Anger is the sword of the emotions. It is the steel within the Sinn Féin hand that enables its representatives to walk into television studios and slay experienced television interviewers. It is the edged weapon that ensures that the front men and women of the IRA live at an emotional pitch far above that of the people with whom they must deal, writes Kevin Myers.
Cardinal Conway once said that in terms of conviviality, the average Englishman was two whiskeys behind an average Irishman. Similarly, Sinn Féin-IRA are emotionally two punches in the nose ahead of the rest of us.
Brainwashed by a full decade of grovelling propitiation into believing that they were, by very reason of their anger, immune to the laws of consequence, they developed their own moral microclimate, even as they were escorted into government, invited to the White House and made welcome in Chequers.
That microclimate permitted them to behave like Charles Manson while alongside them the new age vegans of the SDLP munched glumly on their lentils, chewed their brown rice until tears came to their eyes, and consulted astrological charts.
In negotiations with the British government and unionists, now just who are nationalists going to vote for - angry killers, with steel in their mailed fists and menace in their eyes, or the Peter, Paul and Mary of the SDLP, strumming Puff the Magic Dragon?
Well, actually the winsome folk group might have done better if the two governments had valued their passivity of purpose, but neither did.
All the Sinn Féin animal had to do was utter a growl, while the SDLP were warbling Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, and it would find itself inside sitting by the fire with Bertie and Tony, while outside in the howling east wind, a shuddering Peter, Paul and Mary were gazing through the letter-box at the cosy scene within.
But throughout this grisly process, the SDLP never got angry. Their operatives didn't kill postal workers, or a garda, or Eamon Collins. They weren't running cross-Border rackets, or laundering diesel or breaking legs while they were strumming their guitars and warbling, "If you're going to Ballymena, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair". The ocean of hippiness had receded across the globe, leaving a few improbable green puddles of it amid the drumlins and pot-bellies of Ulster. This relic of the 1960s possesses one enduring mantra, a localised if prolix version of "Peace, Man," known as the single transferable speech, which spoke winsome words of "inclusivity", "cherishing all our traditions equally", "taking pride in diversity." The men with flint in their eyes and steel in their hands smiled in the dark as this treacle rolled over them. They had no reason to fear such gushing piety, because neither government respected it, and this was a game of terror, not of tarot cards. Thus the SDLP carefully prepared the bed of their own destruction, and it was through no deed of theirs, nor of the governments either, that the kiss of life was placed firmly on their greying, wizened lips, as the final rattle began to gather in their lungs.
For it was Sinn Féin-IRA hubris which breathed life into the SDLP. They forgot they were in their own microclimate, and assumed they were free to wander anywhere they liked. And why wouldn't they? Had they not gone through an entire laundry list of offences, and the only thing between their latest offences and a safe return to their beds was a trip to Chequers or the Taoiseach's office, where they could glare and snarl, while Tony and Bertie would do little rain-dances of propitiation? They didn't know that £26 million was about £20 million too far. They didn't know either that the CIA had been looking at their capers, and had made an altogether more pessimistic assessment of the vegan potential of an animal that specialises in eating raw, still-living liver in front of its owner. They didn't know that Washington saw in the South Armagh-North Louth area a terrorist and criminal sanctuary, a little Tora Bora that could no longer be tolerated.
So, with the governments emboldened by Washington's resolution, and the kiss of life still warm on his lips, last weekend Mark Durkan leapt from his party's deathbed. He threw away the beads, headband, the tambourine and his old Woodstock album, and came out with the Sinn Féin weapon of choice in his eye: anger. And this time, it wasn't the dreary, weary anger directed towards the unionists, which has been the SDLP's futile stock in trade, and at which they can never compete with the IRA, because they've never killed any, whereas the IRA have killed oodles of them. No, this time it was directed at their real competitors for the nationalist vote: the Shinners.
Have we reached a turning point, confirmed in all its awfulness by the savage Shankill-butcher type murder of Robert McCartney by IRA men in Belfast last month? Well, this moral mess was assembled over 10 years of ceasefire, and years of covert propitiation before, so it's too early to say that we have. But if this is a nadir, then there is nothing beneath it, and the only available direction now is upward.
Dare we hope that henceforth the SDLP will enter television studies with fire in their bellies and menace in their eyes, knowing that with their bloodless hands and their pure unsullied anger, they can win against the Sinn Féin-IRA machine? So mark me well, Mark: be angry, by all means, but never ever lose your temper.
