As I write this article I am very mindful that the families of Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison and Kevin McGuigan are in deep shock and trauma over their violent and sudden deaths and will be for many years to come.
I did not know Kevin McGuigan but I know he spent time in prison for his republican activities as a young man. I knew Jock Davison and his family well.
His father and three uncles were in jail while I was there and his uncle Brendan was shot dead by loyalists.
I know the communities both men lived and grew up in - the Short Strand/Ballymacarrett and the Markets. I lived in both areas during the conflict in the 1970s.
Both communities were heroic during the war years and lost many members for their loyalty to the IRA and the republican struggle. Scores of young people went to jail.
In these areas the IRA is highly respected for its role during the conflict and for its commitment to peace.
Thanks to the peace process the IRA’s place is firmly in the communities’ historical memory. It is akin to how I, as a teenager in the late 1960s, viewed the IRA from previous times.
The deaths of Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan not only plunged their families into a nightmare of grief and sorrow but also the communities they lived in; adding to the already heavy burden of conflict-related loss.
We might never know who killed these two men but what is quite clear is that their deaths are being used to undermine peace and political progress.
On occasions like this I always ask myself whose interests are being served by the ‘crisis to hand’?
A few miles from the Short Strand Britain’s intelligence services have a huge and inexplicable mission based in Palace Barracks at Holywood. What are its agents doing there?
We know beyond doubt that the Crown’s intelligence agencies are responsible for killing hundreds of people through collusion during the conflict. We also know they are responsible for using agents to kill, on occasions, their own people.
I wonder not only what they know, if anything, about the killings of Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan but whether they are responsible for spreading disinformation as well.
The shenanigans of the unionist parties vying with each other for electoral advantage at the assembly is undermining the integrity of the political process and the power-sharing institutions.
Now I hear republicans understandably but mistakenly saying that Sinn Fein should withdraw from the assembly and pave the way for an election to divorce itself from the shambles which Gerry Adams has described as Stormont’s version of Lanigan’s Ball.
The arrest of Bobby Storey and other republicans has damaged the integrity of the police as has the perceived stark difference in the police investigation into both killings. Seventeen people have been arrested following Kevin McGuigan’s murder with only a few for the killing of Jock Davison.
What does that tell us about the motivation of the police?
The Chief Constable, George Hamilton was viewed by many republicans as being different - a committed police officer keen to do the right thing. His own man.
But now republicans are asking questions and I understand why.
And then we have Peter Robinson's and Arlene Foster's ‘gatekeeper’ remarks.
The former unionist leader David Trimble wanted republicans ‘house-trained’. Now Robinson and Foster are patrolling the assembly’s ‘unionist’ frontier for ‘rogue’ and ‘renegade’ nationalist ministers.
How do they think those comments will play out inside the broad nationalist community? The remarks are an echo from a distant past when a former unionist prime minister said he would not have a Catholic about the place because they could not be trusted.
The difference today is nationalists and republicans are not only ‘about the place’ they are all over the place and intend to be.
And the leaders of the unionist parties have to accept and respect that reality.
The sooner they do that the sooner political stability will be restored and the pressing issues like welfare cuts and others can be dealt with.
