Dissidents or Premature anti-agreement republicans?
By Tommy McKearney

There is a story told in Belgium about a competition held within the police department in order to determine whether the traffic branch, the CID or the riot squad was the smartest branch of the service. The test set to all three was to catch a rabbit within the shortest space of time. After three hours Traffic returned with a large fat rabbit, two hours later the riot squad turned in a squalid looking creature suffering from Maximatosis, but alarm grew as the day went by with no sign of the CID. Late that night Traffic phoned in to report a sighting of the missing detectives. In a lonely country field three burly gumshoes were holding a frightened looking cow, shining a flashlight in her eyes and demanding that she admit that she was a rabbit.

For once the moral of this story has nothing to do with our local Coppers but is a lesson about making labels and descriptions fit a particular requirement, rather than accurately reflecting a situation. This practice is frequently used in an attempt to undermine the political positions of those we disagree with. Rather than address the essence of the other person’s argument, there is a lazy tendency to fix them with a pejorative label and thus attempt to dismiss the validity of their opinion.

There is often a belief in some quarters that something is of such overriding importance that rules of fair play may be bent in order to achieve what is understood to be the greater good. Well meaning people throughout the Establishment have taken the view that peace on this island is so essential that no risk whatsoever should be taken to undermine any of the institutions or structures that are supposed to support and sustain the undeniably precious requirement for peace. Too often this leads to a situation where received wisdom or the consensus sponsored by the state are held to be beyond critique not to mention criticism.

This tendency has been particularly noticeable when people attempt to make critical analysis of the Good Friday Agreement. So distorted was the original debate about the merits or otherwise of what is essentially a political treaty that those who found fault with the contents were widely described as being anti-peace. There appeared to be little room for healthy scepticism and the referendum in 1998 seemed to come down to a starkly manichaean choice of whether one endorsed the GFA (and peace) or embraced conflict and bloodletting.

Republicans who for any reason queried the value of the GFA were subjected to incredibly crude vilification and little time was allowed to hear the range of opinions that existed outside of the mainstream. The broad generic term ‘dissident’ was used to bundle together what were frequently very different outlooks and very different critiques.
The reality of the situation is that the term ‘dissident republican’ has become synonymous with a particularly bloody form of militarism. This constituency undoubtedly exists and the Omagh bombing bears cruel evidence to this fact. However, it is disingenuous to the point of being blatantly dishonest to suggest that because two people share a similar view of a particular political treaty that they therefore can be deemed to share every other view. If that were the case it would make for some odd bedfellows- after all, Bob McCartney and Ian Paisley also dislike the GFA.

The fact is that many vested interests found it much easier to bandy insults about their critics rather than deal at any length with what for them was an unwelcome analysis. This led on occasions to the unhealthy situation where decision makers within the media would ‘run or hold’ a story not necessarily on its accuracy but whether it would help or hinder the ‘Process’. In its worst manifestation, this wilful blindness even dissuaded the political establishment from recognising or seeing anti-democratic practices.

Although somewhat unethical it is understandable that political opponents resort to name calling and exchanging insults. It is harder to know why those allegedly standing above or beyond the political cauldron should use politically loaded terminology that tends to support one side of the argument. This is what happens when the term ‘dissident republican’ is ubiquitously employed without elaboration or definition.

Dissident republican is in many ways a meaningless term. In the first instance it does not refer to one shared comprehensive political position. Some described as dissidents are passionately anti-militaristic while others are endeavouring to pursue an armed struggle. Some are ultra-left while others are centre-right. Some have established healthy connections within the unionist community while others remain ghettoised.

Moreover, what are dissidents supposed to be dissenting from? Is it the Good Friday Agreement? Is it peace? Is it a settlement internal to Northern Ireland? Or possibly most ominous of all, is it opposition to a flawed political arrangement that currently stands in helpless disarray?
If the latter is the case then perhaps some of these ‘dissidents’ have merely been asking the questions that enlightened people should have been asking over the past five or ten years. Might we someday see a situation where political expediency will dictate that some of our ‘dissidents’ will eventually be described as ‘premature anti-agreement republicans’?

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