Under fire, IRA returns to menacing form of old [View All]

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Sunday Times
Liam Clarke, Northern Ireland Editor



GERRY ADAMS quoted Woody Guthrie instead of Padraic Pearse or James Connolly when he was questioned about the Northern Bank robbery this week.

“I don’t just talk about this bank robbery or other robberies of that nature. I talk, as Woody Guthrie once said, ‘Some men rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen’.” A few moments earlier, the Sinn Fein leader had parried questions with talk of banks ripping off their customers. The message was clear: robbing banks is no worse — better maybe — than running them.

It was the latest desperate blast from a republican smoke machine that has been working overtime for more than a month to cloud the issue of who robbed the Northern Bank of £26.5m. Since Christmas we have had four IRA statements, two signed and two whispered in the ears of journalists, and each has been more menacing than the last. The first two denied the robbery, the second pair warned of dire consequences if the IRA continued to take the blame.

In the past such statements have been treated with exaggerated respect and parsed carefully by analysts for hidden messages. This year it’s different. Each one has been dismissed by the British and Irish governments as soon as it was issued. As a result, the IRA’s tone has become ever more shrill. The second-last statement introduced a whiff of cordite by recalling the circumstances in which a previous IRA ceasefire had ended, withdrawing its offer to disarm and warning that the
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