After Gerard “Jock” Davison was shot dead in the Markets area of central Belfast in early May, two investigations began: one by the PSNI and the other by IRA members.
As Davison’s body lay concealed inside a police forensic tent, a number of senior IRA figures arrived in the Markets. They were grim and hard-faced and determined. These were people you would see standing in the background at Ardoyne or in west Belfast during periods of tension over loyal order parades or at other times of sectarian trouble at the Catholic-Protestant interfaces.
They kept their counsel, not speaking to the press, leaving that sort of work to the local Sinn Féin representatives but you could see that their IRA pedigree gave them weight locally. They would have the ear of the likes of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.
In the Markets that IRA reputation and clout would have given them access to information about the Davison murder that never would have been available to the PSNI investigating detectives.
Not surprisingly the situation that day was very tense. Davison was a very senior republican who'd had a bad falling out with Kevin McGuigan. He'd been a longstanding member of the IRA. After the 1994 IRA ceasefire he was involved with McGuigan in Direct Action Against Drugs (DAAD) in the murder of about 12 alleged drug dealers, some of them very minor drugs figures.
It was another of those grotesque episodes of the Troubles – almost as if now that the IRA was on ceasefire some of its members needed an outlet for their bloodlust, so let’s have at the druggies.
Davison was also blamed for giving the order for the murder by IRA members of Robert McCartney close to the Markets in January 2005. He suffered some IRA censure for that killing but subsequently was rehabilitated back into the provisional republican movement and was a leading community activist in the Markets area when he was gunned down.
That day most people were reluctant to say much to the press, one man reflecting the general view: “Do I want to comment? The IRA! F**k no, there’d be trouble.”
Another well-dressed man in his 50s who was standing on the footpath watching the murder scene was more forthcoming but brutally terse. He said he wasn’t one bit sorry or surprised that Davison had been murdered. “He was a total f...ing scumbag,” he said, and then walked away, refusing to say anymore.
The murder scene and the reaction illustrated how Davison was a major player in the republican movement, how his comrades appeared determined that his murder would be avenged, and also how within this republican community there were tensions, and that Davison was not universally loved.
Numerous enemies
In the end a group calling itself Action Against Drugs, a modern subset of DAAD, killed McGuigan in the Short Strand in east Belfast. Here it must be said that while McGuigan was fingered for Davison’s murder there is no guarantee that the killers got the right man. As indicated by the man in the Markets who could so callously and pejoratively describe him, he had numerous enemies.
It must also be said that McGuigan was viewed by several republicans as volatile and dangerous, and to quote a number of sources, “it may have been a case of people getting McGuigan before he got them.”
Chief constable George Hamilton in his weekend assessment played it wide and carefully. “We have no information to suggest that violence, as seen in the murder of Kevin McGuigan, was sanctioned or directed at a senior level in the republican movement.”
But equally he said the IRA still existed and some of its members, along with others, killed McGuigan.
He said Action Against Drugs was “little more than an organised crime group” and was “not part of or a covername” for the IRA.
It was a statement that criminally implicated some IRA members but in effect exonerated the IRA leadership and politically created a dividing wall between Sinn Féin and the killers.
Sanctioned
Northern Secretary
Theresa Villiers
, taking her cue from Hamilton, accepted that the IRA still existed but majored on the chief constable’s view that the murder was not “sanctioned or authorised by the Provisional IRA as an organisation”.
She believed Sinn Féin subscribed to the principles of democracy and consent, as is required to keep its Ministers in the Northern Executive.
She was also of the view that people hardly should be surprised that some IRA structures were still in place and that the IRA still existed.
Unionists, however, citing how the IRA formally ended its armed campaign in July 2005, did indeed express such surprise. They too know the names of the IRA figures who were in the Markets the day of the Davison murder. And they know too that they would be well known to Adams and McGuinness.
Yet whatever suspicions unionists might hold that does not criminally link these IRA people to the internal republican investigation of the Davison murder; nor does it criminally link them to the murder of McGuigan.
But if they are brought into the frame – even if it is by arrest rather than charge – then that could cause problems for the Sinn Fein leadership, to whom they would be linked. It would put pressure on unionists to respond.
Gone away
Adams was adamant at the weekend that the IRA has “gone away” and that IRA members were not involved in McGuigan’s murder. That contradicts Hamilton’s assessment but unionists will believe the chief constable.
There is a lot at stake here. Stormont already is very shaky because of the deadlock over welfare reform and the uncertainty over how the “Namagate” affair will unfold.
As is frequently the case, what happens next probably will be down to Peter Robinson when he returns from holidays shortly. Villiers believes that the chief constable’s statement means it should be politics almost as usual and the focus should now be on implementing the Stormont House Agreement and getting through the welfare blockage.
But it won’t be that easy. Very few politicians want to see the collapse of the Executive and Assembly. But two men are dead. Some sort of moral imperative should apply regardless of the dictates of political pragmatism. What happens next is unpredictable but it is serious.
The DUP and Robinson will bide their time for a while. But they may have hard decisions to make at some stage in the coming weeks that could have far-reaching consequences for the powersharing devolved political structures that were so difficult to achieve. As one DUP source said, “whatever decision we make will have mammoth consequences. We don’t want to make any decisions without careful judgment and proper consideration.”