For Sinn Fein, the terrorist atrocity on Saturday night that left two British soldiers dead came at the worst possible time and involved the worst possible category of victim. Up until 2007, it seemed possible that the party would soon be in government on both sides of the border. This would have allowed it to claim that its goal of a united Ireland was within reach. But Sinn Fein failed in the 2007 Irish election; voters south of the border were repelled by the gangsterism of the Northern Bank robbery in 2004, in which £26.5 million was seized. In the North, the Democratic Unionist Party has out-manoeuvred Sinn Fein on issues from the Irish language act, to policing, to education reform. All this has provided a context of opportunity for those Republicans who argue that a return to the armalite is more likely to bring success than perseverance with the ballot box.
The dissidents, former IRA men, did not choose the British army as a target to force the ‘Brits out’, but — more subtly — to heighten the contradictions in Sinn Fein’s position on the British state. The party is now deeply engaged in its devolved structures — while simultaneously rejecting its entire legitimacy. Sinn Fein/IRA might have entered government and given up the armed struggle. But they have never confronted or rejected Republican ideology; an ideology that holds that consent does not matter, and that violence is acceptable if it advances the aim of a united Ireland: the so-called ‘mandate of history’. This is why Sinn Fein has tied itself in such knots responding to the attack. It cannot denounce the murder of soldiers because it still venerates a past that was all about precisely that. It cannot say that British troops are not legitimate targets because it still holds that the British army is an occupying force.
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