Connect: Who, other than the perpetrators of the crime and their cronies, doesn't want to see the arrest and trial of the alleged murderers of Robert McCartney?
The sisters and partner of the late Mr McCartney were in Dublin this week. They said that fear of the IRA was playing a larger part in keeping witnesses silent than, as Gerry Adams had suggested, any difficulties nationalists had with the PSNI.
McCartney's sisters are surely right even though the PSNI is, rightly or wrongly, despised by many nationalists in the Short Strand area of Belfast where the slaughtered man lived. However, as McCartney's killers are reportedly IRA members, even without the complication of nationalists' negative perceptions of the PSNI, most people would feel intimidated about acting as witnesses.
If you saw similar barbarism in a Dublin pub you'd almost certainly be nervous about going to the Garda. Most people would agonise over their duty to report such a crime because of the possible ramifications for themselves or their families. In a community in which the alleged perpetrators have a fearsome, if ambiguous reputation, the agonising intensifies hugely.
In Short Strand, in Belfast, the Provos, it's said, were once largely protectors and now they are largely oppressors. It's probably true. Certainly, they are less popular now in the working-class Catholic areas of the North that nurtured them than at any time since their formation. It's not simply playing politics to say so although there is an unseemly and dangerous degree of that abroad.
Some politics-playing is unavoidable, of course, and designating it as such - like views of the PSNI - is a matter of perception. But the IRA must take responsibility for problems it creates in its own areas. Assuming, as McCartney's sisters allege, that their brother's killers are IRA members, then such thuggery within its own heartland despoils republicanism.
Throughout two and a half decades of murder and mayhem directed at the British presence and the unionist community - mostly the RUC, RIR (formerly UDR) and unionist paramilitaries - the Provos could rely on sufficient support within their own heartlands. The general feeling among many ghettoised Northern nationalists (ask them if you doubt it) was "this is horrible, but . . . " There was always a "but" and that "but" was that the Northern state was irredeemably biased and bigoted. Unionists, it was sometimes suggested, looked upon nationalists in the same way as, in the Republic, many citizens looked upon Travellers. It was - and in some respects, still is - part of the island's unspoken but poisonous caste system begun more than three centuries ago.
In "polite society", such matters are generally taboo. "What's all that nonsense got to do with today?" is more readily and, frequently angrily, heard. The proposition is often denied (tellingly, by all but Travellers!) as absurd and inflammatory. But we know it's largely true and that trouble always occurs when the power relations start to shift between groups separated by core identities.
Mind you, the analogy discomfits everybody, including Travellers. There are thugs among them too who cause difficulties for everybody. Republicans are no different and neither are other nationalists (who are unionists in that they seek union with the rest of Ireland) nor unionists (who are really British nationalists anyway). Even the language used for the competing groups is unstable.
Anyway, to the more specific matter at issue: republicans have serious questions to ponder over crime - moral crime (whatever about their theology regarding legal crime). Throughout working-class and middle-class communities, the killing of Robert McCartney is rightly considered to be morally appalling and most people believe those considered guilty should be arrested.
They should - even if it means passing information to the PSNI through solicitors. McCartney's sisters have deservedly been widely praised. They've been exemplary. But politicians and commentators browbeating witnesses to go to the PSNI seem to be counter-productive. In fact, they are counter-productive because of the historical complications in an area such as Belfast's Short Strand.
Indeed, not only is browbeating not likely to deliver justice to McCartney's family and community, it may even intensify republican "solidarity". It certainly will, if politicians from this State take the same side as say, the Paisleys, on the issue. It really is a mess and it can't have a simple, black and white answer, at least until republicans endorse the North's policing service.
The problem for the Short Strand community - apart from the fear generated by Provo policing and the loathing generated by PSNI policing - is that neither form is trusted as being accountable to the people. Neither really grew out of the community.
That's a bloody great way to leave any community and it signals political failure which any party can level at any other.
For the moment, republicans are taking the blame and rightly so. Some psychopathic savages slaughtered Robert McCartney and Sinn Féin must try to redress a monstrous injustice. However, hysterical attempts to demonise all republicans are like demonising all Travellers because of the actions of the worst among them. It may be tempting but it's morally cheap.