Gunned Down In Omagh

Anthony McIntyre ☠ The attempt on the life of a senior PSNI figure in Omagh has prompted a spurt in public discourse.

It was of a type we are familiar with from the era when there were endless crises in the peace process, most of them manufactured for political advantage. The process was too big a gravy train to be allowed to come off the rails. Crises just led to more gravy for more snouts to slurp around in. There was no serious existential threat to the process. Nor is there today.

In the aftermath of the Omagh shooting politicians and the media have fed into a moral panic not seen in the wake of a range of killings in the North, including a number that were investigated by the seriously injured cop: Natalie McNally, Mark Lovell, Shane Whitla and Ryan McNab. Abhorrence amplification notwithstanding, the fallout from the shooting of John Caldwell will be no more destabilising than the killings he had investigated. Northern society nor its peace is going to fall apart.

Every which way, this makes the attack on John Caldwell all the more purposeless. It has not advanced the ostensible republican goals of the people responsible one inch. All it has achieved is a reaffirmation from society that physical force republicanism is deeply unpopular; that whatever the wrongs of Northern society, killing is not the way to make things right.

Whatever the demerits of the Provisional IRA guerrilla war against the British state - too numerous to mention - it could at least lay claim to some measure of popular support and legitimacy. There is no guerilla war being fought by republicans today. Just a reminder every so often that they haven’t gone away, and that every now and then they will attempt to kill someone for an end not discernible to anyone, perhaps not even themselves.

The shooting of John Caldwell is as unpopular as the killing in Drogheda of the teenager Keane Mulready Woods. It brought similar sentiment onto the streets in protest. Claiming political motivation does not justify an attack or make it any more acceptable than an attack carried out for other reasons. It merely explains or worse excuses why it was done. A failure to understand why the bulk of others do not understand the logic of killing people is a sure indication of having lost the plot while retreating into a self referential tenebrous vault. The ideology of the cave cult and not that of the Cave Hill where traditional republicans sometimes trace their lineage to.

Everybody who wants to shoot somebody else whether in a gangland way or out of fidelity to a homicidal ideology will rummage around for some sort of justification. It was said somewhere online today that as long as Britain remains in Ireland there will be armed resistance. That makes as much sense as claiming that while there are shops in Ireland there will be shoplifters.

It requires a particular hatred to gun down somebody in front of their own child and the children of others. Everybody at the scene was targeted in some way. Ideological hatred, like its theological soulmate, is to be abjured.

A republicanism that does not have as a priority the preservation of life contributes nothing more to society than gangland. John Caldwell was gunned down while doing something useful by people doing something harmful. It is not hard to figure out where the sympathy vote will go.

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