THERE are no neutral articles on any matter touching the North. Vincent Browne's extraordinary effort to discredit Sean O'Callaghan's critique of the peace process, taken together with his sideswipes at Conor Cruise O'Brien and myself, add up to a political position pretty close to that of Phoenix or An Phoblacht.
Perhaps this impression is inadvertent but should like to show Browne how it might arise.
It starts with his first sentence "Predictably, the usual suspects Conor Cruise O'Brien and Eoghan Harris, were gushingly approving, over the weekend of the revelations of IRA machinations offered by the self proclaimed informer Sean O Callaghan." Limp language apart band the style is the man the stock phrase the usual suspects has no political content. It is simply a sneer in the patois of Phoenix or An Phoblacht a signal of solidarity to all those still selling the peace process.
Then there are the quotation marks around "informer". Since Browne can hardly believe O'Callaghan is not an informer the quotation marks are signalling something. But what and to whom? After that the politics are more plain. Apart from such damning approvals there is good reason to be doubtful of O'Callaghan. This sentence makes no sense. After all, it refers to political judgment. And Conor Cruise O Brien, O'Callaghan and myself correctly predicted that the Provost would collapse the ceasefire. Browne and most of his media colleagues got it wrong. So what is the word damming doing in there except to signal watch me put the boot into people we don't like?
Which he does. Thus the professional foul "the tenor of O'Callaghan's premonitions, echoed by Messers O'Brien and Harris, is that there is a grave danger threat in the IRA's abandonment of violence and the adoption of constitutionalism. This is a travesty of our published positions which we arrived at from different angles and is an attempt to fog the fact that the IRA, are still at war. We want Sinn Fein to abandon violence. Sinn Fein has spectacularly not done so. The IRA will not go away. And it is also specious of Browne to pretend that the SDLP will be replaced by constitutional Sinn Fein.
It will be replace by an IRA front.
Like O'Brien and O'Callaghan, I believe that what Browne calls the peace process, Sinn Fein call TUAS tactical use of armed struggle, all civil war cocktail that is 10 parts political twist of terror. There are three reasons why TUAS is more likely to it lead to civil strife than the traditional military it causes, send out conflicting signals. Second, these signals turn up the tension in unionism and have them down road like Drumcree. Third, they corrupt the moral responses of the Republican come 50 per cent of our people no blame Britain rather than the IRA and subvert the shaming of Sinn Fein which was working so well in the early 1990s.
BROWNE sneers at us, but he snarls at O'Callaghan. And of course it makes sense to attack O'Callaghan's character. O'Callaghan, by his own confessional murdered two members of the security forces. But this poses a problem for O'Callaghan's critics be cause it is his crimes which make hi criticism of the peace process so cogent the greater the terrorist the greater the force of his testimony against former comrades. Browne tries to bluff his way out of this by being bitty. When did O Callaghan start working for MI5? Why does O'Callaghan say the Provos just want to kill Protestants when the policeman he killed was a Catholic? This nit picking reaches its nadir when Browne produces a Provos source" a nameless Deep Throat, to, clear up the problem of O'Callaghan having access to senior Provos as late as 1990 an access which would give great weight to his current analysis. Deep Throat told Browne that the IRA knew O'Callaghan was a spy at that time. So why did they give this spy a safe passage into the Republican compound. Because they thought the poor fellow was psychiatrically ill"? Given that the Provos have killed mentally ill people in the past, if Browne swallowed that he deserves The Deep Throat title himself.
But if Browne is credulous where he should be sceptical, he is cynical, he is cynical when interrogating integrity. Some of the most hard bitten journalists in the world have been struck by Sean O'Callahan's sincerity. Pat Kenny of RTE, Ryle Dwyer of the Examiner, Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe, Liam Clarke of the Sunday Times, Adam Boulton of Sky, Peter Snow of Newsnight all have given us portraits of O'Callaghan, warts and all, and still he emerges all of a piece. Browne alone seems blind to what matters most about Sean O'Callaghan the solidity and strength of his character under massive media scrutiny.
And of course he got the best of Browne on the latter's radio show. Having failed to rattle O'Callaghan when he was face to face with him, Browne now seems to suggest that, in a political and historical sense, he does not exist at all, that O'Callaghan the informer is a myth, a Walter Mitty manufactured by MI5. But his crimes confront Browne with the bitter truth. If O'Callaghan did not murder Inspector Peter Flanagan of the Special Branch a crime which proper started his career as a Provos - why did the judge sentence him to over 500 years. Like John Hume who will talk to anybody except Sean O'Callaghan Browne seems more comfortable with Provos who are still active, than with former Provos who are active against the Provos.
Contrary toe what Browne implies, O'Callaghan is an historical human being. Born and bred in Tralee, he is a former Sinn Fein councillor who rose to become a member of the Sinn Fein Ard Comhairle. He is a man with family and friends, and poignantly, a child whom he has not seen for years. Two weeks ago in Tralee anybody I asked said they knew some member of his hardline republican family. He is one of our own, a southerner who went North and did terrible things, and tried to make ameads by putting his life on the line.
SEAN O Callaghan was that soldier. But the word is was O'Callaghan is charged. The force of that change is carved on his face. Those who see him on screen, or hear him on radio, or read him he is a fine writer, and the style is the man sense the coherence of his character. There is no self justification, no self pity, no self seeking, only a sardonic sense of not being soft on himself, a moral rigour that forbade him to seek forgiveness in councilling or in born again Christianity and to seek absolution in acting as a unpaid agent. Sean O'Callaghan fits his own suffering skin. And if we listen to him we might learn to save ours. He cries wolf because he has been a wolf, and so can see and smell a wolf even" when dressed in sheep's clothing.
So why is Vincent Browne being a blind shepherd?
