The IMC and a worrying signal

WE didn’t need the so-called ‘Independent Monitoring Commission’ (an ex-Scotland Yard supremo, an ex-CIA spook chief, an Iveagh House mandarin and a lord of the British realm and the Alliance Party) to tell us that the murder of Bobby Moffett on the Shankill Road was carried out and sanctioned by the leadership of the UVF.
Long before the IMC produced their report, the family of the murdered man and the people of the Shankill Road let the world know who runs that place and who could, in the words of the report, “publicly execute” a man in broad daylight and get away with it.
In this, its 24th report, the IMC did not recommend any sanctions against the UVF or their political wing, the Progressive Unionist Party, but merely gave them the required slap on the wrist and hoped the incident was “a one-off”. Comforting words indeed for the bereaved relatives and the thousands who attended the funeral of Bobby Moffett in the face of threats by the killers.
The IMC, set up in 2003 as a result of the Joint Declaration by the British and Irish governments, has provided a lucrative income for the retired CIA and Scotland Yard spooks, as well as the former Speaker of the Assembly, Lord Alderdice.
Their official role is supposed to aid the Peace Process “by monitoring and holding to account the activities of paramilitaries”. That primarily means republicans for, in the murky world of the IMC, unionist paramilitaries have only bit parts, which is why they can carry on their activities without fear of sanctions, political or financial.
Their unofficial role is to be the mouthpiece for the backroom boys: Special Branch, MI5, MI6 and all the other shady characters that collectively make up the intelligence services of the British and Irish governments.

The modus operandi is simple. The two governments and the intelligence services use the IMC in much the same way that a dog uses a lamp-post. Most of their reports to date have not been worth the paper they are written on since they reflect, for the most part, the slavish line dictated by the British Government at any given time as well as providing comfort blankets for the political opponents of Sinn Féin. There’s no thundering threats or screaming headlines to get tough on the UVF and the PUP or ‘name names’, as was the case in past reports directed against republicans. In the British House of Commons, SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie described the IMC’s mild rebuke to the UVF as “sending out a worrying signal”.
In the face of the proposed and swingeing British Government cutbacks, it is scandalous that the IMC performing poodles should be paid almost £700 a day for producing reports regurgitating information served up by the political detectives of the intelligence services. Now that is a worrying signal.