Had Bobby Storey been any other person, including a Unionist, there would have been nowhere near the hullabaloo that his funeral stirred up almost a year ago. From the very second Unionists, the SDLP, Alliance and Nolan heard about and witnessed the size of his funeral on television, they were on their pedestals and indeed up in arms. How dare an entire community mourn the passing of a literal hero to many. Any other person would have been allowed to rest in peace, their grieving family allowed to grieve in peace. It’s called common decency and respect. Yet none of the above was afforded to either Bobby or his family.
The Police Ombudsman, an independent investigation by Deputy Chief Constable Mark Webster of the Cumbria Police and an investigation held by the Inspectorate of Constabulary, have all found the PSNI showed no bias in the Bobby Storey funeral. No Sinn Fein politicians were arrested, no member of the public arrested…no arrests at all. That’s not good enough for Unionism. In their view, they’re right and everyone else is wrong, though there is a distinct lack of face from the Alliance Party and the SDLP this time. Two parties who previously rowed in behind Unionism in their assertion that the PSNI was under the thumb of Sinn Fein and indeed called for Simon Byrne’s resignation because…well, they didn’t get the result they wanted, and didn’t like the result they got. To be clear, they didn’t get the result they wanted on three separate occasions, by three separate independent investigations. Anyone else would have said “You know what – fair enough. We’ll let it go at that”.
However, Unionism is lacking a real leader. The DUP is fighting for its life to hold onto its position as the North’s largest Unionist party, and the UUP wants to take that crown away from them with Doug Beattie seeking to be that leader. After the news of the Inspectorate of Constabulary’s findings – findings Unionism refuses to accept, the UUP met with Simon Byrne and his senior officers to “close gaps in knowledge” surrounding the Storey funeral simply because Gerry Kelly had “communication” with the PSNI over the planning of the funeral. I’ve lost count of how many times it has been made clear to all aggrieved parties, that there is nothing new in the PSNI engaging with the organisers of any event such as a funeral – in fact ‘Good Policing Guidelines’ dictate police should engage with the organisers. The only difference this time was it was the funeral of what could be described as a Republican hero.
Doug graciously allowed Simon Byrne off the hook by saying, “He’s going nowhere, he made that clear”, going on to state, “So we as a party are also clear – if he’s going nowhere, we have to work with him. We’ve always said that we will be a constructive political party, that we will give solutions, not just look for problems.” Now wasn’t that easy, Doug? Doug even attempted to get Naomi Long involved in her role as Justice Minister to instigate a Judge-led inquiry (yes folks…another inquiry by another team) to further investigate the entire series of events and gain answers. Answers which three previous, independent investigations hadn’t uncovered…apparently.
So is that the end of this witch hunt? Of course it’s not (he said with a smirk). No doubt Unionism and Loyalism will be unhappy that they retain a PSNI Chief Constable who isn’t a Unionist lackey, who won’t be pushed about by Unionists and I personally am glad to see it. Resigning from his post simply because one side of the community demanded it would have set stability in the North back decades. It would have been seen by Nationalism and Republicanism as pandering to a Unionist witch hunt based around a man who in Republican and some Nationalist eyes, served Ireland and protected the community, who came out in their thousands to say goodbye to him, which says a lot about some parties who rowed in behind this witch hunt in the first place.
Unionism is running out of road on this. However, unlike in days gone by, when a suspected ‘witch’ would die regardless whether she was innocent or not – Sinn Fein as a party aren’t going away, in fact I would go so far as to say this witch hunt by all other parties in Stormont has made Sinn Fein stronger due to the feelings that politics in the North attempted to demonise an entire community. It wasn’t simply a family, it wasn’t simply a few people – politics in the North turned on the entire Republican family in the North, completely ignoring the mirror image of what happened at the Bobby Storey funeral, in other communities and for some other personalities within Nationalism . It was a sectarian witch hunt directed at a man and a party which have been at the forefront of peace and reconciliation in this dire little state. Make no mistake: had this been anyone else, literally anyone else, the funeral would have passed off without so much as a whisper of an investigation, the family would have been allowed to grieve in peace and the man would have been resting in peace…but then again – it was Bobby Storey.
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