whatever the medium, what is being said is that this type of politically violent activity should have no place in society of today. That Laurence McKeown may stand in the company of more than a few who make him uncomfortable is no reason for not making his views felt. While he may wax schmaltzy in saying ‘feeling uncomfortable or uneasy is much better than someone else feeling grief’ there is logic therein. 

It is certainly okay for former republican prisoners to protest against what they see as wrong but not:

because it’s always been okay for republicans to condemn or criticise the actions of other republicans. In fact that has been the strength of the Republican Movement down through recent decades. Such criticisms were rarely voiced openly, people not wanting to give a hostile media yet another opportunity to condemn those from their own community, but they were voiced nonetheless, and more importantly, taken on board.

This is simply not borne out by the facts on the ground. Virtually everybody that parts company with Sinn Fein, regardless of their motives for doing so, are in agreement on one thing: all alternative arguments are treated as heresy. Many in fact departed because of the pervasive culture of censorship. None yet have said they left because there was too much discussion or toleration shown towards alternative viewpoints.

In short, it was made virtually impossible to express any criticism of the Provisional movement.  If in the course of discussion a view was expressed that coincided rather than cooperated with a strand of thought not known for its amity towards the IRA, the person airing the view would be pejoratively labelled and accused of siding with the Brits, the BBC, the unionists, the securocrats. Discussion and debate were never welcome companions of Sinn Fein or the IRA. People were told ‘this is the way it is’ even if it was entirely the reverse of the way it was a week earlier. Moreover, all manner of repressive methods were deployed to silence criticism. When I and Tommy Gorman publicly protested, through writing, the killing of Joe O’Connor, every bit as wrong as the killing of Ronan Kerr, few in Sinn Fein said it was legitimate to criticise the actions of other republicans. The party did not hold a vigil to protest the killing but rather sent a mob to our homes to intimidate us out of expressing our opposition to other republicans killing their internecine rivals.

If Lawrence McKeown out of moral conviction feels a compelling need to publicly stand in opposition to killings like that of Ronan Kerr, it is his call which he is entitled to make without being subject to a tirade of abuse. If he feels the need to justify his choice he should do so on the grounds of how he currently understands such activities rather than invoke the spurious rationalisation that he is being consistent because of republicans having always been able to criticise the actions of other republicans.

This mythologizing of a republican past in order to justify current anti-violence perspectives, wholly legitimate in their own right, is an exercise in revisionism that darkens rather than illuminates any genuine understanding of our collective republican past. Massaging the past in order to bring it into line with the present simply drains current opposition to republican political violence of a moral potency it might otherwise lay claim to.