On the day of his funeral in Belfast TPQ runs excerpts from an interview with Tony Catney conducted Feb. 21, 2013 at his home in Belfast. The interviewer was Dr. Peter Trumbore, Associate Professor of Political Science, Oakland University. He made the following exchange public at this time in acknowledgement of Tony Catney's contribution to the public understanding of modern Irish republicanism.

 
What has and hasn’t changed under the peace process

Ironically, and this is for me the saddest part of having to admit that I was an IRA volunteer engaged in armed struggle, it’s that what we have now today is not better than the quality of life that people had pre-1969. But it is better than when people were being killed on the streets. The history of the statelet called Northern Ireland has now been reduced not to the past 100 years but to the past 35 or 40 years.

So when you’re asking people, “Would you like it the way it was?” you know, people aren’t saying, would you like it the way it was in terms of the Orange State, they’re saying it in terms of the war years. And if you take the statistical analysis between the implementation of the state in 1968-69 and now, there is a higher demand for housing in 2013 than there was in 1969. There is more evidence of institutionalized bias in the development of housing in 2013 than there was in 1969. There is more unemployment in 2013 than there was in 1969.

Almost by every index that’s used. And then what you have to say is this: “OK, but everybody shares – you know, at least now there is equality in our deprivation.” And then you go through the statistics. As recently as yesterday we have the statistics showing that West Belfast is the fourth most deprived area in the whole of the United Kingdom.

So, admittance of that would at least allow you to start looking at what you have now on the basis of how it compares to the quality of life that you should expect in the 21st century. So we’ve already looked at the figures on child poverty, the recent statistic, but again went virtually by-the-by, is that if you live in West Belfast you will live on average eight years less than someone who lives in South Belfast. If you live in the ward of the Old Park in North Belfast you will live 20 years less than if you walk 500 yards past the Waterworks into the ward of Fort William in North Belfast because Fort William is an affluent area, the Old Park is a fairly destitute area.

All of those anomalies, disparities, and inequalities, irrespective of whether you are a green republican or an orange republican, should be abhorrent to anybody who claims that they want to live in a just equitable society.

But none of those things get taken into consideration. What gets taken into consideration? The gate in Alexander Park is now opened for eight hours a day. Now, it doesn’t matter if kids have rickets but the gate’s open, and it’s open for eight hours a day.

I just think that it is about the indicators that you use, but we just have a bunker society now who, because the prospect – and the prospect is always drummed up by those whose interests it best serves – the prospect of going back to bombs in the town and bodies in the street is so fresh and horrific in people’s minds that that is almost used as the big stick.
 

Falling out with the leadership of the Provisional Movement

I was considered to be a fairly pivotal member of the IRA organizational team, which by and large was responsible for the organization that is now called Sinn Féin. So therefore I was well known in most of the areas, I was held in fairly high esteem in most of the areas. I had been quite happy to move about within the different organizational entities, arguing strongly that I was opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, that I was opposed to the Mitchell Principles, that I was opposed to the acts of decommissioning, and that I was opposed to the standing down of the IRA. And I put forward the argument that in my view it is quite all right for you, you, you, you, and you to say exactly the same thing, and to work against that. That’s not what’s called being a team player and adhering to team discipline.

That scared the life out of members of Sinn Féin because it was starting to strike a chord with people because they were looking at what was the peace process and they were going, “There is no quid pro quo here. I mean this is about surrender,” right? And no one wanted to use that term. No one would use the term that IRA had been defeated.

Now it’s commonplace for people to say. People, former IRA volunteers to say, yeah, we were defeated, and thankfully - and even though this isn’t done in a very, very vocal fashion - thankfully the degree of discipline, commitment, and maturity that those people showed while they were in the IRA has also demonstrated itself in the way in which they construct their arguments about the defeat of the IRA.

And they’ve been very, very clear that in 35 years of armed struggle, the membership of the IRA never let the leadership down once. Anything that the leadership asked for they got. They might not have got it to the degree or as quickly as they wanted but they got it to the best of the ability of the volunteers within the IRA. What happened from 1994 onwards was a failure of leadership not a failure of the IRA. It was a failure of the people who made the decisions as opposed to the people who were prepared to honour their commitment to the liberation of Ireland and were quite prepared to do it in a different fashion.

