In Crossmaglen...

It has been brought up that the devolution of policing and justice may be held up until the Army Council dissolves. Certainly pertinent in this debate is the murder of Paul Quinn (okay maybe not the best link but one that came to mind quickly). The brutal death of this young man has sparked a McCartneyesque like movement which has professionalized and streamlined rather quickly.

To be honest there were a couple things that came to my mind when I've read of this but the one that has kept coming back, kept nagging at me and finally made me reach for a novel I'd read. Not a bad book if you have nothing else going but one which has since stayed on the shelf and collected dust, until now. The oldest son of a widowed school teacher in WWII Italy Nino who served with the partisans in the war explains,

"The war was a joke, Ma!...but the joke isn't over...These characters think they can start all over again, like before: Don't you see that? Well, Ma, they're wrong! They put real guns in our hands, when we were kids! And now we're having fun making peace!"

Maybe I'm just missing the boat on this one but I don't really believe that the AC funds all (or a majority) of SF's electoral activity. It was made very clear when Friends of Sinn Fein (note the address for donations) was set up that all money donated was clearly marked to go to "legitimate" political activity. This was indeed a snub to the long term supporters from NORAID. Some of which openly crossed over to support Gerry McGeough in his failed electorial bid for a seat at Stormont as an anti-PSNI/pro-Immaculate Heart of Mary candidate. Something tells that real estate investments in Bulgaria have very little to do with getting Grizzly Adams elected president in the Free State.

The cost of operating the AC independent of actual operations of has been estimated to be anywhere from 7-11 million euro a year (as noted by the Gardai in 2005). It is also believed that by the late ninteties that over 2/3 of petrol stations in the North were selling laundered diesel. I would imagine this number has dropped some as the ARA has stepped up its activities and people start to realize the environmental hazards that smuggling diesel actually presents to the localities. Slab, as we all know was listed as the richest smuggler in Britain by the BBC in 2004. And while he's currently awaiting trial on tax evasion charges even Willie Frazer admits that he still drives an old beat up van and lives on his family farm. IE he's not exactly buying holiday homes in Donegal like GA or taking holidays to Portugal like Gerry Kelly. Their incomes come from an even shadier source, the British Government. That money goes to the Provisional AC. Continuity may hold blessing of the first Dail, but the Provos hold the purse strings when it comes to funding. Lord knows that RIRA haven't able to make a go of it and the INLA are stuck in some sort of Soviet cubist mode while trying to comes to grips with the economics of Perestroika.




Ah, but once again I've veered off the track I had wanted to go down. I'm sorry, but I'm not particularly interested in whether or not Paul Quinn ever drove smuggled fuel. The hard men in Crossmaglen will continue to operate as they have regardless of whether the AC stays on or disbands. Certainly this episode illustrates the down and dirty nature of the black market economy which is prevelant in NI. If anything comes of this I would say it would be a further move away from this type of operation to the more refined real estate deals such the kind exposed in Manchester and Bulgaria.

As for the devolution of Policing and Justice. Well I think the Assembly and Executive should show that they can make their existing portfolios work for the people of NI before they take on one more thing to hose up. Though to be honest, could do they do any worse than these guys?