McGuinness blasts the IMC, but are the IRA lying?
Wednesday, February 1st, 2006As reported by Slugger, Martin McGuinness has blasted the IMC report (pdf) and branded the body the non-Independent Monitoring Commission (inventive).
Calling all statement it has made in its report against the IRA as politically motivated he remains convinced that former members of the RUC Special Branch are the ones handing down this information. He also asked for clear evidence to be produced, saying the public deserved no less.
It is debatable that his comments would have been less critical had the IMC been kinder on the IRA; one would be forgiven for assuming the report would have been praised rather than rubbished in that instance. It is also hard to know what he would deem as clear evidence; this report is based on the intelligence of security services North and South of the border and is not the direct work of the three-person body.
The IRA, for what it’s worth, has said that they have not reneged on any pledge made last July; and perhaps it hasn’t either.
The IMC have said that the IRA are still involved in leadership-sanctioned intelligence gathering however it seems they have no plans on using it in an armed campaign; all other illegal operations reported seem to be individual cases and not part of any higher order. So did the IRA say they would stop gathering information? Well, that all depends on how you look at it; in their July statement they said:
All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means.
Which, under the twisted logic of the IRA could involve intelligence gathering for political gain. It’s peaceful, it’s purely political and democratic (no elections will be rigged but candidates will be manipulated). Note the lack of the word ‘legal’ in the above (or in the entire statement for that matter.)
Once again it comes back to the fact that in the July statement the IRA made no pledge to disband, nor did they make any recognition of the Irish or British governments; even if they had promised to abide the law it wouldn’t have been anyone’s but their own.
So we’re still a long way away from the perfect situation in the North, and you can be sure that no Unionist party will enter government on any terms but their own. Whether the IRA has sold the public a dud statement or not remains to be seen.
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