So the fork in the road for me was the 31st of August 1994 when as an IRA volunteer I was summoned to be given the briefing as to why there would be a ceasefire at 12:00 that night. And the guy doing it gave me the reasons why, and then foolishly enough asked for people’s opinions. So he asked my opinion and since I’m not usually very quiet, I wasn’t that particular evening. So he said, “Well, what’s your opinion?” and I said, “Well, I mean what is it you’re asking me for? Do you want my honest opinion about this or do you want me to say whether or not I support an army line?”

He says, “No, it’s not about an army line, I want your opinion,” and I said, “My opinion is this is all bollocks.” And I said:

You sat in February of this year and sent IRA volunteers out on operations that have resulted in them lying in the H-blocks of Long Kesh at this moment in time on the basis that all of the talk about cease fires was mischievous and that it was being put out by the Brits. You denied whenever you were asked that the mini cease fire in May for the Americans was a dummy run for what is happening now, and this hasn’t been done from a position of strength by the IRA it has been done as an admission of weakness and that’s my honest opinion on it.

And he says, “If you ever repeat that outside of this room,” that I’d be charged with treason. I said, “Right, so it wasn’t really my honest opinion you were after, you just really wanted me to agree with you.”

“No, no, no, I’m not saying that,” and I said, “Well then how can you say it’s fucking treasonous?” It was a stupid row what was or what wasn’t treason, but at that point then I was earmarked as someone who wasn’t on board with the leadership strategy.

Nothing could be further from the truth, for one simple reason. I could neither be on board or off board because I had absolutely no idea what the leadership strategy was. Because the leadership had no idea what their strategy was.

If someone had said to me, “Look, our purpose in doing this is to arrive at a point where we are getting rid of the IRA,” I would have argued strongly against it on the basis that the IRA shouldn’t be seen just as a military organization. When it’s seen just as a military organization then in the interest of peace you do need to get rid of it the way in which you would need to get rid of the British army.

But the IRA is not a conventional army. It is a volunteer army and it works on a completely different basis, and for me the IRA was the embryonic form of a vanguard party, very much in the theory or the theoretical paradigm of Lenin and that’s the way the IRA should be used. You have a cadre of people who had demonstrated their discipline, their loyalty, and their commitment, and for me you should keep that together. You shouldn’t throw that away. But, if you’re in a position where you actually fear that rather than embrace it, then I can see how it becomes a threat rather than an aid. For me that’s where it went for this particular leadership.

 
The role of leadership in the republican alternative

A friend of mine constantly makes the point what is missing in the alternative camp is a charismatic leader. And as soon as he says that everybody smiles and goes, “Haven’t we already been there once? And are there not massive pitfalls in having a charismatic leader?”

There is the rawness of that because it’s hard for me to convey just how much faith people placed in that leadership; you know, how much the fact that Martin McGuinness can stand along with Hugh Orde and Peter Robinson and call IRA volunteers traitors; how much that rankled with people who would have laid down their life on the belief that Martin McGuinness will be there until the end because he was seen as so dedicated, so committed. And the same with Gerry Adams.

And people have in their head, well, if someone who was as highly motivated and as dedicated as those two people were to become the Ayatollah and everyone follows them, then that means you end up like lemmings jumping off the end of the cliff. They needed to stay away from him, you know. Now, in my opinion, people have knee-jerked to that to an extreme, and that will take a few years to pan out.
 

The role of militarism and armed groups today

I think that the period when Irish republicans were going to make either physical progress or political capital out of pure militarism has completely closed down at this moment in time. But even within that, and maybe it’s because I was in the IRA, you like to see that anybody that is putting forward a militaristic view for Irish republicanism is actually doing it in some sort of coherent, competent, efficient fashion.

Three weeks or four weeks before the execution of two sapppers at Massereene, the Andersonstown News devoted their editorial column to explaining how dissidents weren’t true republicans, and they used two examples of true republicans. The two examples of true republicans that they used were Gerry Kelly and Raymond McCartney, and they named both in their editorial. And they were true republicans by virtue of the fact that both of them had killed people for the IRA. And how can you take a group claiming to be a militant republican group seriously if they can’t kill Brits or peelers, and how many Brits. That’s how bluntly they put it in the editorial. Three weeks later we have Massereene.

We have Martin McGuinness on the steps of Castle buildings pontificating about who had and who hadn’t the right to be Irish republicans. And the next week lo and behold the editorial of the Andersonstown News is not saying now by the standard that we set the people who carried out Massereene aren’t Irish republicans. Their name was dirty stinking dissidents killed two unarmed soldiers who were waiting to leave the country.

It is clear that the people who were responsible for Massereene, Ronan Kerr, David Black, and a number of other successful operations which they claimed is this new grouping of a realignment of the IRA.

