Dissidents hope that British are more stupid than them- Feeney
Brian Feeney’s opening observation in his Irish News column yesterday regarding those seemingly fixated with Sinn Fein’s response to events is, unsurprisingly, nowhere more relevant than here on Slugger. But he correctly identifies that the response of the British government is perhaps more important at this juncture, not least given how forceful republican leaders have been in positioning the party after the dreadful killings of the past few days:
“The correct response to the shock and dismay of Saturday’s murders is to pursue steadily and resolutely the present policies which so annoy and frustrate dissidents, not to announce any flashy security measures which would play into their hands but to proceed with all deliberate speed to devolve justice and security to locally elected politicians.”
This is a pretty confusing argument, in an otherwise reasonable piece by Feeney:
“Let’s be clear about what the Real IRA, one of the groups who claimed responsibility, want. They want the British army back on the streets mounting road checks, kicking down doors in nationalist districts and, ideally, meting out violence to nationalist youths who are then more likely to join RIRA. For people who call themselves Irish republicans to conspire to bring the British army back on to the streets shows how absurd the aims of RIRA are.”
Maybe they don’t want the British Army back on the streets? Maybe what the RIRA and CIRA want is the exact opposite, for these surveillance troops to be recalled now, giving the dissidents a victory and gaining them support?
It’s a little unfair to make such insights based on speculation, and then use this speculative ‘evidence’ as if it proved beyond doubt that the dissidents are ‘absurd’.
It’s easy enough to criticize the dissidents and these killings, and we don’t have to resort to unfair speculations on their motivations and strategy.
It’s always good to analysis Feeney’s pieces. Let’s put it this way, he works on many levels
The assumption that nationalists are happy is not entirely true,
his assumption that the disgruntled nationalists, do not support murder and mayhem is of course correct, regardless of who does it, however
I do feel, that there is (if we are being honest) a constituency, not small, alienated from the state, & politics, for one reason or another.