IT’S the wrong question, but since you asked - has the IRA completely disarmed? Well, no-one ever can really know, whether you’re John de Chastelain or Brian Keenan. The offensive materiel will have gone, with heavy weaponry no longer of any real practical military use now either. Of the rest, some is likely to have been nicked, some will have been taken by dissidents, and no doubt a few handguns will be kept handy for the odd occasion when community restorative justice fails to get the required result or the dissidents gets uppity.

But it looks like the bulk has been done away with, and that’s good enough for Tony - the appearance of progress. A handful outside unionism and even fewer outside Northern Ireland will care.

This was, essentially, a formal conclusion to the ‘armed’ conflict.

But for republicans, the struggle is far from over.

I doubt if total decommissioning would have happened if Sinn Fein hadn’t convinced the IRA how a united Ireland could be achieved by ‘political and peaceful means alone’, and now I have a vision of P O’Neill surreptitiously beavering away through his Oxford English Dictionary to find out just how elastic that meaning can be.

So aside from an old boys’ commemorative association, what else will the IRA morph into? A protection outfit for the SF elite? A fundraising organisation for Sinn Fein (with all the fun and games that could bring)?

Just as loyalists have been applying the republican game-plan to get what they want (“Wreck the place, then hold out your hand and scream ‘Themmuns have one, I want one too!’ until you get it, or at least Tony convinces you that you have it.”), so republicans must have been looking at how to continue the war by other means. Because that’s what politics here is. We seem to be settling down nicely for a kind of ‘civil cold war’.

Different fronts may open. We’ve watched a cultural war already at Drumcree and seen a bit of a sequel this summer in Belfast - though I suspect that the rerouting of an Orange parade was something of a pretext for the violence, as the real target of loyalist rage was the British Government.

You can be sure that unionists will jump on every Provo provocation - real or imagined - but it’s unlikely they won’t find something.

That ‘something’ may have been flagged up by Stormontgate and, no matter who was in the wrong there, I think it pointed ominously to a new battleground behind the scenes. To get political leverage without weapons requires a new approach to gaining the advantage on an opponent. Could political intelligence gathering replace the bomb and the bullet? After all, if unionists get leaks all the time, isn’t it simply replacing the old boy network with the new Broys?

Even if that proves to be wrong, unionists are still going to have to get their heads around the fact that there are a helluva lot of young, intelligent and qualified republicans out there who - through merit, ambition and ability - are going to have their hands on more and more reins of power. Over 3,000 applications have come from the Irish Republic to join the PSNI already, so no-one need kid themselves it isn’t happening already.

There are more degree qualified republican students in Northern Ireland now than ever before, but the perception of the Protestant community is that the unionist middle class leaves here to study elsewhere, never to return, and that the loyalist working class has an aversion to education, as there used to be an expectation of a good job, qualifications or not. That’s all changing, and loyalism hasn’t been coping well with the shift away from the old industries and certainties.

It is still incredibly suspicious of an emergent and confident republicanism, one that often plays by its own rules and gets away with it. The recent loyalist riots were a petulant cry for recognition. That doesn’t justify the violence;  it was the natural conclusion of the policy of ‘parity of esteem’.

Government policy aims to finely balance the ‘gains’ made by the two main communities. What it always failed to recognise was that it if it doesn’t appear to do so, it creates discontent in the other community. Tip the scales too far either way and you end up with a lot of street sweepers on overtime and cops on sick leave.

The problem for loyalism is that it doesn’t feel particularly held in esteem. And that’s pretty much going to continue to be the case when the only perception most of the world has of loyalism is men in bowler hats and swords throwing half-bricks at police. What loyalism requires to reaffirm its esteem in some cases, such as parades through disputed areas, might be too much for others to give. But there are pleas from the Great Unloved that are more reasonable.

I strongly suspect that now that violent republicanism has been sorted, the Secretary of State will turn his attention to loyalism. Like later today, at the Labour Party conference.

In Brighton, Peter will predictably follow the peace process pendulum over to the other side. He remembers from the state of the streets in east Belfast that he hasn’t invited loyalist community representatives around for tea since talk of that £70 million pay-off. He just hasn’t been holding them in high enough esteem lately. Conversely, loyalism dissed him right back in the only way that works with HMG in NI - an anti-State tantrum. The fact that there is no IRA to hit out against doesn’t mean there is no longer a target for loyalists to fire at.

Because loyalism no longer feels that the police - a powerful symbol and arm of the State they ostensibly claim to be loyal to - ‘belongs’ to them, the PSNI became the target in the recent riots. If the PSNI were heavy-handed, then its because they’re pissed off having to act as a sponge for gangs of petrol-bombing 13-year-olds with a passing knowledge of human rights legislation and big brothers with rifles, when they’re copping it in the neck from their Ma for not being able to catch the ordinary decent criminal that nicked old Mrs Smith’s Royal Doulton collection to feed his smack habit.

