Dissident republicans suffered a blow this week with the conviction of Michael McKevitt. They have no programme beyond repetition of core beliefs, but on they go, writes Fionnuala O'Connor
In 1998 Francie Mackey was a psychiatric nurse and a councillor in Omagh, Co Tyrone: never a Sinn Féin star but one of their earliest local government representatives. Shortly before the Good Friday Agreement, I interviewed him for a radio programme on the peace process. He was the only Northern member with any political profile of the shadowy 32-County Sovereignty Movement, aligned to the "Real IRA".
But he would not accept the label "dissident". He and his friends were true to tradition: Gerry Adams and his followers had betrayed republicanism. The peace process would copper-fasten Partition, not remove it. The 32-county "movement" was necessary because the "supposed peace negotiations are not tackling the key issue of Irish sovereignty".
He spoke the phrase reverently but could not explain how his group would win the united Ireland it required. "The British" must withdraw, but it was unclear how that would come about. As for unionists, "how can they be British when they're born in Ireland?"
He refused to answer questions about a military wing.
There was another missing element. "Sovereignty" might be sacred, but the only sizeable fracture in post-ceasefire Provisional republicanism came in 1997, when the Adams leadership agreed to "the Mitchell principles" as the ambiguous form of words that would allow it "address decommissioning" without handing in guns. To the traditionalists, this still ceded control of weaponry.
Compared to the increasingly slick Sinn Féin machine, then introducing the concept of "transitional arrangements" which would bridge any gap between "conflict" and eventual unification, Francie Mackey and his sovereignty movement seemed fossilised, then and now. The few articulate critics of the Adams mainstream insist they do not support violence, while Republican Sinn Féin and the 32-county group maintain the awkward postures of pre-ceasefire Sinn Féin: defending, apologising. The various dissident strands still have no political programme beyond repetition of core beliefs, but on they go.
In the space of the past week dissident republicanism suffered a double blow: the discovery of an alleged Continuity IRA training camp and the sentencing of Michael McKevitt for "directing terrorism" as leader of the "Real IRA", largely on the evidence of a highly paid agent who nonetheless painted a convincing picture of a garrulous incompetent. One of McKevitt's confidences was that he was number one in the organisation and that the imprisoned Louth republican, Liam Campbell, was number two: they are now enemies. McKevitt has been in jail for two and a half years, Campbell for half that.
McKevitt accuses the present leadership of being corrupt, and while the Continuity IRA and the "Real IRA" sometimes co-operate it is clear that neither is a coherent organisation.
To judge by the frequency with which their bombs are intercepted, both groups are heavily infiltrated on both sides of the Border. They have suffered a high rate of attrition: about 30 imprisoned in Maghaberry prison, a larger number in the Republic.
Yet, in this past week, police in Belfast told Gerry Adams of a dissident threat to his life and a series of hoax bombs paralysed the city's traffic. This followed attempted van-bomb attacks in Belfast and Derry, plus another, reminiscent of a Troubles staple, in which a bus-driver was forced at gunpoint to drive towards a police station. Only luck in several cases has prevented the bombs from killing, luck that unfortunately escaped David Caldwell, the Protestant workman who picked up a booby-trapped lunchbox on a Derry building-site last August.
Five years ago this week, a "Real IRA" bomb destroyed the centre of Omagh, the worst single bombing of the entire Troubles in terms of numbers killed and injured. In the days immediately afterwards, it seemed as though disgust might sweep away dissident paramilitarism. There were signs of internal panic. Michael McKevitt and Bernadette Sands-McKevitt told a priest in Dundalk how distressed their children were by media attention. McKevitt, the priest said, assured him "he had no hand, act or part in the bombing". It was the opposite of the loyalty republican leadership is meant to show.
Francie Mackey's pleasant new bungalow outside Omagh was repeatedly threatened by loyalist paramilitaries. Within a month of the bombing, however, his teenage son was out selling the 32-county movement's newsletter around neighbouring houses. Then disgust waned. The anti-peace process splinter groups resumed business. The police investigation of Omagh, flawed in itself, has never gained information from local republican supporters that would help convict the bombers.
Gerry Adams and friends have been lucky in their opponents, but the Provisional IRA may still fear the dissidents' destabilising potential. After all, the Provisional IRA has killed one prominent Belfast dissident, Joe O'Connor, and is probably responsible for the disappearance of a second dissident, Gareth O'Connor. It has badly beaten several others. The ferocity may have suppressed open support, but there is little sense of simmering rage. For the past month, for example, a mix of jailed Real IRA members with, apparently, some non-political prisoners have been spreading their own excrement on cell walls in Maghaberry, demanding segregation from loyalists. A crowd of 200 at most turned out for a recent Belfast rally.
It is not clear what the 32-County Sovereignty Movement amounts to now. Instant reaction from a named source to the McKevitt conviction, apart from his wife's accusation that this had been a show-trial, came instead from a member of the American "Irish Freedom Committee", who told The Irish Times that there had "always been trials like this and people have always gone to jail. It's part of Irish history".
The same old chords will always resonate. It may be that anti-peace process republicanism needs only a trickle of recruits to generate violence, or the threat of violence, for the indefinite future.