I would say from the way in which they’ve conducted their business that they work on the view that this is not a period of revolution but this is a period of consolidation, and that in a period of consolidation, the cutting edge and what that means in real human terms of an armed organization like the IRA cannot be consigned to history, and that all they’re basically doing is keeping a benchmark as opposed to waging the war.

In the late ‘50s what you had was individual republicans who were sort of trying to keep the light of the good faith burning. This has been done in an organized fashion. Then the criticism will be because the benchmark, whether you like it or not, the benchmark that you will be judged by is the efficiency, the viciousness, the extremism or the cruelty of the Provisional IRA.

But, if for a second you wipe all of that out and begin with a blank canvas and turn around and talk about an armed organization, whether you agree with the objectives of it or not, who clearly define what their targets are and why they will be inflicting or attempting to inflict casualties on those targets, and that excludes the civilian population, ordinarily people would say that’s a good thing, you know. Okay, we don’t like to see policemen getting killed, but you know, they put the uniform on. There’s a price that comes with it. We don’t like to see British soldiers getting killed but they put the uniform on, there is a price that comes with it.

We now have the anomalous situation that because you aren’t killing enough British soldiers, and you haven’t done all of the things that people said the IRA were doing wrong, i.e., no warning bombs, proxy bombs, etc., etc., etc. All of that has been removed, and yet those people are still being criticized for what they either do or don’t do.

And what it means is if you turn around and say, for example, what shows that you’re effective as a competent military organization is that you can carry out operations towards your stated objective, or whether or not you can just cause mayhem. And if you adopt the line of well, the amount of mayhem that you cause is an indication of your prowess as a fighter then okay, the Provisional IRA stand head and shoulders above everyone else.

If you take it on the basis of the quality of the operations in terms of underscoring the political point as to why you’ve resorted to a means of last resort in the first place, you have to ask yourself which one of the two is better. So on the basis of that, right, you need to go back as far as Loughall for the last time that the Provisional IRA walked up to a barracks, occupied by armed members of the security forces, and took them on. Now, those two volunteers that walked up to Massereene had no way of knowing how much fire power there was behind that gate.

So in terms of the quality of the operation, Massereene, if you even ignore the disjuncture from 1994 and look at the history of the Provisional IRA, the operation that was conducted at Massereene was a very clinical, calculated, well conducted military operation, more so than most of the military operations that the IRA put out after 1983. After 1983 the standard of IRA operations was atrocious. The IRA relied more and more on bombings rather than on face-to-face encounters with the enemy forces.

This is the soft targets, you know, the off-duty as he’s going home, the local judge as he’s going to mass, those sort of things. What people mean when they say these people aren’t as efficient as the IRA, what they mean is they aren’t killing as many people as the IRA killed.

I can’t answer authoritatively for them, but what I’m saying is I don’t see the unfolding of a new political dynamic that has been spurred by the killing of two sappers. Or the killing of the PSNI constable, the maiming of another, or the killing of a screw.

Somebody who’s engaged in it may have a completely different view. They may see this as the embryonic, you know, 1969 for the IRA. I don’t know. I don’t see it, and I don’t see any new political dynamic coming out of it. Now, I have to say that much to my shock and surprise at the time, I remember senior people within Sinn Féin arguing in the early ‘90s, when I still had a head full of Frelimo and jail education, saying that the function of the struggle was to keep the flame of Irish resistance alive in the hope – not the expectation – in the hope that something would break. So it’s not a new idea.

For me, I remember a journalist asking me one time, “At what point should a military organization consider cease fire?” And I said, “The day before they begin the armed campaign,” because if anybody’s beginning an armed campaign just to carry it on then they’re a psychopath. You should already have in your head what way in which you want to end this before you begin it.

You know, and if it just comes down to a body count then unfortunately the people who are trying in their eagerness to rubbish anybody who doesn’t have a Sinn Féin view, what they are doing is creating a backdrop where sooner or later someone will respond to it and go, “Well, if it’s just down to dead bodies on the streets well then let’s create more dead bodies than the dissidents have been able to do up until now,” and it’s just a road of madness.

So, and it’s one of my fears, is that the longer what has now become the mainstream constitutional nationalists and republicans constantly harp on about how there is not enough death and destruction to actually take these people seriously, that they’re basically saying to those people, “See, until you start leaving more dead bodies on the street we’re not going to take you seriously.”