Loyalists think that they’re getting all the stick, while republicans got the carrots. Curiously, this might open another gap - between unionism and loyalism. Unionist politicians are clearly incapable of stopping loyalist violence, and have been copping flak for their questionable leadership. But loyalism may see the DUP as having ‘failed to stop the rot’ or make gains - and if politics doesn’t work… the self-destructive, nihilistic and intense street burning of late demonstrated pretty clearly that there’s a section of loyalism that no longer really gives a fuck.

Perhaps part of the problem was that unionists tied political progress so closely to IRA decommissioning. It could be that they sowed the seeds of their own irrelevance by making disarmament so central. The entire issue always leaves room for uncertainty, and the spotlight on others, as well as the acclaim. But disarmament is also a symbolic argument - the IRA could rearm if it chose, though it has no reason to - and it is a deal largely between the IRA and British Government.

By stringing out the decommissioning issue and retaining the threat of violence, and, when the threat was probably no longer even real, just doing enough for the two governments, the IRA remained crucial to progress. By never doing enough for unionists, republicanism has kept itself in a key position. It was a successful strategy.

Now loyalism is the same position. Loyalism is the new republicanism. It has, for the wrong reasons, the opportunity to make gains, some of which might actually do some good..

So I wouldn’t see the prospect of loyalist decommissioning as likely any time soon. If loyalists think republicans made gains through holding on to guns, so will loyalists. Because they know violence has paid dividends in the peace process. The thing is, if it follows the republican strategy right through, loyalism knows it has to grow up sooner or later.

This might create opportunities for the DUP, if there are concessions to claim while able to stall for time. The expectation that many have for a restored Assembly soon is fantasy. Sinn Fein may turn its attention South for the next elections, the DUP will be happy to wait for a few IMC reports, and might fancy its chances of finishing off the UUP.

The outside pressure it appears to be under is not real, as the relatively muted ‘unhistoric’ reaction on Monday indicated. The British, Irish and US governments are slightly more sympathetic to unionist mistrust of republicanism these days. DUP pressure will only come from within, and with republicans having bought into the idea of partition until a majority decides otherwise, Paisley won’t be in any rush back to Stormont.

The pot will keep boiling for a long time. Yawn.

On a more personal level, Mo was very likeable. On the few occasions I met her, she took the time to talk, and was chatty, personable and down to earth. She could be blunt too. Her first official visit as SoS was to Ballymena, and she was very well received. I have little doubt about what she would say if she were able to go back there today.

She was very human, but that means she made mistakes, just like the rest of us. After the murder of Charles Bennett by the IRA, she defined it as ‘internal housekeeping’, rather than the breach of a ceasefire. The legacy of that throwaway comment is still with us today, as loyalists slaughter each other, while the Government stands idly by and watches.

Talking to Mo wasn’t like talking to a politician. Some people who had meetings with her thought it was more like talking to a rather vulgar child, and I recall being told by one politician how she used to take off her wig and twirl it round her fingers when she had heard enough. Appalled by her brazenness and scared of her popularity, she was heavily briefed against when she fell out of favour.

Mo had little time for airs and graces, and she was widely regarded by the public as ‘one of us’, a regular person (though maybe a wee bit too rude and touchy-feely for a rather conservative place like NI), the child of an alcoholic father who battled bravely against illness, and brought a more human face to politics here.

In her own words, “a tough old boot”.

ADDS: There’s a good backgrounder on her illness and wig here.

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Interestingly, nothing was reported on Slugger the day Bert McCartney was killed, or the day after. At the time Sinn Fein were denying that the IRA had anything to do with the largest bank robbery in UK/European history. His death at the time seemed part of an all too daily occurance on the streets. Trying to extrapolate anything too quickly on a blog like Slugger invariably means you get it wrong.

Time passed. The BBC’s cheif security correspondent had picked up rumbles of dissent within the IRA, but saw it primarily in the context of accusations of guilt for the bank robbery in the media.

The first direct reference was a nighttime vigil, at which his sister refused to be drawn on the politics of who had killed her brother. Is it heaven or hell within Sinn Fein? feelings running high in McCartney’s home area of Short Strand.

Brian Feeney, previously sympathetic towards the Sinn Fein project, announces that widespread Nationalist support for the IRA’s position, viz a viz retaining arms, is now over! There’s a motion in Dail Eireann backed by government and most opposition parties calling on Republicans to end criminality.

The International Monitoring Commission warns Sinn Fein:

The leadership and rank and file of Sinn Féin need to make the choice between continued association with and support for PIRA criminality and the path of an exclusively democratic political party.

It’s not until more than two weeks after the murder of their borther that the sisters start talking to the press (and here) accusing the IRA of protecting his killers. Then Mark Durkan accused both the IRA and Sinn Fein spokesmen of attempting to cover up and diffuse a police follow up action with an orchestrated riot. Speculation follows that the IRA had been intimidating witnesses.

