Opinion

Denis Bradley: Time to facilitate the disbandment of whatever is left of the IRA

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley is a columnist for The Irish News and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

The Official IRA decommissioned weapons in 2010
The Official IRA decommissioned weapons in 2010 The Official IRA decommissioned weapons in 2010

The new IRA and the newish Irish government have been drawn into that old familiar political swirl: the question of leadership.

Recent events have forced both to examine the intricacies of leadership, how much of it comes from within and how much is subject to external forces.

Long before the outrage about the golf dinner the government was being heavily criticised for indiscipline within the parties and confusion in its various messages to the public. The media was becoming more outspoken about Micheál Martin’s inability to control his own party members, Leo Varadkar’s disloyalty in briefing against his own government and Eamon Ryan of being too polite to challenge either of them.

The golf dinner fiasco may have been a blessing in disguise. The public anger, fury is probably a better description, drove the government into a huddle. The outrage was so great that no one’s reputation or political head was safe. A baying mob is seldom a pretty sight. It encourages every prejudice and ugly passion to be vented. But it is also a revelation that leadership has been dissipated to a point where political authority has been dangerously weakened.

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The three leaders of the coalition have been given a second chance. They have seen the fury and they will have got the message that the people want leaders who are not preoccupied with old historical or selfish ambition. That second chance doesn’t happen that often in politics and it is going to be interesting to observe the response and the performance of Martin, Varadkar and Ryan.

The events of the last week have also clarified that the New IRA has run out of chances. It has been obvious for years that the IRA has been sinking into a morass. Every attempt to purify it, to straighten it up has ended in failure. If the reputation of getting up early means you can lie to dinner time, the reputation of shady transactions and infiltration by informants ensures a death shroud for a residual IRA. Despite being advised by critics and semi-supporters alike that their status within their own community is beyond redemption and all the evidence that they were riddled with informers, they continued to expound old tired slogans that have no credence or reality in this age.

The nationalist/republican community will not turn up at their doors to berate or drive them out of town, there is a residual fear of the gun, but the recent saga of entrapment reduces them to a status beyond contempt within that community. It spells the need for whatever leadership remains to create the space where the methodology of disbandment can be decided as to how to bring it all to an end with as much dignity as can be mustered.

Denis Bradley
Denis Bradley Denis Bradley

And this is where the new replaces the old. The Irish government must facilitate the disbandment of whatever modicum of the IRA that is left. It must encourage and facilitate the growth of community policing in areas where the presence of the IRA made it difficult. It should have a seminal role in the drive to recruit more young nationalists into the police. The A5 road should be pushed ahead and the nettle grasped that there will never be a proper university in the north west if the decision is left to the present university authorities or to the political and civil service establishment in Belfast. That is just for starters.

The Irish government must do more than turn up at funerals and formal negotiations. It must realise that in the minds of many nationalists, the Irish government is their government; Micheál is their taoiseach and Leo is their tánaiste. It is part of their task to make that real in the lives of those people. They have been given a second chance to realise that they are not just the leaders of their parties. They are now the government. Govern better.