The line that violence doesn’t work is completely belied by the people who are telling you. I mean Martin McGuinness sitting telling me that violence doesn’t work just doesn’t cut the mustard. I mean short of that he would be a butcher or a mechanic. Gerry Adams telling me that the only reason he’s not still pulling pints in the Duke of York is because he turned his back on violence is so far removed from reality that it doesn’t even bear thinking about.

All of the cues that tell you that violence does work are around you daily. To convince people that violence doesn’t work then what you need to be able to do is you need to be saying, “Here are the alternatives.” Now, the alternatives will only be as good or as bad as you make them. All we can do is point out where the roots are.

Tony Catney Sharing his Political Thoughts

On the day of his funeral in Belfast TPQ runs excerpts from an interview with Tony Catney conducted Feb. 21, 2013 at his home in Belfast. The interviewer was Dr. Peter Trumbore, Associate Professor of Political Science, Oakland University. He made the following exchange public at this time in acknowledgement of Tony Catney's contribution to the public understanding of modern Irish republicanism.

 
What has and hasn’t changed under the peace process

Ironically, and this is for me the saddest part of having to admit that I was an IRA volunteer engaged in armed struggle, it’s that what we have now today is not better than the quality of life that people had pre-1969. But it is better than when people were being killed on the streets. The history of the statelet called Northern Ireland has now been reduced not to the past 100 years but to the past 35 or 40 years.

So when you’re asking people, “Would you like it the way it was?” you know, people aren’t saying, would you like it the way it was in terms of the Orange State, they’re saying it in terms of the war years. And if you take the statistical analysis between the implementation of the state in 1968-69 and now, there is a higher demand for housing in 2013 than there was in 1969. There is more evidence of institutionalized bias in the development of housing in 2013 than there was in 1969. There is more unemployment in 2013 than there was in 1969.

Almost by every index that’s used. And then what you have to say is this: “OK, but everybody shares – you know, at least now there is equality in our deprivation.” And then you go through the statistics. As recently as yesterday we have the statistics showing that West Belfast is the fourth most deprived area in the whole of the United Kingdom.

So, admittance of that would at least allow you to start looking at what you have now on the basis of how it compares to the quality of life that you should expect in the 21st century. So we’ve already looked at the figures on child poverty, the recent statistic, but again went virtually by-the-by, is that if you live in West Belfast you will live on average eight years less than someone who lives in South Belfast. If you live in the ward of the Old Park in North Belfast you will live 20 years less than if you walk 500 yards past the Waterworks into the ward of Fort William in North Belfast because Fort William is an affluent area, the Old Park is a fairly destitute area.

All of those anomalies, disparities, and inequalities, irrespective of whether you are a green republican or an orange republican, should be abhorrent to anybody who claims that they want to live in a just equitable society.

But none of those things get taken into consideration. What gets taken into consideration? The gate in Alexander Park is now opened for eight hours a day. Now, it doesn’t matter if kids have rickets but the gate’s open, and it’s open for eight hours a day.

I just think that it is about the indicators that you use, but we just have a bunker society now who, because the prospect – and the prospect is always drummed up by those whose interests it best serves – the prospect of going back to bombs in the town and bodies in the street is so fresh and horrific in people’s minds that that is almost used as the big stick.
 

Falling out with the leadership of the Provisional Movement

I was considered to be a fairly pivotal member of the IRA organizational team, which by and large was responsible for the organization that is now called Sinn Féin. So therefore I was well known in most of the areas, I was held in fairly high esteem in most of the areas. I had been quite happy to move about within the different organizational entities, arguing strongly that I was opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, that I was opposed to the Mitchell Principles, that I was opposed to the acts of decommissioning, and that I was opposed to the standing down of the IRA. And I put forward the argument that in my view it is quite all right for you, you, you, you, and you to say exactly the same thing, and to work against that. That’s not what’s called being a team player and adhering to team discipline.

That scared the life out of members of Sinn Féin because it was starting to strike a chord with people because they were looking at what was the peace process and they were going, “There is no quid pro quo here. I mean this is about surrender,” right? And no one wanted to use that term. No one would use the term that IRA had been defeated.

Now it’s commonplace for people to say. People, former IRA volunteers to say, yeah, we were defeated, and thankfully - and even though this isn’t done in a very, very vocal fashion - thankfully the degree of discipline, commitment, and maturity that those people showed while they were in the IRA has also demonstrated itself in the way in which they construct their arguments about the defeat of the IRA.

