Sisters Skeptical About IRA Disarmament

As the prime ministers of Britain and Ireland lauded the Irish Republican Army’s pledge last week to disarm, the family of a Belfast Catholic killed by IRA members was not celebrating.

The campaign by Robert McCartney’s five sisters against the IRA, and the international condemnation of his slaying, accelerated the IRA’s disarmament decision, analysts say. But the McCartneys, who met with President Bush on St. Patrick’s Day, remain skeptical about the group’s promise to become solely political, said Paula McCartney.

“I’d like to believe them, but does this now mean that if the IRA murders someone, they’ll be subject to the rule of law?” she said. IRA “volunteers” fatally stabbed Robert McCartney, a 33-year-old Catholic father of two, outside a Belfast pub in January. Evidence of the crime was destroyed, and witnesses were ordered to never speak of it, police said. The IRA later apologized and said it had expelled three men involved.

Two suspects were arraigned in June: Terence Davison, 49, on suspicion of murder, and James McCormick, 36, on suspicion of attempting to murder a friend of McCartney’s who survived.

Paula McCartney said that others involved in the attack continue to walk free in the Short Strand, a walled Catholic enclave in Protestant East Belfast.

The media storm that erupted over the killing of the forklift operator, who was defending his friend in a fight, tarnished the image of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political arm. In April, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams prompted the IRA’s disarmament decision by calling on it to renounce violence.

“They had lost control, and everything was disintegrating,” Paula McCartney said. “They couldn’t justify their existence any longer, and everyone knew they were only hanging around to line their pockets. What do you need armed men for if there’s no war?”

Though the 1998 Good Friday peace accord largely ended sectarian killing, the IRA and loyalist paramilitary gangs had continued to prey on their own communities as vigilantes, authorities say.

IRA members also allegedly stole $50 million in a spectacular December bank robbery, just after the collapse of negotiations to restore power sharing in Northern Ireland.

The fallout from the bank robbery paralyzed the peace process. But criticism from Belfast Catholics and Irish American politicians, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), over McCartney’s slaying was what played into the hands of Adams and the republican peace camp, said Adrian Guelke, professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast.

“It underlined the republican movement’s isolation,” he said. “It made it easier for what the leadership knew had to be done, and was helpful for persuading recalcitrant volunteers that they couldn’t ignore the outside world.”

The McCartneys did not set out to end the IRA, said Paula McCartney, who said she had never taken an interest in Northern Ireland’s politics. Now other bereaved families, including those of Protestant unionists who have been killed by loyalist paramilitary fighters, call on her.

“I was 4 when this all began, so this was all normal to me and people of my generation, who’ve known nothing else,” she said. “But Robert’s murder opened my eyes. I felt like I’d been lied to all along, that things didn’t have to be this way.”

Her brother’s death also forced the world to realize that Northern Ireland was still far from normal, she said.

The continued freedom of men involved in the killing, and the reluctance of residents to turn them in, has convinced Bridgeen Hagans, the mother of Robert McCartney’s two small children, and Paula McCartney to move, she said.

After a century in the Short Strand, the last remaining McCartneys will soon depart.

“I’m not leaving because I was intimidated,” said Paula McCartney, who will live in a neighborhood that is home to both Catholics and Protestants. “It’s because the people around here might be disgusted by what happened to Robert but they’re not willing to do anything about it. They think, ‘Oh well, what can be done,’ and I don’t want to breathe the same air as them.”

As the investigation continues, McCartney said, she hopes witnesses will be encouraged by the IRA ban on all activities not “peaceful” and “democratic.”

“This is a golden opportunity for the IRA to show they’re sincere,” she said. “They have the power to deliver these murderers. If they don’t, then nothing has changed.”