Ben Lowry: The PSNI row as everyone know​​​​​s is about the overall culture of appeasing Irish republicans

The anniversary of the attack is obviously one that families, loved ones and supporters would want to mark. But in 2021 police deemed that year’s gathering to be outside of covid restrictions that prevailed at the time, hence constables stopped at the scene. They ended up arresting two people.

There was an outcry because it seemed cruel to apprehend anyone on such a sombre occasion. But the sensitivity of the occasion cannot of itself be a reason for breaching the coronavirus restrictions that prevailed at the time. Northern Ireland had so many massacres that there are multiple anniversaries each year and indeed in early 2021 there were several notable dates. The 50th anniversary of the Brougher Mountain IRA bomb which killed five people working a transmitter in Co Tyrone on February 9 1971 did not happen as planned. A gathering of the families for the first time in five decades was postponed until October. The 29th anniversary of the IRA massacre of eight men murdered at Teebane on January 17 1992 was not marked by a service.

That people in those situations, and many others, made sacrifices in order to comply with the rules gave added force to the police duty to enforce regulations evenly and fairly when in 2020 or early 2021 they came across gatherings that they deemed to be outside the covid rules. This was particularly so in light of the number of people who were denied a funeral.

In a typical year in NI around 17,000 people die. The restrictions on funerals in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 were highly restrictive and thus highly controversial. In the early days of lockdown a maximum of 10 close family members were allowed to be present at the funeral of a loved one, with social distancing in place. No services were held inside churches. Later in the autumn of 2020 the restriction was eased to allow 25 people to be present and some restrictions continued until February 2022.

There were some restrictions for two years, during which time about 35,000 people died in NI (overwhelmingly they were people who died in old age and not of covid). Almost all of these people’s loved ones accepted the funeral restrictions, however reluctantly, and in most cases the funeral service was smaller than it would have been. A number of IRA funerals ignored coronavirus limits.

Of course many people would want to gather in defiance of covid restrictions to mark the death of a loved one murdered 29 years previously, but it is all the more obvious that most people would want to mark the death of a loved one three or five or 10 days previously. Yet, to an extraordinary extent, people accepted such a normal grieving process was not permitted due to a pandemic.

It was very unfortunate indeed that police felt impelled to take the action they did in the delicate situation that prevailed on the Ormeau Road in February. The resulting outcry was akin to the outcry that followed the police action at the Black Lives Matter protests in Belfast city centre the previous June. Those mass demonstrations followed the death of George Floyd in late May 2020, when he was held down so forcefully by a police officer after his arrest in Minnesota, US that he was unable to breathe and died, leading to a wave of global revulsion.

But again, that such revulsion was apt is beside the point. The protest in Belfast on June 3 was a highly calculated breach of lockdown that contrasted with the compliance of tens of thousands of people who wanted to mourn someone they had known and loved. The Saturday Black Lives protest days later was even more calculated.

That morning, before the gathering, I wrote about the pitiable response of the authorities to the breach, calling it “the last straw” with lockdown: “It is hard to see why a business should continue to accept the ruin of their enterprise, or why a group that feels strongly about a political issue should not protest publicly about it, or why a parent should accept that their offspring at school or university should be deprived face-to-face tutoring. The protestors tore up everything we were told about proximity of people and crowds — the reasons we all sacrificed key elements of our lives for two and a half months.” (Click here for the article, ‘Lockdown is now dead as a result of the authorities,’ June 6 2020)

To my surprise, police took the obviously appropriate course of action in the face of such mass defiance and issued fines later that day. Farcically though, the Police Ombudsman later weighed in criticising the fines, the PSNI leadership showed their lamentable weakness in the face of such criticism, and the fines were refunded. Police chiefs faced barely a whisper of protest for capitulating. The ombudsman’s office faced barely a word of complaint for its contemptible findings.

But this was as nothing compared to the Bobby Storey funeral later that month. A mass IRA defiance of coronavirus restrictions that was not merely facilitated by the PSNI and by Belfast City Council, but both organisations were essentially exonerated by reports into their disgraceful conduct. Here is a link to an essay I wrote about those investigations (Ben Lowry: Instead of moving on from the IRA funeral, we still need proper answers into the scandal,’ May 2021). And here is a link to an excellent essay Owen Polley wrote in which he said: “I’m afraid unionists will just have to suck it up. The peace process is based on appeasing Sinn Fein and their ilk.” (Owen Polley: ‘The Bobby Storey IRA funeral was reminder of who is in charge of Northern Ireland,’ July 2020)

And that’s what this latest episode has all been about. Sinn Fein, who made demands of the police over the Ormeau Road arrests, get special treatment on everything from collapsing Stormont for three years until they get their non-negotiable political demand (an Irish language act) to getting millions in MP expenses while boycotting Westminster. Everyone knows they get special treatment, and successive UK governments do nothing about it, and Irish governments in their own way demand such special treatment.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor