If there was proof needed of the growing gap between Sinn Fein and the IRA on one hand and the liberal sentiment of Middle England, it’s buried, none too deeply, in the Guardian’s editorial:
The statement is rooted in the republican movement’s insistence on its own autonomy, in its private and closed belief system, and in its axiomatic insistence that it cannot be answerable to any other law but its own. “Our investigation,” it begins. But there can be no other proper body to conduct such an investigation than the police and no other process under which it can be carried out than a process of law. This is the IRA’s world and in this world there is no law and no enforcement but their own. In particular, there is no place there for the police or the laws of states – north and south of the border – whose existence they do not recognise.
It concludes:
It is a death sentence not to the killers themselves, whom the McCartney family – being normal people – want to see arrested, charged and punished in the proper way. It is a death sentence to the credibility of those who want to live in the IRA world and our world simultaneously.
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