Everything Ulster - Election 2005

IT sounds nuts doesn't it? With their long-standing position being that the Policing Board is just a mask for an unaccountable force for British occupation on the island of Ireland (or something like that). However, that's the story tucked away at the bottom of page 8 of today's Daily View (no website as yet) after it was hinted at in Gerry Adams's "Keynote speech" yesterday.

According to the Daily View, senior IRA members across Belfast have been told that Gerry Adams wants to 'move the process' forward by signing republicans up to the policing system and standing down IRA 'volunteers'. The paper goes on to claim that Adams's mid-Ulster cohort, Martin McGuinness has delivered a similar message to the IRA members in the north west of the province.

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According to an unnamed source this, for republicans, is a much bigger step than decommissioning and anything else that has been done up until now.

The source goes on to claim that it will be a step too far for some pIRA members, at the same time as fears have been raised of a dissident republican campaign to be waged in the run-up to the General Election on 5th May. That said, another senior republican is said to have predicted that "those who have stayed with the leadership throughout the last ten years will stay with it now too. Many senior republicans like Martin Meehan have already said that the war is over. This process will make it official."

Surely this has to be welcomed as a step, admittedly a long overdue step, but a step nonetheless, towards normalising Northern Ireland and the PSNI. I can't help but wonder if this is a reaction to the events of a few weeks ago, when the SDLP were unable to prevent the sanctioning of a new type of plastic bullet for use by the PSNI, in no small part due to the absence of any Sinn Fein representation on the policing board. At the time the SDLP received much criticism from Sinn Fein for their ineffectiveness. Perhaps the time has come for Sinn Fein to admit that abstention from the polcing board, like that from Stormont and Leinster House, was the wrong course of action.

At the same time, I can't help but feel for some of the officers. There are bound to be more than one or two who are a bit uneasy at having decisions made about their work by people who have spent 30 years or more trying to kill them and their colleagues. You can't really blame them if any of them feel uneasy with this. But lets treat this, for now, as an acceptance by Sinn Fein that they realise they can't bomb and shoot their way into a united Ireland and that for the forseeable future, they will have to work with unionists and others, if they want to make this corner of this island/these islands the best it can be.

But lets not get carried away. This is, like yesterday's announcement, just a story. Until something concrete is actually delivered and Sinn Fein take their seats, any optimism should be cautious and guarded.

Source: Daily View, 7th May, page 8: "SF to join Policing Board" (not online)