First, the IRA is an organisation that ordered its membership to “to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means.”
and “not engage in any other activities whatsoever.”

It also an secret organization that does not disclose its membership, nor confirm or deny the membership status of individuals.

So what sanctions the IRA could apply to a member suspected but not convicted of criminal activity?

The only apparent sanction that the IRA could use which would comply with the first statement to deny membership to the individual.

Does anybody have any other suggestions?

What are the standards of proof to be used when asserting that the IRA or any organization is a criminal organisation?

Personally I believe in the established standard of innocent until proven guilt in a court of law.
(with all the usual established judicial safeguards and assuming that the Northern Irish judiciary are capable of delivering justice), therefore several people convicted of serious crime and IRA membership would indicate that that IRA is still engaged in criminal behaviour.

Participants in this debate seem to reject as standards of proof:
the assessment of the British goverment (Haines)
the assessment of the IICD (an quango set up at the request of and designed to reassure Unionists)
but rely on the hearsay reports of a senior PSNI officer’s commentary.

Is that the burden of proof required now??

“Clearly, Sam Kincaid has condemned the PSNI as being a criminal organisation by his own logic.”

Clearly, Shaun Woodward has employed a rationale that could make that point – however, Mr Woodward intended his rationale to imply that the IRA is not a criminal organisation. So he’s got himself tied up in a logical knot, and I’m afraid that you haven’t so much untangled it as picked it up and swung it around.

PS: I’d venture to suggest that fobbing people off with academic terms and concepts won’t work too well around here.

Now, if it helps the “others” at all, it’s called Aristotle’s drawn-out “Barbara” syllogism. And it is valid. Object X that has property Y belongs to category z, object W is object X and has property Y, therefore, object W belongs to category z.

P.S. Shore, kindly reading the comments presented. (Politeness added to appease Mick)

Please feel free to hammer home the criticism as hard as you like. The comments page is precisely to serve that purpose. But, whilst you are taking advantage of that freely offered platform, there really is no need to show such discourtesy in return.

“I’ll let the readership be judge of the veracity of your syllogism.”

The Dubliner has it spot on. He’s making the same point as Woodward, that we always need to make a distinction between the actions of individual members and the organisation as a whole. That’s a conflation that political opportunists will exploit if given half a chance. And we’ve seen enough of that already.

Otherwise, as he quite rightly pointed out we’d have to conclude that the PSNI was a criminal organisation too.

So more sense please, and less of the non sense.

I wasn’t doubting the veracity of the figures. I’ll let the readership be judge of the veracity of your syllogism.

But can you please drop the personal asides to other posters? It’s both condescending and it distracts from the core of the argument.

In case folks are really thick. Here it is in simple syllogistic format:

An organisation whose members engage in criminal activity is a criminal organisation.
The PSNI is an organisation whose members engage in criminal activity.
Therefore, the PSNI is a criminal organisation.

Clearly, a distinction (by whatever expedient) must be made between an organisation and the activities of some of its members, or we accept the false premises as true and therefore must except the conclusion as true. In this example, that the PNSI is a criminal organisation.

BettyBoo, try to acquiant yourself with the actual issue under discussion, there’s a good girl. It is this:

Pedantic semantics do not alter either the substance or logical correctness of Shaun Woodward’s statement that “There is clearly a distinction to be made between the activity of individuals and the intention of organisations.”

Now, let us suppose that Shaun Woodward is incorrect and that no distinction can be made between an organisation and the actions of its members. It then follows that all criminal actions by members on an organisation are criminal actions by that organisation. Since the PSNI is an organisation and members of that organisation have committed criminal actions, it then follows that the PSNI is a criminal organisation.

According to the Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, between November 2000 and March 2003, her office deemed 260 of the cases involving criminal allegations against the PSNI that it investigated to be so serious that it referred them to the DPP to prosecute. 30 criminal convictions of PSNI members followed and 50 cases are still pending.

Clearly, Sam Kincaid has condemned the PSNI as being a criminal organisation by his own logic.

The activity of the “PSNI/RUC/whatever you want to call” is governed by a public complaints procedure. Just in the way that the massive hike in reported crime in West Belfast may indicate higher rate of reporting of crime, rather than a massive crime wave, high levels of complaints against officers may be an indication of the health of the reporting system.

It’s hard to know without drilling further down into the context. But it’s also hard to use these figures to stand the premise you’re presenting us with.

