Brendan Behan must be turning in his grave. The Dublin playwright and IRA activist advocated that all meetings of republicans should have a split as the first item on their agenda.
Conscious of the culture of factionalism over two centuries, Behan recognised that republican history is threaded with a tradition of division.
Echoes of the Civil War can still be found in Kerry and de Valera's entry to the Dail left another bitter legacy in many homes. The Republican Congress split in 1934 was less bitter but more significant in ideological terms and the Second World War years were marked by a fundamental division over how to react to Hitler. (It has been observed that there were three IRA views on Hitler – those who were for him, those who were against and then there was Brendan Behan's view.)
The 1950s gave rise to the breakaway Saor Eire, while the INLA/IPLO internecine wars in more recent years saw Behan's black humour translated into real life with a tragic vengeance. The four different commemorations at Milltown Cemetery on Easter Sunday speak for themselves.
But although the Provisional republican movement was founded on a split in 1969, it has remained largely undivided since then. True, many have left and others have been forced out, but always in small numbers and usually over a diverse range of disparate issues so that there was no meaningful rallying point for those who the press now label dissidents.
That such a long period in republican history avoided serious schism was quite an achievement. That it did so while the traditional culture and core values of Irish republicanism were turned on their head was probably the most extraordinary feat of political leadership in modern Irish history.
Portrayed in the past as prisoners of history, current republican leaders have shown themselves astute students of the subject. They successfully made the transition from electoral abstentionism to government without serious division. The secret of their success has been based on three inter-related ingredients: timing, using the right words and knowing how far the rank and file will go.
At the same time there has been tangible success to back it all up. Previous armed campaigns ended in defeats – some subsequently glorious such as 1916, some less so as in 1962. Most of them left a scattering of disillusioned men and women who still harbour a grudge about their time in the movement: personality clashes in prison, mental breakdown, family splits, lost careers, needless deaths – all for a cause which ended in failure.
Indeed the enduring ethos of republicanism down the years appeared to be to hand on the mantle of failure to the next generation. But 1994 changed all that. The end of the latest campaign saw the mass release of prisoners, the feting of republican leaders in London and Washington and those previously unheard of commodities – massive electoral support and real political power.
But apparent victory has come with a price: no united Ireland and no more IRA. The first two pages of the Good Friday Agreement make that much clear. Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as free political influence. The bill for releasing the prisoners is now resting on a plate at the Sinn Féin table.
For some republicans it's a small price to pay. Saying the war is finished merely states what has been obvious for 10 years.
But to say that the IRA is finished is a bridge too far for many other republicans, especially since they see Stevens as indicating that the British government for years had its own paramilitary wing which has neither disarmed nor disbanded.
Voluntary liquidation for the IRA would end this campaign in more recrimination and division than any other. On this occasion republican leaders have little room to manoeuvre over the timing – Richard Haass saw to that – and all their words must be agreed by (that means written by) Tony and Bertie.
Republicans have no future in politics – and certainly none in power – while the IRA exists as a physical force for Irish unity in an environment for peace which they created and continue to perpetuate. Governments can have peacetime armies. Constitutional political parties cannot.
So it's crunch time for republicans. They face a choice: bite the bullet, so to speak, and bring as many members forward as possible into a brave new IRA-less republican movement. Large-scale defections would probably result. The alternative is to sit and wait, avoid a split and hope for a break.
What the days ahead hold for the pen of P O'Neill remains to be seen. What is most likely, however, is that – presumably to the eternal frustration of Brendan Behan – there will be no split.
