Not long ago, we predicted that dissident republican groups would end up killing other republicans – and so it has come to pass with the brutal killing yesterday of Danny McGurk, almost certainly by the Real IRA.
Derided and rejected by the vast majority of this community, these micro-groups continue blindly down the road to nowhere, ostensibly fighting a war against the British, but in reality doing nothing more than visiting grief and pain on this community.
It is all too obvious that the vast bulk of the energy – physical and mental – of dissident republicans goes into attacking other republicans in the most hysterical fashion.
Given such behaviour, it was only going to be a matter of time before guns were turned on those who, for whatever reason, place themselves outside the magic circle of ‘republican purity’.
If the Real IRA and its supporters represent republican purity, then this community wants nothing to do with it. What this community does want is for these people to go away and to go away now. Let them give up their squalid and all-too-often self-enriching little schemes and enter the 21st century with the rest of us.
Our thoughts and condolences are with the family of Danny McGurk this morning. He leaves a wife and a large young family – some of whom witnessed the murder of their father. Those who carried out that disgusting act will have to live with the thought that they have devastated not only the life of a man who they deemed worthy of execution, but the lives of his wife and children too.