Thanks for the statistical information which is available from the Police Ombudsmans website which is an acknowledged exxample of an independent agency which rightly imposes checks and balances on agents of the state.

I can tell you that the sum and parts of the complaints statistics compare favourably with just about every police service in the UK. And let’s not even talk about the Guards who are free to operate without anything like the oversight of the PSNI.

You see where I’m going.

To compare the exhaustive framework which exists to report on, analyse and protect (appease?) citizins against police illegality in this state with other paramilitary organisations is so bonkers you must have got the rationale out of a christmas cracker.

We don’t even know the extent of human rights abuses by former and current SF/IRA. People who disappear from police custody normally have some legal redress. People who disappear from republican custody normally end up near Cullyhana with their bodies mutilated and two in the nut for good luck.

And the means of redress? Well, you might try appealing against paramilitary excesses. I think the McCartneys have been down this road. The moral relativists at IRA HQ generously offered to murder the chief suspect. I don’t see Nuala O’Loan saying, oh yes, this police officer is suspected of murder. tell you what I’ll just nip off and shoot him.

Your argument is intellectually and morally pants.

“A paramilitary organization is a group of civilians trained and organized in a military fashion.
Paramilitary, like paramedic and paralegal, comes from Greek para (“beside”). Paramilitary means auxiliary military, that is, something not quite military performing military duties. “ From Wikipedia.
Does the IRA still constitutes a paramilitary organisation, since they don’t perform military duties as an organisation?
Just a thought.

The majority of complaints were: allegations that police officers had failed to do their duty and allegations of assault. Complaints of intimidation and harassment represented 37% of the total. 58 complaints involved the use of CS spray. 4 complaints were incidents in which people died. Of those 2,800 complaints, Nuala O’Loan sent 149 cases to the Director of Public Prosecution, and sent 57 cases to the chief constable with the recommending that officers face disciplinary action.

Now, that’s not bad going in just one short year for what is indisputably the biggest organisation with the largest number of complaints against it alleging criminal activity in the north. No other organisation in the north even has a fraction of that level of criminality surrounding it.

And let’s not mention its history of collusion with unionist death squads in the wilful sectarian murders of hundreds of Catholics, nor its history in the direct murder of Catholics by its members, shall we? Let’s not. Otherwise we might accidentally put the issue of ‘criminality’ back where it rightfully belongs.

Well they have a wee bit of previous form for extra judicial executions.

It’s interesting that when it suits them the shinners and apologists on this thread can characterise the IRA as well meaning but essentially toothless with regard to asking its membership to stop making unauthorised withdrawals.

I’m a bit more sceptical about this. If the IMC did indeed support the widespread belief that paramilitary killers have mutated into equally squalid gangsters (killers without even a warped ideology – yikes!) PIRA might think not just of leaving the field but blowing the fucking thing into its constituent sods.

Look, I’m not going to add my voice to those who are trying to tell the IRA what they should or should not do. They are independent actors and will make their own decisions in their own good time. I’m just arguing that for further progress there has to be indisputable clarity on the issue of criminality.

I’ve no doubt that when the time comes all political parties will finesse the odd indiscretion, and the heavy lifting will get shared out appropriately. But all the parties to this ‘agreement’ need to be seen to anti up to their committments in a way that allows the real political game to get started.

Surely that’s the implication of allowing an ad hoc body to adjudicate (on the basis of secret intelligence) over whether the IRA is keeping up its end of the bargin?

I’ll paraphrase the logic in Woodward’s statement so that you may grasp it: “The sum is seperate from its parts, such that universals cannot be defined by individuals.” It means that the because some members of the RUC/PSNI colluded in the murders of lawyers Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, it does not mean that all members, nor the RUC/PSNI as an organisation, colluded in their murders. Nor does it mean that the PSNI is a crimimal organisation because some of its members are involved in crime.

“An organization is after all merely comprised of the individuals which are members of it.” – Comrade Stalin

Then you conceed that the PSNI is a crimimal organisation. Are you sure you’re not a shinner?

The IRA can simply issue a ‘cease and desist’ order to its members, but it has no means to enforce such an order. Unless, of course, illogical unionists are demanding that the IRA takes the law into its own hands.

What sort of action were you looking for Mick, should they have topped the culprits? Or kidnapped their fasmily members and forced then to own up?