The first dissident republican murder in four years will weigh heavily on the faltering peace process and will cause particular concern to unionist politicians, writes Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor
Sam Kinkaid is not a man afraid to speak his mind. An Assistant Chief Constable and one of Sir Ronnie Flanagan's key officers, he has countered his former boss's account of who actually ran the investigation into the "Real IRA" bombing of Omagh in 1998.
Yesterday he made clear his view that dissidents, either "Real" or Continuity IRA, were responsible for the murder of David Caldwell - just as they have been responsible for a series of attacks on soft targets throughout Mr Kinkaid's northern region which he commands.
Mr Caldwell, the softest of soft targets, is the first "Real IRA" victim since it claimed 29 nearly four years ago to the day in Omagh.
While much of the focus this year has fallen on the Provisionals - particularly due to the Colombia affair - yesterday's killing was the first attributable to dissidents, who have engaged in a series of attacks over the last 12 months. The cumulative effect of such attacks is provoking growing political alarm.
The "Real IRA" enjoys support in the south Down, south Armagh and Co Louth area and has targeted the new police service in general and young recruits in particular. It is anxious to put off Catholics from joining the force which is pledged to sign up equal numbers from both sides of the community. It is a classic republican tactic and one which has echoes of 30 years ago, when some Catholics joined the now-disbanded Ulster Defence Regiment following the scrapping of the B Specials.
Two weeks ago, a Catholic police recruit in Newry was given security-force protection following intelligence reports he was in danger of attack by dissidents. Another recruit was unhurt in June after a booby trap device was found under his car in Ballymena, Co Antrim. Dissidents also bombed the police training college at Garnerville in east Belfast in April.
The more traditional bombing tactic has also been employed - but this has been hampered by security force successes. A massive incendiary-type device was halted in Belfast city centre in April as it was being taken towards its intended target - possibly the Ulster Unionist headquarters, the Grand Opera House or the city's main bus station.
The Continuity IRA claimed responsibility for the blast near the estate of Lord Brookeborough in Co Fermanagh last month.
In April, British anti-terrorist officers say dissidents could have been plotting a bomb attack in London to coincide with the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. They were investigating an incident when a car with Northern Ireland licence plates and carrying empty fertiliser bags, maps and drawings was abandoned by two people who ran off.
Bombs were detonated by republicans in London last year near the BBC in Shepherd's Bush and Ealing.
Of particular concern is the level of threat by dissident gunmen to leading unionist political figures. Dissidents, anxious to bring down the Belfast Agreement and its institutions which they oppose, may - it is feared - feel they can trigger a unionist withdrawal from Stormont by a spectacular political assassination.
The acting Chief Constable, Mr Colin Cramphorn, who has the reins of the PSNI following Sir Ronnie's departure last March until Mr Hugh Orde arrives in Belfast next month, has been questioned by unionists at public sessions of the Policing Board.
Mr Ian Paisley jnr asked him about the level of dissident threat to unionists. "There are a number of serious threats that have emerged in recent weeks from dissident republican groups," was his reply.
It's only a short step from political violence to politics and it is to this arena where the focus could now shift.
The DUP, as its meeting this week with Tony Blair showed, is keen to highlight violence from any side as evidence of the failure of the Belfast Agreement. It will make hay with this latest killing.
Mr Denis Bradley, the deputy chairman of the Policing Board and another man unafraid to speak his mind, said yesterday that the killing of David Caldwell posed questions for republicans in general. Referring to republican tendencies to feud when divided over key political questions, he said: "There have been times when the republican movement has split in Ireland and they ended up sometimes taking each other on . . . I feel an anger within the mainstream republican position that says that these dissident republicans cannot continue to walk away and get away with this."
He emphasised the need for policing to become objective, it must stand in the middle and "draw a line at which the war is over, at which the war ends in the sense that we stop politicising murder". How "mainstream" republicans, i.e. Sinn Féin, can do that while supporting constitutional politics on one hand yet holding back on whole-heartedly supporting the PSNI on the other, remains to be seen.
Martin McGuinness was unequivocal yesterday in his condemnation of the murder and he emphasised this was not a blow in favour of any republican ideal - indeed it was quite the reverse.
While the clamour grows for "non-dissident" republicans to take on the "dissidents" and help prevent a recurrence of "Real" or Continuity IRA attacks, Mr McGuinness believed that working the political mechanisms available was the best way forward.
He insisted his tactics are "to make politics work, to bring about a peaceful environment within our community, to address the issues that created the conflict in the first place, to ensure that there is equality, justice and to ensure that there is a real opportunity for everyone to move forward with a peace process which is being led collectively by pro-Agreement politicians . . . that's the way that we will defeat them."
It now appears that tensions within unionism in general and the leadership of David Trimble will now be supplemented by pressures within republicanism over proper response to the attempted destruction of the peace process by dissidents.
With the spectacle of unionism's ability to turn on itself now matched by the historical threat of a republican "split", the resumption of "normal" politics after the summer break is going to be an intense affair indeed.