SF are not out in the cold, over half a million fed-up voters have already brought them in

A lot of people not alone don’t support either of the old teams, they want to play a different game, writes

IS it time for our political establishment to bring the Shinners in from the cold? The question is, in itself, a denial of reality.

As Mary Lou McDonald told Hugh O’Connell in their interview in this paper last week, Sinn Fein policies are today being plagiarised by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, even as the tired old parties profess to find SF “unpalatable”. At the same time, the old parties remain hopeful they can use Sinn Fein’s past to influence the course of the future.

From the mid-1970s, the complex reality of the Northern Troubles was brushed aside by the southern political establishment. They believed that if only the IRA could be defeated, all would be sweetness and light.

There were reasons for this. The IRA was leaving in its wake a non-stop trail of atrocities. It was one thing to get nostalgic about the 1920 exploits of Dan Breen, something else to switch on your television and see body parts being swept up after the latest explosion.

There was also a real — though grossly exaggerated and fantasy-based — fear that the IRA would launch some kind of a coup attempt in the south. Some in the establishment were embarrassed by the violent image of the country. Others were simply outraged by the violence.

The atrocities involving those killed and maimed by the IRA were rightly denounced, repeatedly. But the belief that everything started and ended with the IRA created a skewed vision of the problem. And a shameful disregard of many of those killed and maimed who were not victims of IRA violence.

For instance, the 33 dead and 300 injured in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings were the wrong kind of victims.

The Garda investigation was inadequate. Evidence of British security force involvement got the blind-eye treatment. Judge Henry Barron assessed the event and criticised Garda and Government conduct.

The political establishment looked away, even from this criticism from one of their own. Only one minister — Justin Keating — had the courage to publicly question his own Cabinet’s response to the bombing atrocity.

For some years, significant parts of the establishment encouraged Garda brutality on the basis that it was happening only to Provos (which wasn’t true). As they encouraged it, they simultaneously denied it was happening.

I had an insight into the depth of the self-delusion when I wrote some years ago in these pages about how gardai beat a helpless suspect senseless. They then told a government minister what they’d done. And the minister — who is now dead — warmly approved.

The newspaper immediately received a letter in which the minister denied any of this happened, and threatened the usual legal consequences.

I had an impeccable source for the story. The minister had written a memoir — in which he recalled that event. At the earlier point, he wanted to sneer at his liberal colleagues and boast about his toughness — so he wrote about the beating. Later, he wanted to defend his reputation as a humanitarian, so he denied the beating, and forgot he’d put the truth on public record.

As human rights activists and journalists repeatedly outed Garda brutality, the establishment steadfastly denied it was happening. As did gardai. Sometimes on oath.

Gardai who reported that such things were indeed happening were slandered and isolated. Politicians denounced any such claims as Provo propaganda.

The consequences for the force, and its attitude to law and to the public, linger still.

When the IRA ceasefire was announced, some were adamant that it was a trick, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t happening. Since they believed the violence began and ended with the IRA, a peace process in which the likes of Adams and McGuinness took part was unacceptable to them — even if it ended the violence.

Albert Reynolds, in his short, unhappy time as Taoiseach, recognised the IRA ceasefire for what it was — an historic turning point. He acted accordingly.

Some in the political establishment made the impossible demand that IRA members simply line up outside their local Garda stations and hand over their guns. Such a comic-book understanding of what was happening contrasted with the plodding, detailed work in which Reynolds, Adams, McGuinness, Bertie Ahern, Mo Mowlam and others — nationalist, unionist and British — engaged.

Unwinding the Northern conflict was extremely complicated, with volatile elements on all sides. The August 1994 ceasefire lasted just 18 months, then there was more blood on the streets. It took

‘It had become like English football

— Arsenal or Spurs?’