HOW DID THE IRA think it could get away with it? How did it think it could plan a £26 million bank heist while negotiating a place for its representatives in Government? How did it think it could get away with the murder of Robert McCartney for so long? Why did it think it could restore confidence in its commitment to peace by promising to shoot the men in its ranks who carried out that killing? How could it imagine it could break the law with impunity and still remain a full player in the political process?

For one simple reason. Because it has, literally, been getting away with murder for years. The IRA has been indulged, excused and accommodated so often since the signing of the Belfast Agreement that it had no reason to believe that it would ever face the proper consequences of its immoral actions.

The IRA sent operatives to Colombia to train narco-terrorists in return for drugs money and faced no sanction from the British Government. The IRA organised an illegal gun running operation from Florida but paid no political price for its involvement. Indeed, the FBI was explicitly told during its inquiry not to state that the operation had in anyway been sanctioned by the IRA leadership. Throughout the past 11 years the IRA has been running extortion rackets and smuggling rings, it has robbed cigarette warehouses and laundered cash through a chain of front businesses, it has driven innocents into exile and killed dozens of individuals who have crossed its path. And the price exacted by the Blair Government for this massive, lethal, organised criminality? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Zero.

Actually, it’s worse than that. The Government hasn’t just turned a blind eye to terror. It has winked at the breaking of the law.

When pressure from democrats in Ireland led to the establishment of a monitoring commission to investigate the many breaches of the IRA’s ceasefire, Tony Blair actually rang Gerry Adams to reassure him that the organisation would be a toothless poodle and he shouldn’t worry. When the IRA previously shot its own internal enemies, not a finger was lifted. When the IRA used the techniques of political warfare to mount a spying ring in Stormont, the Government was initially inclined to do nothing serious in response and only direct democratic pressure from David Trimble, then the First Minister, led to the suspension of devolution.

Even that suspension was explicitly designed not to single out republicans for punishment. Instead of ejecting Sinn Fein from power, every party in Northern Ireland had to relinquish executive office. How can it be just when the innocent are punished equally alongside the guilty?

Only in the past few weeks have the republicans been called to account for their actions. But not by the Blair Government, supposedly resolute in the face of terror and robust towards criminality. Instead it has been left to the victims of IRA crime themselves, the partner and sisters of the murdered Belfast man Robert McCartney.

As a result of facing a determined attempt to hold it to account, for the first time in six years, the IRA has been suffering. Gerry Adams invited Mr McCartney’s relatives to the Sinn Fein conference last week to hear him condemn that murder. The McCartney family could be forgiven for doubting the sincerity of Mr Adams’s words. The IRA assisted the perpetrators of the murder to make good their escape, organised a riot to prevent the authorities conducting a proper investigation, had its representative in the area, Alex Maskey, condemn the police for their heavy-handedness in pursuing the case and let the evidential trail go cold for weeks. Only when the murder began to hurt Mr Adams’s political position was action taken. And the action proposed, the extra-judicial killing of those held to be guilty, only underlines in the most tragic way that the IRA still doesn’t get it. Its violence is the heart of the problem, not part of the solution.

The lesson is clear. The IRA will break the law, and kill those who get in its way, unless it is forced to pay the political price. Violence is still integral to the IRA and until it is abandoned the IRA’s leaders, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, can never be trusted participants in government.

But there is no sign that the Blair Government appreciates that. In December last year the Prime Minister was pressing for a deal that would give Sinn Fein power over policing or justice in Northern Ireland. That is still the Government’s intention.

And that’s not the least of the continued indulgence extended to Sinn Fein-IRA. This Government allows Sinn Fein the freedom to raise funds abroad for its political activities, a right denied to parties which operate in the rest of the United Kingdom. This Government arranged for all the political parties in Northern Ireland to be barred from the White House St Patrick’s Day celebrations even though it is Sinn Fein alone that has been engaging in criminality. And this Government continues to insist that devolution cannot be restored to Northern Ireland without Sinn Fein exercising ministerial power.

A Government that took democracy seriously would punish Sinn Fein, not its democratic rivals. Republicans should be removed from power until they have surrendered all arms, stopped all violence and ended all criminality. Power should instead be devolved to democratic parties alone, such as the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists. As long as democrats are denied the chance to show that moderation works, their electoral position is weakened.

The Government argues that it needs new powers, outside the rule of law, to deal with future terror threats. But it won’t even enforce the laws we already have to deal with the terrorists of Sinn Fein-IRA. Instead they are left, defiantly in arms, unashamedly on our television screens, outrageously occupying their Commons offices, an affront to justice at the heart of our democracy.

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