SDLP is right to recall the assembly on Sinn Féin’s paramilitary breach of it’s own covid regulations

So the PPS in Belfast has junked the application from the PSNI to prosecute no less than 24 Sinn Féin politicians under the criminal law. They lay out their reasoning in a statement yesterday. Take that as you like but it’s pretty final.

That’s the legal door closing with a dull thud. It’s not hard to see their logic. The messy shifts in the law could give the defendants many opportunities for finding a technical loophole, despite the fact some of them framed the law itself.

Given the scale of the organisation of what was a quasi military funeral for a figure with a fearsome reputation as a paramilitary chieftain, sending it on to the courts might have sent a message of equality of all citizens under the law.

That was not to be. And yet, as the SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole said on last night’s Spotlight (about 8 mins in), the question people across Northern Ireland will asking themselves is ‘how does accountability work’?

The cynic’s response will be that in Northern Ireland, “it simply doesn’t”. But in truth, where it doesn’t, is a democracy teetering on the edge of dysfunctionality and not, as O’Toole points out, because of any split between Orange and Green.

There is a cosseting indulgence of an invidious form of anti pluralist politics which sees the law as an instrument with which to bind its opponents but which never under any circumstances can be admitted to apply to it. This was not a family funeral.

It was the American abolitionist Wendell Phillips (rather than Thomas Jefferson) who did in fact say that “eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty”. He added that “the manna of popular Liberty must be gathered every day or it is rotten”.

Given how sectarianism has upheld this accountability free zone, it must be nationalists who hold other nationalists to account (as the SDLP is doing) and unionists, unionists. Liberals too should see their own stake in defending democracy.

“Bobby Storey makes contribution” by Sinn Féin is licensed under CC BY

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty