By Brendan Anderson

Sinn Fein, with its traditional resilience, will likely soon bounce back from the trauma of the Denis Donaldson affair. The party has, after all, weathered many major crises, albeit somewhat lower on the Richter scale of disasters.

A strategy, no doubt, is already being worked on to repair the damage inflicted on the party by Donaldson’s long-term touting. But it is the effect on Republican support, the ordinary Sinn Fein voter, which could prove interesting.

Grassroots supporters have been asked to accept an awful lot in the past few years.

Following the last, massive act of weapons decommissioning by the IRA and the standing-down of the organization, many life-long supporters have been left feeling bewildered and vulnerable. The advice was, always see the big picture, trust the leadership.

Now a figure, close to but not actually part of the leadership, has been exposed as an enemy agent. In Donaldson’s home neighbourhood, the tiny parish of St. Matthew’s in the Short Strand area, the mood is a strange mixture of confusion and subdued anger.

Donaldson, a tiny, articulate man from an old Short Strand Republican family, could be charismatic or irritating. He was liked and disliked in equal measure, but he had been around a few corners, enjoyed the friendship of the Sinn Fein leadership and was always believed to be a “sound” Republican.

Now his exposure as an informer has created massive doubt and uncertainty. It is only after some days that the enormity, the extent of Donaldson’s perceived treachery, is being appreciated.

While he may not have been a top-rank policy maker, he certainly took part in “think-tanks” which put forward suggestions for the leadership to consider.

Based in the Assembly buildings or at Sinn Fein headquarters, he had an insight into the thinking of the leadership. The thought eating at many Republicans this week is that because of Donaldson’s treachery, British Prime Minister Tony Blair would have had access to Sinn Fein’s position papers days before negotiations with the party took place.

Others too — families with members killed by security forces, for instance — will be wondering if the friendly little man with the ready smile, the quirky joke, was implicated in the death of their loved one.

Donaldson followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the IRA in the 1960s as a teenager and, through a mixture of ambition and a high arrest rate amongst volunteers, rose to the position of commanding officer in East Belfast. He himself was arrested while on a bombing mission in Belfast and served five years of a 10-year sentence in Long Kesh.

It was there that a smuggled camera was used to take the world-famous photograph of Donaldson with his arm around the shoulders of Bobby Sands, later to die on hunger strike.

On his release Donaldson continued to rise through the ranks of the IRA, eventually taking on the intelligence portfolio. In 1983 he stood unsuccessfully as a Sinn Fein candidate in Belfast City Council elections for East Belfast.

His role led him to the Middle East, where he was responsible for maintaining contact with guerrilla groups. On one occasion he was sent to negotiate the release of Belfast man Brian Keenan, who had been taken hostage by Lebanese fighters.

Donaldson reported that he and his colleague had come close to death when they were taken prisoner themselves and threatened with being shot. They returned home safely, but without schoolteacher Keenan.

In 1993 he was sent to New York to counter the influence of Irish Republican supporters there who were perceived to be in danger of departing from the party line.

Republicans, albeit in retrospect, maintain that Donaldson was always close to the centre of power within the party. The full impact of his informing is not yet known, and will be continue to be studied by party analysts for some time.

When he was released from Long Kesh prison, Donaldson brought home with him an old-fashioned Dineen’s Irish dictionary. Dozens of prisoners, including Donaldson, had signed the flyleaf.

Denis was fond of pointing out the signature of Chris Black, the first IRA supergrass. That flyleaf now contains the names of two informers.

Many years ago, Donaldson told this writer he had been approached by British intelligence agents while he and his wife were on holiday in Spain. He was not asked if he had declined the offer to work for the British.

In retrospect — a serious omission.