Should McConville murderers be tried as war criminals?

Gerry Adams was unhelpful in responding to questions about Jean McConville's fate

Jean McConville and three of her children before she vanished in 1972

A young Adams at an IRA funeral

Gerry Adams was unhelpful in responding to questions about Jean McConville's fate

Jean McConville and three of her children before she vanished in 1972

A young Adams at an IRA funeral

Eilis O'Hanlon

November 10 2013 12:33 AM

The news began breaking mid-morning on Wednesday. Sinn Fein was about to make a "big announcement". Rumours swept Irish social media circles like seagulls following a returning fishing boat. It seemed a safe bet that it must have something to do with the harrowing and intense film on the Disappaeared which had been broadcast on RTE two nights earlier, the film that led her daughter, Helen McKendry, to say, "If it was any other country it would be investigated like a war crime."

No party could surely ignore the allegations laid once more at their leader's door, that he not only knew more about the fate of Jean McConville than he had previously admitted, but that he may have been responsible for her fate.

In the event, the announcement did appear closely connected to the Disappeared, though not in the way viewers shocked by the broadcast might have expected, even hoped. Instead, Sinn Fein revealed that it was in possession of further secret recordings made within Anglo Irish Bank, which it had now passed to the authorities. And ... that was it. Off they traipsed. In politics, as in comedy, timing is everything, and the timing of this pantomime seemed remarkably convenient for a party whose leader was reeling as doubts continued to be raised about his judgment and integrity. The Disappeared was still fresh in people's minds. Now, suddenly, this.

A deliberate distraction? Many suspected so, though SF denied any cynical motive. Still, it seemed pertinent to raise that old Latin phrase: Cui bono? Who benefits? The answer was clearly: Gerry Adams, whose 65th year is not turning out to be one of the Sinn Fein president's best. His brother, Liam, will be sentenced shortly for the rape of his daughter Aine. The prosecution has asked for a sentence of at least 15 years to reflect the seriousness of the charges. Questions will invariably resurface about Adams' handling of that situation.

Now he also has to face renewed accusations that, as leader of the IRA's Belfast Brigade, he was involved in the decision to have Protestant mother of 10 Jean McConville abducted, murdered and secretly buried for 30 years before her body was finally discovered. His response to questions posed by Darragh MacIntyre during last week's film were typically unhelpful, but the real damage was done by his demeanour; his clumsy, but revealing, offhand choice of words ("people go off, people disappear"); his inherent unreliability as a witness to the past.

It's not that there was anything new in the programme itself. People already knew that the IRA's Brendan Hughes had, in tapes recorded before his death, made serious accusations against his former leader. Likewise, the story of how the McConville children were treated by local IRA members and supporters in the aftermath of their mother being taken away were harrowing, not least Michael McConville's account of how he himself, at the age of 11, was taken away by the IRA and warned against asking questions about his mother; but they have been heard before. It was the careful, quiet stitching together of the whole narrative which made it such a devastating portrait of dark acts undertaken in dark times.

It made the familiar newly strange and terrifying, exposing in the process much of the shallowness about the past which has been allowed to become the dominant propaganda of the peace process, and which Martin McGuinness, who ran on this same historical lie when he was seeking to become President,

Eoin Harris P28, Opinion P30, AND Analysis P36

was again stressing at last week's Oxford Union debate when insisting that the IRA never targeted civilians and that, if any innocents died, it was merely a mistake. In this version, the IRA is supposed to be applauded for its restraint rather than held to account for its crimes.

McGuinness's fairytale version of the past was deftly unravelled at the Oxford Union, but he remains an adept pusher of the false narrative. Gerry Adams, however, looks ever more ill at ease in his role as court storyteller; he's not in command of the nuances; he stumbles too easily and too often. Finally trapped in a corner of his own making, his only option is to stay there, then invite the rest of his party to join him as they're forced to pretend that they believe him too. Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt summed up the situation on Thursday's The View on BBC One, when he pointed out that the preamble of the Belfast Agreement stressed the need for "mutual trust" but that there can be no trust any more in Adams. Nesbitt recalled how, in The Disappeared, Provisional IRA founder member Billy McKee responded to Adams' denials that he was in the organisation with a challenge that he should "come up to me and say that to me face to face". As Nesbitt said: "I believe Billy McKee." The whole country does, and that is a profound problem for Sinn Fein, whether they choose to face it or not.

SF national chairman Declan Kearney's response was telling: "Of course I believe Gerry Adams." It would have been funny if the context was not so tragic. Kearney then tried to deflect attention by complaining that there was a media and unionist "agenda" to make trouble for Sinn Fein, whereas the truth is that any trouble currently faced by the party is entirely of its own making by continuing with slavish loyalty to a leader who, even if SF does well at the next election, will surely, by that point, be so toxic that he will be unacceptable as a coalition partner to any mainstream party.

Some SF groupies even claimed The Disappeared was a ploy by an amorphous "establishment" to tarnish Adams because they knew SF had more Anglo tapes, as if a film so long in the making, a compelling and tender piece of art in its own right, had been knocked together in a few days to scupper a minor party political announcement. The least Sinn Fein must do now is prove the contents of the tapes are dramatic enough to justify last week's theatrics, or Pearse Doherty will look as foolish as Pat Rabbitte when he declared that he knew of the existence of a document which would "rock the foundations of the State".

The worrying part of all this is that maybe SF didn't need to stage any distraction to draw attention away from Gerry Adams at all. There was curiously little reaction to the film in some quarters, which was doubly odd considering that RTE should rightly have been claiming credit for it, as a co-production with BBC Northern Ireland, with both Niamh O'Connor and Steve Carson, former director of television, acting as executive producers. Morning Ireland did a brief preview on Monday, but there was no follow-up on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday ... Sean O'Rourke didn't discuss it either, except to solicit an even briefer denial from Tony Blair that he "honestly" did not know the truth of allegations about Adams' IRA past, proving that the game of deception is now played at many levels. News At One, Liveline and Drivetime likewise all passed in a wasteland of silence. Bad things fester in silence and darkness. That's where the ultimate lie takes root, the one which Gerry Adams was again peddling last week: "All of us bear responsibility." No. All of us don't. Those guilty of war crimes do.

Should McConville murderers be tried as war criminals?

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