If MI5 rules, What was the 30-year war all about? -- Stormont Watch

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Date Posted: Fri, Feb 16 2007, 20:48:10 PST
Author: John Kelly - The Blanket
Subject: If MI5 rules, What was the 30-year war all about?
In reply to: Anthony McIntyre-The Blanket 's message, "The Foreman" on Fri, Feb 16 2007, 20:37:33 PST

If MI5 rules, What was the 30-year war all about?

John Kelly � Irish News, 5 February 2007

Policing is and has been the defining issue for the Provisional movement because it is the last obstacle on their tortuous, deceitful, scheming and politically unscrupulous journey away from the core values of republicanism to the values of constitutional nationalism, values they derided in the recent and distant past as being second class in the context of this nation's struggle for its sovereignty and independence.

And the Provos transformation from actively opposing the PSNI to actively endorsing it was internally painless and externally acclaimed in London, Dublin and the White House.

So while the new soldiers of the new De Valera's 'soldiers of the rear guard' at the provo ard fheis waved their voting cards and cheered and stamped their feet in a stupor of triumphalism, the mandarins of the British securocrat establishment were raising their glasses to celebrate another victory over Provo republicanism.

The problem for the Provo leadership at the ard fheis was not about struggling with a republican conscience but about devising a political sleight of hand to make defeat sound like victory.

It was a political device that is symptomatic of a political culture that is driven by the pursuit of political opportunism and expediency that is underpinned by a narrow and selfish interest in a self-advancement that feeds on the cult of personality.

It is a political culture that is inimical to the best ideals of Irish Republicanism.

And with this political culture and with their political deceits this Provo leadership have drained the dignity from the sacrifices of the last 35 years, and terminally degraded Provisional republicanism.

However, in the Provos' history of deceits their deceits on policing are overshadowed by a more grievous and damning deceit that in many ways makes their deceits on policing a distraction.

And it is their deceits around MI5.

At St Andrews the Provos' much-vaunted negotiators did a shabby side deal with Tony Blair. This sidedeal marked a new low in Provo negotiations with the British.

We don't know what the side deal entailed.

We do know that without any explanation to the republican-nationalist community this deal gave carte blanche political and security control to MI5 over the PSNI.

Political and security control by MI5 without MI5 accountability. This deal has such sinister political and security implications for all the people of this part of Ireland - and in particular for the PSNI - that it demands from the Provo negotiators a detailed explanation of how this side deal was arrived at.

And when one adds to that the Provo negotiators' deafening silence over the British securocrats establishment constructing a �100 million-plus espionage octopus at Holywood, Co Down the plot thickens.

And when we recall that in November 1990 in another piece of political choreography between the Provo negotiators and the British security establishment, the then British secretary of state, Peter Brook, declared that 'Britain had no selfish or strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland', we have to ask those same Provo negotiators why they did not make the deliberate choice of Holywood by the British to house MI5 a deal breaker.

I can only conclude that in not making the physical manifestation of MI5 in Co Down a deal breaker, the Provo negotiators were conceding to the British political establishment its right to assert political and strategic control over this part of Ireland.

The republican and nationalist community are entitled to ask if the struggle wasn't about the removal of the British presence from Ireland, the ending of partition and the establishment of a sovereign and independent state on the whole of the island, what was it all about?

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Replies:

The need for an Anti-Imperialist United Front -- Philip Ferguson - The Blanket, Fri, Feb 16 2007, 21:10:44 PST