The Belfast Telegraph welcomes Gerry Adams’ statement that the McCartney killing was an unpardonable crime. The IRA followed suite with a condemnation of the killers. Nearly three weeks in, they cede the right for the PSNI to investigate the killing.

About this time, Arthur Miller dies.

According to one Sunday journalist in Dublin, the IRA’s options are closing. And one senior Northern Irish nationalist warns Sinn Fein that it is playing dangerously on this and the bank robbery. The dead man’s aunt agrees.

One southern Nationalist notes how the McCartney killing may denote a degradation in politics towards the purely personal. We wonder where it’s all going to end? Editor and journalist Robin Livingstone argues that whatever the political damage, the party’s vote will hold.

In the middle of all this Hunter S Thompson dies.

Sinn Fein’s bona fides (long taken for granted in the larger part of the British and Irish press) begin to come come under scrutiny. The IRA announces it’s held its own court marshall. Eamonn McCann a civil rights veteran compares it to a longstanding Irish nationalist grievance. Martin Kettle is the first to make an early mention of the Adams Arafat comparison. The Irish Foreign minister asks Sinn Fein a choose between politics and armed struggle.

As far as what went on inside and outside Magennis’s Bar, the only testimony in the public domain is a detailed IRA statement.  The family responded that the IRA were entitled to their own investigations but nothing would replace the transparency of court proceedings. By 10th March eleven men had been questioned, and the police had still not made any arrests. Despite Gerry Adams’s appeal to members of his party to help, the sisters continued to assert that local intimidation is taking place.

Despite all of this controversy, the party’s support appears to be solid. Though 44% of its core support want to see the IRA disband, and nearly 60% want it to disarm.

In the meantime (for all the media attention) as one of our commenters put it at the beginning: “all we have is a pub murder and a widow and orphans”. To that might be added five very determined sisters.

Northern Ireland’s Chief Constable has so far resisted all pressure to bring an early prosecution. In doing so Sinn Fein have accused him of playing politics with the McCartney case. However it pans out, this story is like to run a lot longer than one high profile visit to the US.

Although Sinn Fein was emphatic from the beginning that the announcement was politically motivated, commentators were quick seize on the indirect nature of the IRA’s denial. The SDLP asked, given the areas in which the operations took place, who else could it be?

At first most nationalist commentators stayed onside with the Sinn Fein line, with others taking a variety of positions. But, pressure was building, firstly on the fringes, with a questioning of the media’s general reluctance to put Sinn Fein on the spot. Then the weekend brought a remarkable change in tone - particularly in Kevin Toolis’s question as to which “political dunderhead on the IRA Army Council” was responsible for authorising an action that would inevitably bring fingers pointing back at the Republican movement.

Others began to question the terms of reference of Sinn Fein’s substantial democratic mandate. One interesting, but so far fruitless, twist in the road was the idea that an ex British soldier may have done it. Even steadfast supporters of Sinn Fein’s role in the peace process began to question why the governments were still talking to them?

Finally the taoiseach backed Hugh Orde’s accusations. There were other accusations that gross inefficiencies in the police response, were the direct result of political concessions extracted from the British government by Sinn Fein. The Economist noted concerns that the party and the IRA were playing the same game in parallel.

With the body politic in semi-shock, only a few were prepared to speculate on what the governments’ next step might be. The Guardian, appeared to turn its back on Sinn Fein. Tony Blair questioned whether Sinn Fein was providing political cover for the robbery.

The credibility vacuum, caused by the lack of hard evidence, actually seemed to play against Sinn Fein. Tom Kelly used the metaphor of monkeys and organ grinders to describe their relationship with the IRA. Despite concerns about dangers of losing the principle of innocent until proven guilty, or the party’s impressive mandate, the critics kept the floor.

One argued that if literally read, Sinn Fein’s mandate meant a majority of Catholics voted for bank robbery as a legitimate act. Most worryingly for Sinn Fein, the party’s most eloquent independent adovate, Brian Feeney, argued that Sinn Fein cannot expect to re-enter the process until its armed wing is stood down.

In the Irish Times, Fionnuala O’Connor noted that the party had not even begun to prepare its constituency for peace, but hoped “some dual-purpose Provos [will] hear how bad they sound”. In the same paper, Republican commentator Anthony McIntyre argued that the only thing sustaining the IRA’s existence, is the peace process itself.

As the week went on we saw some of the humour which was such a feature in the US election, with mock emails, forged bank notes and film trailers hitting inboxes in Northern Ireland and further afield - with Sinn Fein the consistent butt of all the jokes.

Unionists called for the process to move on without Sinn Fein, and in some quarters of the SDLP there were signs that message might find a credible answer.

And so the party continues. As yet, there is little sign of any tangible public evidence of IRA authorship of the raid arising. Nor indeed, any sign of a credible defence from Sinn Fein over the many questions raised by the crisis - not least its apparently anomalous position viz a viz law and order.

As reader James from Silicon Valley might put it: party on!