Having cheerfully murdered members of the RUC, of An Garda Síochána and of the Metropolitan Police for some thirty years, it does not sit easily with the IRA movement to support police forces in general and its lumpen rank and file has never actually been converted to love for ‘peelers’.

On January 29, 2007, at an extraordinary Ardfheis (party meeting) at the Royal Dublin Show, Sinn Féin “voted overwhelmingly” (IRA-speak for ‘delegates were informed in advance how they should vote’) to support the PSNI.

Gerry Adams wasted no time in putting it up to the DUP – “The decision we have taken today is truly historic… This Ardfheis acted in the national interest” he trumpeted.

The national interest of Northern Ireland, Gerry?

But of course, while the combined IRA/SF party leadership voted tactically to declare support for the PSNI, nothing had been done to educate or convert the lumpen IRA footsoldiers and their supporters in either urban or rural areas to wholehearted support for this newfangled U-turn.

In fact, support for the PSNI was characterised by Gerry ‘The Bolt’ Kelly as a step toward a United Territory of Ireland:

How much ACTUAL support did the IRA movement give to the PSNI when it was investigating the IRA murders of Robert McCartney and Paul Quinn and the Northern Bank robbery?

Absolutely none…

For almost a century, the IRA movement has held these ‘truths’ to be self-evident – that the destruction of Stormont is the gateway to a United Territory of Ireland and that the police – any police – are armed guardians of the hated status quo and are liable to be murdered.

Adams restored the prospect of police being murdered when he came down from Mount Sinai with the IRA tablet of stone and declared – after signing up to the Belfast Agreement – that [IRA] Violence was still a perfectly acceptable means of achieving political change, a message that has not fallen on deaf dissident ears.

And so as the overarching IRA Army Council has now decided on a U-turn to starve Stormont to a painfully slow death by Abstention, so too it is necessary to produce a U-turn in 2019 reversing the previous 2007 U-turn in supporting the PSNI, and this historically-nihilist strategy sits well with the entire IRA movement, North, South, urban and rural.

The first sign of a U-turn on support for the PSNI was announced by John Downey when he was arrested at home in Donegal in November 2018 for the murders of two Ulster Defence Regiment members in Fermanagh in 1972.

Downey was already an IRA superstar for his victory over attempts to prosecute him for the Hyde Park bombing which murdered four soldiers and killed seven horses – Downey produced a secret Tony Blair Get Out of Jail Free OTR letter at his Old Bailey trial and, hey presto! was back in Donegal in a flash.

The IRA movement is not prepared to accept any historical prosecutions of its volunteers, while demanding historical prosecutions of The Enemy’s soldiers, so when Downey was arrested again for yet different historical murders, the DPP/Courts/PSNI were suddenly BAD again.

John Downey’s poisonous words were well-chosen for him before he was arrested: “I’d say it was the DUP made the decision, not the DPP.”

John you know you just bombed the IRA movement’s declared support for the justice system in Northern Ireland at the behest of the overarching Army Council strategists, beavering away in the background to unite the Territory of Ireland, having failed miserably to unite the People of Northern Ireland.

Puppet Mary Lou McDonald then weighed in from far-off Dublin with a charge that no serving PSNI officer – just recently enjoying full Sinn Féin support – was fit to lead the force after the current Chief Constable retires.

The IRA movement has less than ‘zero credibility’ for its handling of IRA legacy cases, but this did not deter Mary Lou helping to edge the IRA movement back to its preferred stance of critical opposition to any form of policing.

Then Martin McGuinness’ former shoeshine boy and general dogsbody, Raymond McCartney, indicated that suddenly, the entire nationalist community had gotten out of bed one morning with ‘rock-bottom’ confidence in the PSNI.

Wow! If failure to disclose files on ‘legacy’ murders completely undermines public faith, how much faith can there be in the IRA movement’s sincerity to deal with IRA legacy cases, since it hasn’t released any files at all?

When the AC Boys hit the Reset Button on the IRA movement’s support for “the peace process” – the default position is always “Smash Stormont” and “SS-PSNI”…

Old hobbits die hard…

I would note for the record that some time before any of these SF/IRA comments were uttered, I had already highlighted that the IRA movement was seeking a credible excuse to dump the burden of supporting the PSNI while simultaneously strangling Stormont.

It was obvious some time ago that the PSNI was going to be undermined.