They Haven’t Gone Away

Advertise • Help • Contact Us • Permissions

Discussions Groups Events Blogs Photos Premium Irish Circle

Edit Profile Friends Requests Messages Updates

Discussions Groups Events Photos Blogs Irish Pubs Local Networks Expat Info GAA Clubs Rugby Clubs Dating Worldwide

Working in Ireland Working Abroad Currency Converter Jobs Ireland Banking Ireland Irish Sites

Info Ireland Vacation Packages Hotels Car Rental Golf Ferries Hostels Day Tours

Irish Name Register Passenger Lists Screensavers Advice & Resources

Irish News Music & Songs Recipes Proverbs e-Postcards History & Archaeology Heritage & Culture Mythology Irish Studies Literature Gaelic

Gifts & Jewellery Books Music Food Heraldry Clothes Other

Irish Voice

Columnists

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Read newsletters

Enter your e-mail address to receive our weekly e-Newsletter:

Ireland Calling with John Spain

They Haven’t Gone Away

October 26, 2007

LAST weekend here saw an incident of IRA savagery that makes even a Quentin Tarantino film like Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction look tame. No guns were involved. That’s too quick and easy. We’re talking total savagery, sustained over maybe 10 minutes or even longer, which is quite a long time if you’re being beaten to death.

We’re talking about someone being hammered to death bit by bit with iron bars, and maybe baseball bats or pick-ax handles. We’re talking stuff here that would make Tarantino want to go out the back and throw up.

Experienced police officers who saw the victim, who was still semi-conscious after the attack, were shocked and described it as one of the worst cases they had seen. And some of these guys have seen it all. So when they say it was bad, you better believe it.

But, but ... I hear you say. The IRA has said the war is over and have renounced violence. They have turned over a new leaf.

They’re into politics these days. Senior Sinn Fein spokesmen last weekend said that Republicans weren’t involved in this. It can’t be the IRA.

Can it?

Well, I’ve got news for you. To borrow Gerry Adams’ famous phrase from a few years back, They Haven’t Gone Away, You Know.

The first time Adams came out with this line he was reassuring a Republican heckler at a big rally in Belfast who was worried about the IRA ceasefire. They haven’t gone away, you know, Adams said, smirking at the crowd.

He wasn’t smirking when I saw him on the news on Monday night. In fact he looked stunned, a bit like Dr. Frankenstein did when he realizes his creature has escaped and is no longer obeying orders.

What Adams said on TV was that Republicans (obedient Sinn Fein supporting Republicans, he means) were not involved, that this was a criminal act and that anyone who knows anything about it should go to the police.

Of course what he did not say, and could not say, was that he knows the gang involved is made up of former members of the IRA, known Republicans in the area that used to be called Bandit Country.

The appalling attack happened in a shed beside a farmhouse near the border in Co. Monaghan last Saturday evening. A young man called Paul Quinn, a truck driver from an area near the village of Cullyhanna in South Armagh, was brought to the isolated farm where he was taken into the shed and beaten by a Provisional IRA gang of around eight men.

It may have had something to do with diesel smuggling, or it may have been a result of previous rows that Quinn had got himself into with Republicans.

It’s quite possible that the IRA gang did not set out to kill Quinn. According to the police the aim was probably to beat him up in retaliation for the injuries they claimed he had inflicted on a Republican in the area and, separately, on another Republican’s son.

Whether this is true or not, we don’t know. But what seems to have happened is that the IRA men kind of got carried away, you see. Just like in a Tarantino movie.

The gang went to some trouble to get Quinn to the farmhouse. First they lured two of his friends there and then forced them to contact Quinn and get him to the farmhouse.

Once he arrived he was separated from the other two and brought to the shed where the savage beating took place. He was still alive when the ambulance got there but died later in hospital. His two friends were also treated in hospital for injuries.

Quinn’s family subsequently issued a statement saying that he had been in an argument with members of the IRA and had been told to leave the country. “Our son courageously and correctly refused to leave,” said the statement. “We believe that he was abducted by the Provisional movement and brutally beaten to death.”

