For the love of Robert

Inside the McCartney family house there are two constant noises - the dull ring of the telephone and the background chatter of a 24-hour news channel.

For the McCartney sisters, it all feels unreal. What is even more surreal is when their pictures appear on the TV, on the hour every hour.

"Sometimes I wonder to myself 'is this all really happening?'," says Claire, the youngest of the five sisters.

But this is not a dream, it is a recurring nightmare. The McCartney sisters have lost two brothers in the space of four years. First Gerard aged 28, then Robert, 33.

Gerard took his own life after a period of depression. Robert was stabbed and kicked to death in the centre of Belfast. The gang which killed him included at least three members of the IRA.

He died only yards away from the Hilton Hotel where he and his fiancee Bridgeen were hoping to have their wedding reception in July.

Now their two young sons Conlaed, 4, and Brandon, 2, are left to wonder why daddy does not come home at night. What is also confusing is why so many cameras and microphones are being shoved in front of their mummy.

Brigdeen has told them that their father has gone to heaven. As for the international media presence, in some ways that is more difficult to explain.

The boys are too young to understand the political significance of a Catholic family from a hardline republican area daring to challenge the IRA.

No one needs to explain it to them, but if anyone did try to put it in their language, it would be a bit like the seven dwarfs deciding to take on the Power Rangers.

The IRA are self-styled super-heroes, not used to their authority being questioned by ordinary folk in republican areas. But the McCartney sisters are no ordinary folk.

Strong, courageous, bold, articulate, tenacious and formidable - just some of the adjectives used about them in recent weeks.

Gemma, a 41-year-old nurse, is the eldest. Next comes Paula, who is perhaps the best known of the sisters, because she has done most of the media interviews. A mother of five children, aged 19 to three, she is a mature student at Queen's University, doing women's studies.

She hasn't been at many lectures recently. In the six weeks since her brother died, Paula's modest home in the republican Short Strand area of east Belfast has become the unofficial headquarters of the campaign 'Justice for Robert'.

Wooden placards litter the porch, leftovers from the recent protest rally urging the killers to give themselves up. In the living room, an old family photo of Robert sits on the TV, which is continually tuned to 24-hour news.

The phone sits in the hall and rings every five minutes. It is normally a journalist. Family members take it in turns to threaten to throw it out the window. No-one ever does.

In the kitchen, cups of tea are drunk as if they are liquid oxygen. Look for a puff of smoke and you will usually find Catherine McCartney, the one with the glasses, and the straight dark hair. Close by her will be a red folder with vital pieces of information, such as the schedule for the planned four-day trip to Washington.

It is all neatly written in a ring-bound file. It is not hard to guess which of the sisters is a teacher.

She teaches history and politics - subjects which now swamp all aspects of her life. Catherine understands why the IRA was reluctant to admit its link to her brother's murder, she realises the historical reasons why the IRA did not hand over the killers to the police, but that does not mean she thinks it was right. Quite the opposite.

Donna is the middle sister. She runs a sandwich shop in Belfast. She has kept on working in recent days but it has not been easy.

The youngest sister, Claire, 26, is a teaching assistant. Like the others, she is a confident speaker. She summed up the family's determination to find their brother's killers by calmly telling BBC Radio Four's Today programme: "It is just a matter of persistence."

They have lost count of the number of interviews they have done. The Irish state broadcaster RTE talked to them for an hour last month on the prestigious Mariane Finucane programme. There were tears followed by laughter followed by more tears as they talked about their memories of Robert.

"Ah, we spoiled him," remembers Gemma, "with kisses mainly, because we didn't have any money."

They are an open family. Open enough to admit that many of them used to support and vote for Sinn Fein, including Robert himself.

They are also a close-knit family, and they will need to be. Like all families, there are tensions, strains, differences of opinion but - so far - they have managed to stay united.

In Belfast, 'the McCartneys' has entered the political phrase book. It does not have the same ring as 'the Clintons' or 'the Kennedys' but there is a connection.

