Robert McCartney, father of two and devout Catholic, was stabbed to death outside a Belfast bar six weeks ago. Normally, the murder of a common man like McCartney would melt away into media oblivion. Instead, it has created a moment of crisis for Gerry Adams and his Sinn Fein party, political wing of the Irish Republican Army, and just on the eve of Adams’ annual visit to the United States for St. Patrick’s Day. It seems that among McCartney’s assailants were two IRA men. Per standard IRA practice, the murder scene was soon sanitized — the murder weapon destroyed, clothes burned and film from the bar’s surveillance cameras gone missing. And, of course, 70 or so eyewitnesses silenced for fear of IRA reprisals.
Not, however, Robert McCartney’s five sisters. You might say they screamed “bloody murder,” and the world has heard them.
The McCartney sisters — whose brother was a Sinn Fein loyalist — and a sixth brave woman, McCartney’s fiancée Bridgeen Hagans, are demanding the killers be held to account in the Northern Ireland courts. But IRA men are not in the habit of handing themselves over to police to stand trial in a court system they historically have deemed illegitimate.
The McCartney contingent, though, is keeping up the pressure, demanding normal justice. McCartney’s sister Paula has said the killers “should be pressurized” to turn themselves in and face the consequences.
The IRA response to this cry for justice was both stunning and stupid. They went to the McCartneys and offered to shoot the four men directly involved in the murder. The family rightly rejected the IRA’s twisted offer to be judge, jury and executioner, saying they wanted “justice, not revenge.” But the offer itself reveals that the IRA “lives in a parallel universe to the rest of civilized society,” per a Belfast Telegraph editorial, adding that the terrorist organization seemed to be totally unaware of their massive “public relations blunder.”
A whole host of other factors further complicate Adams’ usual “feel good” and triumphant visit here for St. Paddy’s Day. He officially arrives as the leader of a political party committed to “exclusively democratic methods,” as required by Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace agreement of 1998. But IRA blunders stick to Adams and Sinn Fein like glue — and they should. Michael McDowell, the Justice Minister of the Republic of Ireland, partners with the British Government in the peace process, has publicly stated that he believes both Adams and Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator in the peace process, Martin McGuinness, are members of the IRA’s ruling Army Council.
And the IRA has been doing some very undemocratic and unpeaceful things of late, the McCartney murder only compounding Adams’ problems of presenting himself as a statesman rather than a henchman. The $50 million robbery of the Northern Bank in Belfast in December was the handiwork of the IRA, according to the police. Raids in the Republic in February confiscated large stashes of cash, evidently part of an IRA money-laundering scheme, and McDowell flatly says that Adams’ IRA/Sinn Fein republican movement is a “colossal crime machine.” So shedding the image of criminality may tax even Adams’ powers of persuasion in Washington. He may be glib, but he’s not God — by a long shot.
The U.S. government, a strong supporter of the peace process, has not turned a blind eye to these events. Adams has not been invited to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day — but the McCartney sisters have. One of them, Catherine, has bluntly said, “I think some Irish-Americans have a romantic view of the IRA that doesn’t fit with reality. We’re (going) there to tell them what has really gone on in Belfast.”
Even if Adams downs some green beer and drifts off into a rendition of “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” I suspect the twinkle will be gone from his eye. He’s got a massive job ahead of him to extract his movement from that parallel universe of uncivilized behavior and bring it fully, fairly and squarely into an inclusive peace process.
James F. Burns is a professor emeritus at the University of Florida. E-mail him at burns@ise.ufl.edu
