REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP MUST ALSO BEAR ITS RESPONSIBILITY
Republican leadership must also bear its responsibility for the Omagh tragedy
THE myth of bringing people along.
The strategic awareness and operational co-ordination of republican dissidents who now form the nucleus of the Real IRA has been the centre of speculation for some time. Structurally this subversive, violent organisation is politically inchoate with no electoral base of supporters to consider, consisting of people intensely resentful of the Provisional leadership's peace strategy and most dangerous of all, incorporates a degree of both highly experienced senior military figures and highly inexperienced but committed young operatives. These three factors account for the deeply disturbing and senseless loss of life and limb in Omagh town centre on Saturday afternoon.
The second factor here cannot be understated or ignored and as an Irish republican it is my painful duty to state this categorically. The individuals who planned this disastrous action are people who until recently, placed an intense (albeit dubious) trust in Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. As members of the provisional republican movement, they had been 'briefed' that the now canonised peace process was merely 'another front' of struggle both consistent and complimentary to a continued use of revolutionary armed struggle. When they realised that this was not the case and that part of the provisional leadership's strategy was to out-flank those opposed to constitutional reformist political activity within the Northern state, a new, separate structural republicanism based on physical force was inevitably established.
Responsibility for the bomb blast that killed 28 people must not only lie with those who planted the bomb. It must also be recognised as the evil fruit of years of callously dishonest manipulation of the provisional republican base and indeed those who designed Saturday's attack. Gerry Adams, it pains me to say, must bear his responsibility in all of this. He had recently been lauded by certain sections of the media for his brave realism in bringing his people along in this process and has cynically gained massive political and electoral capital in doing so.
Far from bringing his people along in terms of an honest statement of policy objectives, open debate, continual exchange between the base and the leadership, Adams and McGuinness have treated their people with utter contempt, subjecting them to stage-managed annual party conferences and rallies and to techniques of information management and manipulation of their collectivist characterology to the extent that any security service in the world would be proud. This has undoubtedly created a new level of cynicism and abject hatred of the agreement to which the Adams leadership signed up to. and this in turn was all too horribly manifest on Saturday. If republicanism is to ever transcend the quagmire into which it has allowed itself to sink then it must now transcend its increasingly degenerative, oligarchic and internally undemocratic tendencies of treating people as a means and means as ends.
Name and address supplied
THE myth of bringing people along.
The strategic awareness and operational co-ordination of republican dissidents who now form the nucleus of the Real IRA has been the centre of speculation for some time. Structurally this subversive, violent organisation is politically inchoate with no electoral base of supporters to consider, consisting of people intensely resentful of the Provisional leadership's peace strategy and most dangerous of all, incorporates a degree of both highly experienced senior military figures and highly inexperienced but committed young operatives. These three factors account for the deeply disturbing and senseless loss of life and limb in Omagh town centre on Saturday afternoon.
The second factor here cannot be understated or ignored and as an Irish republican it is my painful duty to state this categorically. The individuals who planned this disastrous action are people who until recently, placed an intense (albeit dubious) trust in Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. As members of the provisional republican movement, they had been 'briefed' that the now canonised peace process was merely 'another front' of struggle both consistent and complimentary to a continued use of revolutionary armed struggle. When they realised that this was not the case and that part of the provisional leadership's strategy was to out-flank those opposed to constitutional reformist political activity within the Northern state, a new, separate structural republicanism based on physical force was inevitably established.
Responsibility for the bomb blast that killed 28 people must not only lie with those who planted the bomb. It must also be recognised as the evil fruit of years of callously dishonest manipulation of the provisional republican base and indeed those who designed Saturday's attack. Gerry Adams, it pains me to say, must bear his responsibility in all of this. He had recently been lauded by certain sections of the media for his brave realism in bringing his people along in this process and has cynically gained massive political and electoral capital in doing so.
Far from bringing his people along in terms of an honest statement of policy objectives, open debate, continual exchange between the base and the leadership, Adams and McGuinness have treated their people with utter contempt, subjecting them to stage-managed annual party conferences and rallies and to techniques of information management and manipulation of their collectivist characterology to the extent that any security service in the world would be proud. This has undoubtedly created a new level of cynicism and abject hatred of the agreement to which the Adams leadership signed up to. and this in turn was all too horribly manifest on Saturday. If republicanism is to ever transcend the quagmire into which it has allowed itself to sink then it must now transcend its increasingly degenerative, oligarchic and internally undemocratic tendencies of treating people as a means and means as ends.
Name and address supplied
Further Information
Publisher: THE IRISH NEWS
Ref: IN/0194
Published Date: 24-Aug-98
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