THE IRA'S `MISTAKE'

Patrick Bishop on the

meaning of the Poppy Day massacre for Republican terrorists

`A WOMAN came out and the other man held her . . . . I just fired at the man in the hallway. I can't remember seeing that man's face but I killed him. I have prayed many times for that man since and for his wife. Why did it have to be me? I couldn't kill a dog but I killed that man. What is my wife going to think, what is my family going to think?' Looking for remorse from captured IRA men is rarely a rewarding experience. When sorrow is expressed it seldom lasts long. Within a few days of uttering the above words Kevin Barry Artt retracted his confession to the murder, on his front doorstep, of Albert Myles, the deputy governor of Crumlin Road prison in Belfast. Later he broke out of the Maze prison and is now on the run, suspected of involvement in numerous outrages.

It is possible that the perpetrators of the massacre at Enniskillen have felt some unease as a result of their actions but it will probably be as transient as Artt's. But there is genuine dismay among the pseudo- politicians at the head of the organisation, not so much at the loss of life but at the harm that has been done to Sinn Fein's pretensions. Hence Gerry Adams's ex- pressions of regret and extension of sym- pathy to the families of the dead on the day after the explosion.

The blast that brought down St Michael's Reading Hall has also done severe damage to the rickety political edifice that Adams and his supporters have spent ten years struggling to erect. Even the dimmest Dutch liberal or the most cynical London Labour politico will have difficulty parroting the notion that the IRA is engaged in a legitimate struggle against the occupying 'Crown forces' and sees no distinction between Prod and Taig.

The electorate in the Republic, whom Sinn Fein's candidates struggled so assi- duously to woo in the February election will be surely revolted for years to come. From the point of view of the stated aims of Adams, which are shared by the bulk of the Republican movement, the episode is a disaster. How then did it happen?

The bombing at Enniskillen breaks ev- ery current IRA rule of engagement. These were revised ten years ago after another mass killing of civilians when a petrol bomb planted by the Provisionals at the La Mon House Hotel in the heart of Protestant North Down burned 13 people to death. The La Mon House massacre was a mistake. The fleeing bombers stopped to flag through a warning but the phone box was out of order. By the time they got to one that worked it was too late.

The revulsion that followed this incident led Adams and Martin McGuinness (who took over from him as IRA 'chief of staff), who were already taking their first tenta- tive steps down the political path, to impose new rules to avoid a repetition. Henceforth 'volunteers' must take care to avoid civilian casualties and cut out high risk bombings on buses, trains and hotels.

A brief glance at the civilian death statistics in the ensuing years shows how effective that instruction has been. Civilian casualties persistently outnumber those of the security forces in Northern Ireland. So far 60 have been killed this year alone against 37 in 1986. Nonetheless there has been a general acceptance in recent times that if you are in the ballots as well as bullets game, civilian massacres are bad for business.

The last occasion on which Gerry Adams was moved to express 'regret' was after the Harrods bomb which killed eight in 1983 and imposed a (temporary) froideur on the warm relationship springing up between Sinnn Fein and the Livingstone London left. The Enniskillen bombing is special because it seems to go further than pre- vious bombings in its wantoness. Unlike Harrods and La Mon House there was no attempt to phone a warning. The IRA have claimed that the bomb was intended for the security forces and went off by accident possibly triggered by an army radio scan- ner. Even if this is true it is impossible to see how such an operation could have been planned without envisaging civilian casual- ties, and Protestant ones at that.

Anyway the Provisionals have a long record of trying to wriggle out of responsi bility for atrocities. After Bloody Friday which killed nine in Belfast in 1972, Sean MacStiofain made the fantastic claim that the security forces had deliberately ignored warnings in order to blacken the IRA's image. The incident is probably better seen as a fit of murderous frustration where the perpetrators' desire for revenge persuaded them to flout the existing rules.

This year has been a bad one for the IRA. After opening with a rich crop of assassinations, culminating in the murder of Judge Maurice Gibson and his wife Cecily in April, it has practically all been downhill. So far IRA men have been killed and at the end of last month more than 150 tonnes of weapons were seized by the French off the freighter Eksund. There have been equal reverses on the electoral front. In the elections in the Republic in February Sinn Fein managed to attract a pathetic 1.85 per cent of the first- preference votes.

The most painful setback came with the killing of eight of the IRA's most energetic terrorists in an ambush in the Armagh village of Loughall in May. This incident has created a powerful appetite for vengeance. An IRA team was despatched to Britain to redouble efforts to kill the Prime Minister off, failing that, Tom King. Their efforts have been frustrated. Nor have they been able to bring off an answering 'spectacular' in Northern Ire- land. Enniskillen may well have been intended to be it.

In the light of Gerry Adam's discernible ambitions it is hard to believe that the operation — even in the form claimed for it in the IRA statement — had the lead- ership's blessing. Its nature — the setting, the Protestant crowd, the near certainty of civilian deaths — all give the lie to Sinn Fein's attempts to present Republican vio- lence as accurate and apposite.

Instead Enniskillen may well be taken as an indication of the IRA chiefs' lack of control over their men in the field. The units that operate along the border have had a history of independence since the present troubles began. The South Armagh unit for example exempted itself from the 1975 ceasefire. This is partly the result of distance from Dublin and Belfast, partly to do with the fact that by going public Adams and McGuinness can no longer exercise direct control on events on the ground.

After the damage that Enniskillen has done to Adams' strategy we can expect an almighty row inside the Republican move- ment. Some attempt will undoubtedly be made to impose stricter discipline on those who plant the bombs and pull the triggers. The promised inquiry is unlikely to devote much time to the morality of the action. Nor should we expect the miscreants' punishment to be too harsh. Killing civi- lians is not a kneecapping offence in the IRA list of crimes.