The Independent Monitoring Commission's report is pompous, biased and full of errors. The IMC's treatment of the family of the murdered Co Down man, Michael O'Hare was appalling. That case is indicative of a general shoddiness.
Perhaps partly because, "we are delivering this report in half the time we had expected." Why is that? Because the British and Irish governments demanded it. They also told the IMC to focus on the abduction of Bobby Tohill. It did so. Some independence.
There is much opining about "the responsibility we feel to everyone in NI to help them end all forms of paramilitary activity." There is no evidence of any understanding of working class communities, whether loyalist or republican. Paramilitarism is a problem. So is the failure of the politicians to make peace work.
The bias is clear in, for example, the way it declines to name the Orange Order, while telling the story of a man who had been a member of a "society" for many years, but out an attack on a member of his family and was not expelled. This appears to be a reference to a loyalist murder by an Orangeman. Why so coy?
The Orange Order has welcomed the support of loyalist paramilitaries, and will this summer once again attempt to parade through catholic areas along with bands which openly declare their paramilitary credentials. Will Orange politicians including leading members of both the DUP and the UUP be sanctioned? Not by this commission.
"The UVF has maintained a policy of no first strikes against the catholic community but it is prepared to consider a response to republican attacks." A quote from a UVF publicity brochure? No. The wisdom of the IMC. Its report then lists UVF murders, bomb attacks, assaults and shootings. Did a St Patrick's Day concert by Shane McGowan constitute a republican attack? Apparently so, for the UVF's most recent bomb attack was on 17 March outside a bar in which the ex Pogue was to play.
The errors include the claim that the Loyalist Volunteer Force was set up after "a disagreement with the leadership over the UVF's response to the resumption at that time of PIRA violence." Actually, the LVF was set up after the UVF ordered its mid Ulster leader not to get involved in the Orange Order's standoff at Drumcree. He opted, instead, to kill a catholic and force the police to give in to the Order's demands.
The IMC was set up by the British to help David Trimble in his hour of need. He was looking forward to its publication, but it came too late for him. He has been left lamenting the cancellation of the Lancaster House "fast-track" talks. He is to return to the review of Agreement, out of which he stalked not long ago. Another failed gesture.
Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness waxed apoplectic about the "securocrats" of the IMC. He wasn't aware, he said, that any of his colleagues in the Sinn Féin leadership were also in the IRA. He called Lord John Alderdice "a leading unionist." Gerry Adams spoke of "spooks and spies, retired civil servants and failed politicians." Presumably, to Sinn Féin, leading unionists and failed politicians are synonymous.
The fact that the two of them have lied about their own IRA involvement diminishes their credibility outside republican circles, but the crassness of the IMC's efforts will do them no harm among their own.
Witness the front page editorial headline on this weeks Andersonstown News. "IMC can take their report and shove it!" If Sinn Féin leaders were in the IRA, the author states, "this community…is delighted they used their positions to turn us away from the path of conflict on the road to peace and justice."
In sanctioning the PUP, the IMC report ignores or is ignorant of, the fact that the UVF's recent violence has obviously been carried out in defiance of or to harm its one time political wing.
The Tohill affair gets much space, even though the IMC says it is constrained by pending court proceedings. This doesn't stop it stating that the IRA planned the February attack.
Contrast this with the position the British government has taken on the Pat Finucane case. Remember that both Judge Peter Cory and Sir John Stephens have found evidence that the British colluded with loyalist paramilitaries in the solicitors murder.
There can be no inquiry, says the prime minister, because of pending criminal prosecutions. Will the IMC's next report deal with the claim made by a member of the Stephen's inquiry team that the British government tried to get it to make misleading statements in order to block an inquiry into this, its involvement in paramilitary murder? No.
