Fever Pitch: Speculation Intensifies About IRA Disbandment
We’ve been watching the political situation in Northern Ireland very closely since reports of movement in the Sinn Fein/IRA camp at the weekend. Slugger O’Toole reports that the mainstream news sites are starting to pick up on the story and speculation and analysis have intensified amid claims that the announcement will be delivered later this week.
It’s probably fair to say that the recent bombings in London have made the republicans sharpen their pencils: these fundamentalists give terrorism a bad name! Couple that with the fallout from the Northern Bank raid and the murder of Robert McCartney and you have an organisation that cannot credibly claim a “protection of the people” mandate ever again! As all our terror organisations slip into their retirement years, they begin to resemble gangsters - organised criminals - even more.
I won’t speculate on the form of any statement the IRA make. I don’t really care. I will wait and see how things pan out on the ground.
As regular readers here will know, I don’t subscribe to either a Unionist or Nationalist ethos, I simply like Northern Ireland as it is. Perhaps if their statement is followed with affirmative action, then criminals will become accountable for their actions. Not hiding behind a terrorist banner. Not spreading intimidation and fear in their neighbourhoods. Not raising their young in the prejudices they grew up with.
