Picture: Murdered: Kieran Doherty

On the Wrong Road – Again

By Eamonn McCann

The killing of Derryman Kieran Doherty by
the Real IRA on 24 February sparked a firestorm of denunciation not just from
mainstream politicians and commentators but from the Left. Supporters of People
Before Profit were to the fore in organising a trades union protest rally in
the city centre.

 Kieran, 31, a member of the Real IRA had
been seized, stripped, shot in the head and his body dumped on a lonely road
just outside the city for alleged involvement in running a ‘cannabis factory’
over the border in Donegal. The cruelty of his killing and the grief of his
family touched a nerve in Derry.

Some of those who denounced the killing,
however, were reluctant to face the facts about ‘dissident’ Republicans and the
reasons they are able to keep operating.

 The Real IRA and other ‘dissidents’ do not
dissent from the Republican tradition at all. What they dissent from is the
departure of Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA from the tradition. This doesn't
make the dissidents right. It means that if they are wrong, then so is the
tradition of armed struggle of which the Provisional IRA has been the main
expression in modern times.

 Sinn Feiners denouncing the Real IRA are
denouncing a part of their own past which they are trying to persuade their
supporters – and maybe themselves - to forget.

 They are also wrong when they argue that
the dissidents have no support. The support may be more passive than active and
confined to particular areas. But it is growing.

This doesn’t have to do primarily with a
craving for resumption of armed struggle. Even in estates regarded as hard-line
Republican, there is no stomach for renewed war for a united Ireland. Many
might retain the aspiration. But for the present, they have parked it.

Support for the dissidents is rooted in a
different reality.

Whole communities have been left behind by
the peace process. They hear the babble from embedded journalists about joy
throughout the land at a new policing deal being done. Then they glance around
them, at the fact that, far from being empowered by the process, they have been
left powerless in the face of a new elite.

They look at run-down estates and
closed-down services, poverty wages, fear of losing their jobs or never getting
a job, anxiety about the future and the future of their children, and they ask
themselves - what have people around here gained from the changes which have
delivered so handsomely for those whose smiling faces we see on television
every night?

At least, some conclude, especially young
people, the dissidents are still fighting. This is the main source of the
dissidents' strength, and moralistic denunciation won't make a dent in it.

In the absence of any different, more
credible way of fighting back, in the absence of a grass-roots movement to
oppose the cut-backs, the withdrawal of services to the most vulnerable, the
lack of consultation on facilities and planning, in the absence of a movement
taking up and confronting the problems people face day by day and presenting a
vision of a better future, dissidents will continue to find ground to take
their stand on.

The task of the Left is to provide that
alternative, to show that there’s a better way forward than yet another round
of violence in pursuit of a united Ireland. This is the challenge which People
Before Profit has taken up.