And they’ve been very, very clear that in 35 years of armed struggle, the membership of the IRA never let the leadership down once. Anything that the leadership asked for they got. They might not have got it to the degree or as quickly as they wanted but they got it to the best of the ability of the volunteers within the IRA. What happened from 1994 onwards was a failure of leadership not a failure of the IRA. It was a failure of the people who made the decisions as opposed to the people who were prepared to honour their commitment to the liberation of Ireland and were quite prepared to do it in a different fashion.

So the fork in the road for me was the 31st of August 1994 when as an IRA volunteer I was summoned to be given the briefing as to why there would be a ceasefire at 12:00 that night. And the guy doing it gave me the reasons why, and then foolishly enough asked for people’s opinions. So he asked my opinion and since I’m not usually very quiet, I wasn’t that particular evening. So he said, “Well, what’s your opinion?” and I said, “Well, I mean what is it you’re asking me for? Do you want my honest opinion about this or do you want me to say whether or not I support an army line?”

He says, “No, it’s not about an army line, I want your opinion,” and I said, “My opinion is this is all bollocks.” And I said:

You sat in February of this year and sent IRA volunteers out on operations that have resulted in them lying in the H-blocks of Long Kesh at this moment in time on the basis that all of the talk about cease fires was mischievous and that it was being put out by the Brits. You denied whenever you were asked that the mini cease fire in May for the Americans was a dummy run for what is happening now, and this hasn’t been done from a position of strength by the IRA it has been done as an admission of weakness and that’s my honest opinion on it.

And he says, “If you ever repeat that outside of this room,” that I’d be charged with treason. I said, “Right, so it wasn’t really my honest opinion you were after, you just really wanted me to agree with you.”

“No, no, no, I’m not saying that,” and I said, “Well then how can you say it’s fucking treasonous?” It was a stupid row what was or what wasn’t treason, but at that point then I was earmarked as someone who wasn’t on board with the leadership strategy.

Nothing could be further from the truth, for one simple reason. I could neither be on board or off board because I had absolutely no idea what the leadership strategy was. Because the leadership had no idea what their strategy was.

If someone had said to me, “Look, our purpose in doing this is to arrive at a point where we are getting rid of the IRA,” I would have argued strongly against it on the basis that the IRA shouldn’t be seen just as a military organization. When it’s seen just as a military organization then in the interest of peace you do need to get rid of it the way in which you would need to get rid of the British army.

But the IRA is not a conventional army. It is a volunteer army and it works on a completely different basis, and for me the IRA was the embryonic form of a vanguard party, very much in the theory or the theoretical paradigm of Lenin and that’s the way the IRA should be used. You have a cadre of people who had demonstrated their discipline, their loyalty, and their commitment, and for me you should keep that together. You shouldn’t throw that away. But, if you’re in a position where you actually fear that rather than embrace it, then I can see how it becomes a threat rather than an aid. For me that’s where it went for this particular leadership.

 
The role of leadership in the republican alternative

A friend of mine constantly makes the point what is missing in the alternative camp is a charismatic leader. And as soon as he says that everybody smiles and goes, “Haven’t we already been there once? And are there not massive pitfalls in having a charismatic leader?”

There is the rawness of that because it’s hard for me to convey just how much faith people placed in that leadership; you know, how much the fact that Martin McGuinness can stand along with Hugh Orde and Peter Robinson and call IRA volunteers traitors; how much that rankled with people who would have laid down their life on the belief that Martin McGuinness will be there until the end because he was seen as so dedicated, so committed. And the same with Gerry Adams.

And people have in their head, well, if someone who was as highly motivated and as dedicated as those two people were to become the Ayatollah and everyone follows them, then that means you end up like lemmings jumping off the end of the cliff. They needed to stay away from him, you know. Now, in my opinion, people have knee-jerked to that to an extreme, and that will take a few years to pan out.
 

The role of militarism and armed groups today

I think that the period when Irish republicans were going to make either physical progress or political capital out of pure militarism has completely closed down at this moment in time. But even within that, and maybe it’s because I was in the IRA, you like to see that anybody that is putting forward a militaristic view for Irish republicanism is actually doing it in some sort of coherent, competent, efficient fashion.

Three weeks or four weeks before the execution of two sapppers at Massereene, the Andersonstown News devoted their editorial column to explaining how dissidents weren’t true republicans, and they used two examples of true republicans. The two examples of true republicans that they used were Gerry Kelly and Raymond McCartney, and they named both in their editorial. And they were true republicans by virtue of the fact that both of them had killed people for the IRA. And how can you take a group claiming to be a militant republican group seriously if they can’t kill Brits or peelers, and how many Brits. That’s how bluntly they put it in the editorial. Three weeks later we have Massereene.