In Washington next week, the five sisters are due to meet Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Hilary Clinton. They will also see President Bush. It is a measure of how much international support they have gathered.

Much as they appreciate the attention, the bottom line is that these sisters have been catapulted into the international spotlight because their brother was stabbed, kicked, beaten and punched to death.

A point of clarification.......from Richard Delevan's sicNotes:

The McCartney sisters: Irish Times

McCartney Family Wakes Up the Yanks?

The McCartney family's bravery seems to have done what Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, the PDs, UUP, DUP, SDLP, and Labour (both Irish and British varieties) have all failed to do for 30 years - break through to Americans with an effective narrative to Sinn Fein's [view] about what's going on in Northern Ireland.

Slowly, slowly, since the Northern Bank raid, the interest level has been picking up. After the McCartney killing it's now getting a lot of play. The duelling coverage - Gerry Adams in New York and the McCartney family at the White House - should be quite a show next week around St Patrick's Day.

Technorati brings up around 600 posts on the subject, and a surprisingly high percentage of them from Americans. It's even beginning to dawn on some American bloggers what no one in Dublin can bring themselves to say -- the only way to force Sinn Fein to act like a democratic political party is to cut off the American money.

But this will be the first time that the issue of Northern Ireland has been this high profile in the US since 9/11. Few can listen to people like Sean McManus blather his "the IRA was pushed too far" line without thinking, would we take seriously anyone going on about "al-Qaeda was pushed too far" (except as a security risk)?

Standouts include the always excellent Belmont Club (the comments are particularly good), Brainster, Obsidian Wings, Winds of Change, Dan Drezner, Crooked Timber, and others have all given the situation at least a nod - and one would expect much more next week.

One good snippet of the conversation-

Belmont's mastermind wretchard puts it in the counter-Islamic terror context:

I think the IRA will be a ball in the side pocket. As the US acquires a generic antiterrorist capability, such as for example the ability to track laundered funds through Bulgarian-based banks the type of which the IRA wanted to buy, they incidentally acquire options they didn't have before. Moreover, the future battleground of radical Islamism may in a few years be Europe as much as the Middle East. In that respect all cats will be grey in the dark.

But another commentator on the same thread was less impressed with the efficacy of tough words from the White House:

Let's try and maintain some sense of perspective here. What has actually happened: On their side: the IRA has robbed a bank of more than $50 million and gotten clean away with it, and a bunch of their guys have eviscerated a man in an Irish pub in front of 75 witnesses, all of whom remain too terrified to testify. On our side: The US president has told them they ought to disband. And this is supposed to suggest that the IRA are flat on their backs, about to check out, about to give up? I don't think so... The IRA's reservoir of support, as with any terrorist group including the PLO, Hizbollah, ETA and all the rest, consists of the many sympathizers and contributors it can rely on in Ireland and in the US, primarily New England. The bulk of these supporters will forgive the IRA both of the above 'actions' in a heartbeat, and indeed have already done so. The arrogance which these two IRA 'actions' display shows how utterly complacent it feels about this. In terms of fighting back, if we put some serious pressure on the IRA's sympathizers and contributors we might get somewhere, but I fail to see how a speech from GWB does this at all. If IRA sympathizers agreed already with GWB's view of the world we wouldn't have this problem. They are laughing this off in the IRA-owned pubs across the Irish republic. The IRA has faced many tougher challenges than this over the years, including Margaret Thatcher and the SAS. Achieving results against them is going to take more than some rhetoric from a US president who can't even suppress IRA fundraising in his own country. I'm a GWOT supporter, and I believe things have started to go our way recently, but it will all go wrong pretty fast if we start believing that all it takes to knock off or even wipe the smile off the face of any terrorist group with decades of murderous experience is a speech from GWB, or anyone else. It's not going to be that easy.

More realism like this may help start a real conversation in Irish America.

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