Captain Sensible

Anthony McIntyre ✒ Sinn Fein’s volte face on no jury courts was as predictable as it was unprincipled.

The fixity of principle can often prove a deadweight in the fluidity of the political marketplace where opportunism and opportunity are frequently indistinguishable, and the premium is on horse trading and deal making before all else. In that environ the only principle is that of Groucho Marx: “those are my principles, and if you don't like them ... well I have others.”

When a political party decides to charge down the road of perdition, it can hardly gripe when detractors remind it of its earlier claims to have been the voice of principled leadership. Whatever Sinn Fein is, it can be safely said that it is not principled. Maybe it is best to be candid and simply admit to having no principles to begin with.

Like an earlier about turn on monarchy-groveling, the attitude to no jury courts was determined by a reading of the public mood, a skill acquired in the get votes at all costs library. It left me to reflect that somewhere along the line the message got garbled to such an extent that the party mixed up its Ps, if not its Qs, on what Wolfe Tone really did have to say, and have now replaced the original with a forgery.

If the men of principle will not support us, they must fall. Our strength shall come from that great respectable class, the men of no principle.

Believing in nothing but office, principle is now treated as if it were Covid. Outside the Helix centre in Dublin, the party hierarchy seems to have set up its own walk-in vaccination centre where members were inoculated against the dangers of the principle virus prior to any raising of hands. Aoife Moore’s quip that "it used to be the case in Ireland that you waited until you entered government before you gave up your principles" resonates without a single note being out of tune.

Trial by jury is a fundamental bulwark of a democratic system. Even bodies as conservative as the UN oppose the use of non-jury courts. In Ireland the usurping of the principle of a trial by a jury of our peers by placing justice in the hands of judges, has long been a policy of the right. As Sinn Fein inexorably continues its right-wing journey it too is eager to demonstrate that it will swoop on the carrion of the justice killed off by the predatory right so that it might stand shoulder to shoulder with Fine Gael and everybody else it previously condemned for having done likewise.

While younger radicals take to the podium to appeal for a defence of the democratic right to a fair trial, old conservatives with courtroom form are trundled out to make the pitch. It is the "sensible" thing to do, Gerry Kelly assured delegates in the Helix. Aye Aye, Captain. Kelly who has long been in his party's cruiser weight division now sounds remarkably like another Cruiser who supported measures such as non-jury courts. Yet back in the day it was felt by the Kelly generation of Provos that the Cruiser dead would be a service to humanity.

Forget all that: the dead can't remember in any case. Forget, too, previous protestations and assertions that no-jury courts are just "plain wrong” and happen to be opposed by international human rights bodies, while you deliver a deft Rabbitte punch to the solar principle region.

Maybe there is a reason for no-jury courts, one that I am unable to see and which sensible politicians like Gerry Kelly in their political wisdom can discern. But just think of how many people would have been alive had Captain Sensible and the rest of us adopted such a stance many years ago and instead of joining the IRA had flocked to Fine Gael who remain as consistent on no jury courts as they did half a century ago.

It is a terrible thing to kill other people because of what we believe in. It is even more terrible to kill them because we believe in nothing at all. From being plain wrong Captain Sensible is now there to assure us that no jury courts are just plain right. From no pasaran to no principle, the journey is almost complete.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.