We have Martin McGuinness on the steps of Castle buildings pontificating about who had and who hadn’t the right to be Irish republicans. And the next week lo and behold the editorial of the Andersonstown News is not saying now by the standard that we set the people who carried out Massereene aren’t Irish republicans. Their name was dirty stinking dissidents killed two unarmed soldiers who were waiting to leave the country.

It is clear that the people who were responsible for Massereene, Ronan Kerr, David Black, and a number of other successful operations which they claimed is this new grouping of a realignment of the IRA.

I would say from the way in which they’ve conducted their business that they work on the view that this is not a period of revolution but this is a period of consolidation, and that in a period of consolidation, the cutting edge and what that means in real human terms of an armed organization like the IRA cannot be consigned to history, and that all they’re basically doing is keeping a benchmark as opposed to waging the war.

In the late ‘50s what you had was individual republicans who were sort of trying to keep the light of the good faith burning. This has been done in an organized fashion. Then the criticism will be because the benchmark, whether you like it or not, the benchmark that you will be judged by is the efficiency, the viciousness, the extremism or the cruelty of the Provisional IRA.

But, if for a second you wipe all of that out and begin with a blank canvas and turn around and talk about an armed organization, whether you agree with the objectives of it or not, who clearly define what their targets are and why they will be inflicting or attempting to inflict casualties on those targets, and that excludes the civilian population, ordinarily people would say that’s a good thing, you know. Okay, we don’t like to see policemen getting killed, but you know, they put the uniform on. There’s a price that comes with it. We don’t like to see British soldiers getting killed but they put the uniform on, there is a price that comes with it.

We now have the anomalous situation that because you aren’t killing enough British soldiers, and you haven’t done all of the things that people said the IRA were doing wrong, i.e., no warning bombs, proxy bombs, etc., etc., etc. All of that has been removed, and yet those people are still being criticized for what they either do or don’t do.

And what it means is if you turn around and say, for example, what shows that you’re effective as a competent military organization is that you can carry out operations towards your stated objective, or whether or not you can just cause mayhem. And if you adopt the line of well, the amount of mayhem that you cause is an indication of your prowess as a fighter then okay, the Provisional IRA stand head and shoulders above everyone else.

If you take it on the basis of the quality of the operations in terms of underscoring the political point as to why you’ve resorted to a means of last resort in the first place, you have to ask yourself which one of the two is better. So on the basis of that, right, you need to go back as far as Loughall for the last time that the Provisional IRA walked up to a barracks, occupied by armed members of the security forces, and took them on. Now, those two volunteers that walked up to Massereene had no way of knowing how much fire power there was behind that gate.

So in terms of the quality of the operation, Massereene, if you even ignore the disjuncture from 1994 and look at the history of the Provisional IRA, the operation that was conducted at Massereene was a very clinical, calculated, well conducted military operation, more so than most of the military operations that the IRA put out after 1983. After 1983 the standard of IRA operations was atrocious. The IRA relied more and more on bombings rather than on face-to-face encounters with the enemy forces.

This is the soft targets, you know, the off-duty as he’s going home, the local judge as he’s going to mass, those sort of things. What people mean when they say these people aren’t as efficient as the IRA, what they mean is they aren’t killing as many people as the IRA killed.

I can’t answer authoritatively for them, but what I’m saying is I don’t see the unfolding of a new political dynamic that has been spurred by the killing of two sappers. Or the killing of the PSNI constable, the maiming of another, or the killing of a screw.

Somebody who’s engaged in it may have a completely different view. They may see this as the embryonic, you know, 1969 for the IRA. I don’t know. I don’t see it, and I don’t see any new political dynamic coming out of it. Now, I have to say that much to my shock and surprise at the time, I remember senior people within Sinn Féin arguing in the early ‘90s, when I still had a head full of Frelimo and jail education, saying that the function of the struggle was to keep the flame of Irish resistance alive in the hope – not the expectation – in the hope that something would break. So it’s not a new idea.

For me, I remember a journalist asking me one time, “At what point should a military organization consider cease fire?” And I said, “The day before they begin the armed campaign,” because if anybody’s beginning an armed campaign just to carry it on then they’re a psychopath. You should already have in your head what way in which you want to end this before you begin it.

