ORGANIZED RAGE: Follow up TV Program on the Murder of Robert McCartney

Readers may remember the murder in a Belfast pub of Robert McCartney; and the campaign that his sisters mounted to bring those who committed this crime to justice. Unlike the UK and Irish media for which old news is truly chip paper. Al Jazeera TV have revisited the story, it comes in two parts and is well worth a look as it gives us a glimpse into life on one of Belfast most embattled Republican/nationalist enclaves, the Short Strand.

There are still those who are keen to claim that Robert McCartney was a criminal, when in reality he had no criminal convictions, held down a regular job and was a family man. As to the men who murdered him, they behaved as nothing more than thugs, who with a belly full of beer, became involved in an argument in a pub, took it outside and brought into disrepute an organization from which good men and women have laid down their lives.

After RM’s death, the real problem arose when senior Belfast Republicans took responsibility for the thugs who murdered Mr Mccartney; and gave them the type of support a volunteer could expect when they returned from active service. This fact went down the line and out onto the street and some people felt they were doing the Republican movement a favor by bad mouthing the McCartney women. Some favor.

True when senior Provos realized their mistake they offered the Sisters the option of having the culprits shot. Which must rate as one the worst derelictions of duty that any senior members of Óglaigh Na hÉireann (IRA) committed throughout the course of the war. Talk about doing a Pilate, they washed their hands of all responsibility and instead asked the sisters and Robert McCartney's partner if in return for their loved ones death, they wished some other mothers son’s blood on their hands.

The McCartney family were made of stronger stuff and placed the responsibility firmly back where it belonged, in the hands of the people who had command over a number of those who murdered Robert McCartney. Did they take up there responsibility as senior members of IRA. Did they hell as like, they set the smear and fear brigade on to the women and as this program shows some have never been stood down.

Solders all over the world often get into pub brawls, thankfully such a tragic outcome as this is comparatively rare, what makes this case unique is the senior ranks of the army these men belonged to, not only made a bad situation worse by their refusal to take proper responsibility in the days after the murder, but they either orchestrated or tolerated a campaign against the victims family.

It was these acts that made Katherine McCartney’s words ring true, when she said the following; and any honest man or woman knows it.

“His (Robert McCartney) name is always going to be associated with the demise of the IRA. So those people, those IRA men who went down that night by doing what they did they brought down, or certainly put a nail in the coffin of their own organization.”

MH.

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