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E-mailThe most recent "disciplinary act" of the Real IRA last February says exactly who and what they are. Kieran Doherty, a 31-year-old father, was a member of the dissident republican group. But they suspected him of involvement in a €500,000 cannabis deal. So they convicted him by shooting him twice in the head. The group is responsible for a growing number of attacks on PSNI members and their families as well as exploding a 250lb bomb outside Newry courthouse. They are responsible for the murder of two British army soldiers at Massereene Barracks two years ago.
They follow rigidly the old Provisional IRA "community punishment" template – shooting and beating people up for drugs crimes. Their first murder in the south was the shooting of convicted heroin dealer Gerard "Topper" Staunton in Cork.
Since when did crimes, even those as serious as drug dealing, carry a death sentence here?
Dissident republicans have no mandate for their violence, but they draw their recruits from neglected estates peopled by alienated and disaffected young men for whom there has never been a peace dividend.
Sinn Féin remains electorally strong, but the dissident republicans cannot be ignored.
The party has been regarded for some time as stale and too loyal to the leadership of Gerry Adams, who is fighting to retain his credibility following his denials of IRA membership and his handling of claims of sex abuse against his brother Liam. If passionate republicans are not to become hardliners, Sinn Féin must find new strategies to reassert its own relevance at community level. The impoverished, neglected areas of Belfast and Derry must be prioritised for investment and regeneration sooner rather than later.
The threat of the dissidents is acknowledged as real by all sides. It is distasteful to give them any voice at all. But it is better to know what they are doing and better to solve real grievances by legitimate means, so that the dissidents are pushed further beyond the pale. Then apply the full force of the law whenever and wherever it is broken by their warped attraction to violence.
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In the United States among the rank and file Irish, Gerry Adams is seen as a fraud. He is seen to have abandoned principle in favor of personal gain. He is not a poor man. The elite greet him warmly because at one time they were forced to back a "Brits Out" policy in order to get elected to Congress, but he gave them an out by accepting peace at any price and the British Peace Process. Soon the elite will back off from him as the growing resentment of him among Irish American voters increases.