You know, and if it just comes down to a body count then unfortunately the people who are trying in their eagerness to rubbish anybody who doesn’t have a Sinn Féin view, what they are doing is creating a backdrop where sooner or later someone will respond to it and go, “Well, if it’s just down to dead bodies on the streets well then let’s create more dead bodies than the dissidents have been able to do up until now,” and it’s just a road of madness.

So, and it’s one of my fears, is that the longer what has now become the mainstream constitutional nationalists and republicans constantly harp on about how there is not enough death and destruction to actually take these people seriously, that they’re basically saying to those people, “See, until you start leaving more dead bodies on the street we’re not going to take you seriously.”

The line that violence doesn’t work is completely belied by the people who are telling you. I mean Martin McGuinness sitting telling me that violence doesn’t work just doesn’t cut the mustard. I mean short of that he would be a butcher or a mechanic. Gerry Adams telling me that the only reason he’s not still pulling pints in the Duke of York is because he turned his back on violence is so far removed from reality that it doesn’t even bear thinking about.

All of the cues that tell you that violence does work are around you daily. To convince people that violence doesn’t work then what you need to be able to do is you need to be saying, “Here are the alternatives.” Now, the alternatives will only be as good or as bad as you make them. All we can do is point out where the roots are.

11 comments:

  1. Really insightful points from someone whos views will be greatly missed.

    constitutional nationalists and republicans constantly harp on about how there is not enough death and destruction to actually take these people seriously

    I think the analysis that supposed the British public would react the same as the Americans did in Vietnam as soon as body bags started getting sent home misunderstood fundamental differences between the two nations. The American public in general do see themselves as saviours of the world, and don’t understand why others object to their soldiers ‘transitioning’ them to liberal democracy ( i mention public because the military see things differently) . Body bags should not figure in their narrative. The British however see themselves as rightful rulers of the world, with the aid of truly racist propaganda, body bags coming back just confirms to them the rest of the world are savages.

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  2. A lot of sound and reasoned logic there,thinking republicans are in short demand therefore the loss of one makes it all the harder for those who carry on , but carry on we must.

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  3. Tony said that the Anytout News hailed as true republican Gerrybroy Kelly and Raymondbroy Mc Cartney by virtue of the fact that they killed people ,well correct me if I,m wrong but did,nt Raymondbroy deny ever killing anyone and did the courts not agree and compensate him,so in turn that makes Raymond Mc Cartney What exactly?

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  4. Interesting insight into the skulduggery in SF leadership down the line. Had to laugh at Raymond McCartney being lauded as a proper republican because he was a convicted killer. He who had his conviction quashed after nearly dying on hungerstrike an innocent man. Honestly, they have more faces (faeces)than a town clock suffering from a multi personality disorder!

    The troubles came about from Paisley and Orange bigotry reacting to a failed IRA campaign being replaced with civil rights demands by the general Catholic population within N. Ireland.

    Republicans are awaiting the next issue (wave) to launch their wee surfboard upon. Adams and McGuinness like their much admired friend Tony bLIAR saw a more appealing, personal path and ran down it full pelt.

    Now instead of TC Mackers, Kearney and the likes they have Michaelhenry and Mary Lou Fatdonalds in abundance.

    Republicans talking about people paying a price for pulling on a uniform does seem far removed from reality today though. Hard to see any sense in any of it; like WW1, pointless.

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  5. TC was always a thinking republican and well regarded for it from his days of imprisonment. He looked at things from all angles. Many a disagreement I had with him but he could make his case as well as anybody I knew.

    I take the reference to Raymond and Gerry as being more figurative than literal. There has to be a shared responsibility within the IRA or any other organisation for the activity it engages in. So in that sense all of us who were in the IRA are responsible for its killings. We helped sustain a military killing machine which without our participation would not have functioned. I don't buy the notion of 'I didn't kill anybody' even if hands on individual input is absent. If either the ATN or TC said that either Gerry or Raymond individually killed say Robert Bradford or Edgar Graham then that would be a gross distortion.

    In any event if either get a censor lawyer to send a remove and desist letter they will meet with the usual response.

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  6. I didn't know Tony Catney, however after reading this article I wish I had. It is very seldom you find somebody who can put across the situation we face as intelligently and honestly as he just did. Anthony does an excellent job of putting across the problems we face on this site, but unfortunately most anti-g.f.a republicans I met face to face, myself included,don't have any real strategy on how to take republicanism forward. Maybe what anti-g.f.a republicans need is a charismatic spokesperson any takers?

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  7. The IRA didn't surrender or were defeated....the leadership betrayed them all long before 1994.