It takes real courage to make a statement like that. We can take it that the family know who was involved and why. And we can also take it that the police on both sides of the border also know. So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens now.

No one doubts the sincerity of Adams and Sinn Fein in the decision to end the IRA campaign and to move on into the new era of peace and power-sharing. No one doubts the sincerity of the IRA Army Council when it said the war was over and that in future the members of the IRA would put their energy into politics. But it’s not as simple as that.

I remember pointing out in this column after the IRA ended the war that we were going to face a real problem in the future trying to normalize some of its former members who had been into all kinds of “fundraising” for the movement over the years.

We’re talking straight-forward robbery and also racketeering and extortion, often accompanied by extreme violence to make the targets pay up. We’re talking about IRA members who saw themselves as an elite in their communities and who regarded having jobs as something beneath them. Jobs are for ordinary people.

They sat around, often in bars, like the Mafia bosses of their communities, sorting out disputes and terrorizing anyone who would not toe the line.

For people supposedly living on welfare, they always seemed to have money, transport and anything else they needed. They were feared or respected, depending on how you looked at it.

This had been going on for two generations of IRA activists and they knew nothing else. So the idea that when the Army Council said the war was over that they would suddenly, seamlessly, transform themselves into normal citizens was always a bit naive.

Many of them did, helped by substantial Republican funds that had been accumulated. But many more did not, operating in a kind of grey area between Republican activism and straight criminality.

Before the war ended, there were those who did “jobs” which involved keeping their “expenses” before passing on the cash to the cause. Some of them were worse than others.

There were those who beat up drug dealers on behalf of the community and later allowed the drugs business to go on as long as they got their cut.

This kind of stuff was going on not just in the North but in areas in Dublin and other cities in the south as well. In Dublin in particular, it was not unknown for criminal gangs to pay the local IRA for protection.

As the drugs business in the south soared into the billions with the Celtic Tiger, inter-gang feuds often involved assassinations and gun battles. The availability of former IRA and fringe Republican weapons, explosives and manpower made the situation worse.

This criminal drift by some former IRA members is hardly surprising. Many of them were on the fringes of it anyway even when they were “legit.” And it had an effect at all levels, even the simplest.

At one time, for example, the doormen on many of the big bars in Dublin were supplied by security firms with Republican connections. If there was a dispute at a bar, young toughs could beat up an ordinary doorman, but they knew that if they beat one of these guys up there would be horrific consequences. The “legit” security business worked because it depended on an illegal threat.

So the infection of a lot of criminality here by Republicanism has been real. And probably the worst area for it, unsurprisingly, has been along the border, especially the Republican heartland of South Armagh and the surrounding areas of north Co. Monaghan and north Co. Louth, where this young man was beaten to death.

Before the war ended, well known IRA families in this area were involved in a range of criminal activities, including the smuggling of fuel, tobacco and alcohol. This was huge business, with millions being made every year.

Even after the war ended, this continued and it is now so deeply ingrained in the area that it’s hard to stop. The local IRA godfathers and their associates still enforce their rule with an iron fist (or even an iron bar). They’re the untouchables.

Anyone who interferes with them or stands up to them is ruthlessly dealt with. And that’s what happened to Paul Quinn.

Since the IRA have supposedly ended the violence we have had high profile events like the massive Northern Bank Robbery and the Robert McCartney murder, and Sinn Fein has done nothing effective about them. But it is on the much larger number of less publicized and more recent incidents that they will be judged, like this killing.

Dealing effectively with the remnants of the IRA, with their former members who are unwilling to break away from the culture of criminality will be the real test for Sinn Fein.

If they can’t deal with them themselves they will have to do much more to help the polic e stamp out this scourge once and for all. It’s way past time they were gone away, you know.

Share this story: digg this | Add to del.icio.us

Print Save Discussions

Discuss

Email a friend