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  8. IRA hardliner's clouded moral vision offers little light on 'struggle'


    Hodgins reminded those in the dissident camp still involved in or supportive of the armed campaign that the British State had its eyes and ears trained on them 24/7; that the security forces now had technical advantages over them that were not even available when the Provisional IRA's violent struggle was at full tilt.

    We have to thank The Pensive Quill and the founder of the republican blogsite, IRA prisoner-turned-author/historian Anthony McIntyre, for giving us an insight into the often fractious and argumentative world of dissident republicanism.

    A casual glance at the articles debating the merits of continued 'armed struggle' and the outsider will realise from the site that there is more doubt, discussion and reflection on the efficacy (leaving aside the immorality of it) of violent actions than they initially imagined.

    A large body of opinion loosely connected to the debates and some of the writers on the blog make the same case as Hodgins, many even going as far to state that it is in fact immoral to send young men and women out to carry out armed attacks that will not only end in the deaths of others, but possibly the loss of their own lives and the seemingly inevitable incarceration in Maghaberry Prison and other jails that soon follows these incidents.

    When Tony Catney died from cancer, The Pensive Quill reprinted an interview he gave about the state of modern republicanism to an American academic from Oakland University. It is a fascinating account of one man's journey through the zig-zag path the Provisional movement took from 1969 to 1994 and the ceasefire of 20 years ago.

    However, those who read The Pensive Quill and were seeking some signals from a voice now from the grave of fresh thinking on the 'armed struggle' will be – at the very least – confused.

    The most fascinating section of a very long discourse is the one entitled 'The role of militarism and armed groups today'. For a start, Catney's thoughts on this reveal an unbending, crystal-clear logic that crystallises armed dissident republican ideology.

    Catney pulls apart the party line from Sinn Fein, which portrays the dissidents as inauthentic republicans simply because their kill rate is far lower than the Provisional IRA's used to be.

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  9. I just don't buy the economic arguments in the first section. At all. While I find it hard to believe there is as much poverty in the areas mentioned now as there was in 69, there is even less evidence they would be better off in a united Ireland. Rickets? Really? Oh dear...

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  10. Haha - I might have to eat my words. Apparently there are a few rickets cases kicking about. On the other hand, oranges are pretty cheap.

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  11. Belfast Gozo, let's have a look at what you said.

    "I just don't buy the economic arguments in the first section. At all. While I find it hard to believe there is as much poverty in the areas mentioned now as there was in 69, there is even less evidence they would be better off in a united Ireland. Rickets? Really? Oh dear..."


    I just don't buy the economic arguments in the first section At all.

    The QUB “Uniting Ireland" event (27th March 2014).

    An elected unionist Lisburn City Councillor and Young Unionist chairman admitted that there is an economic case for a New Ireland!

    Cllr Alexander Redpath, of the UUP: “Well I think the best argument in favour of a United Ireland is the service duplications, I think there's a definite argument there"

    A New Ireland is positive change for all of its citizens and not a “pipe dream" or unrealistic in the slightest and we all know measures have to be taken to ensure the better way of life reunification can create. Caitríona Ruane MLA, SF confirmed; there would be “progressive taxation" to make it work, in which Cllr Redpath welcomed her honesty.

    Even those politically opposed to reunification cannot deny the savings that would be realised through the elimination of the duplication of every tier and aspect of government on the island of Ireland.


    While I find it hard to believe there is as much poverty in the areas mentioned now as there was in 69, there is even less evidence they would be better off in a united Ireland.

    West Belfast has the second highest level of child poverty in the UK, according to a new report from the End Child Poverty campaign.

    Out of the UK's 650 parliamentary constituencies, only Manchester Central recorded a higher level of deprivation.

    The survey found that 43% of children grow up in poverty in West Belfast.

    This was 3% lower than the previous year when it was 46%. But where rates fell markedly elsewhere over the year, this was not the case in West Belfast. '




    Rickets? Really? Oh dear...

    Northern Ireland is facing a potential rickets epidemic unless food poverty is addressed, a senior medical professional has said.

    A disease associated with poverty, rickets affects bone development in children and can lead to deformities such as bow legs.

    Most often seen in developing countries, it is caused by malnutrition and particularly a lack of calcium and vitamin D.

    However, there has been a rise in the number of cases in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the north of England.


    Dr John Middleton, vice president for policy at the UK's Faculty of Public Health, has warned that food poverty means conditions such as rickets and malnutrition are becoming more common

    (Belfast Gozo, keep taking the pills)....

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