Dispatches: The Big Heist

Channel 4

Recently on Aerial Telly, we discussed how the IRA don’t chase brain-dead agricultural students across the British Isles for a decade at a time. No, that’s just not their scene. What with it being about as self-evidently fruitless and pointless an exercise as one could conceive.

"What they do do is terrorise, extort, beat, rape and shoot their own communities"

What they do do is terrorise, extort, beat, rape and shoot their own communities. Ah God love them though, because they’re only protecting us from the British. Thanks lads!

Dispatches: The Big Heist chronicled the gargantuan Northern Bank raid from last year. Showing their signature flair and brutality, the Provos took the families of two senior Northern Bank managers hostage and forced them to empty £26.5 million from the high security vault under the guise of emptying out rubbish.

That the IRA is little more than a scuzzy drug-dealing criminal cartel with political pretensions is a no-brainer. Why the Irish vote Sinn Fein in such numbers continues to baffle. One of the most sophisticated, politically literate working classes on the planet, it’s almost as if they’ve been institutionalised over the years by the fascist brutality of the Provos.

You’d think that over time politics will supersede the Provisional IRA as a criminal organisation just as it did as a guerrilla organisation.

It’s a hope worth holding on to but let’s not forget that criminal organisations gain a certain momentum of their own. The hierarchy is now in place, the techniques perfected in the war with the British Army are now being employed against the ordinary people of Northern Ireland.

"The hierarchy is now in place, the techniques perfected in the war with the British Army are now being employed against the ordinary people of Northern Ireland."

The IRA man in the community drives the flash car, wears the flash jewellery and gets the flash women – that’s the big recruitment attraction now. That stoat-faced turd Adams can claim to know nothing about the bank heist but he’s fooling no one.

For him not to be aware of the biggest operation in the history of the Republican movement would demonstrate such contempt for his leadership among the rank-and-file as to make his position untenable.

Kevin Toolis followed the money trail from the Northern Bank raid to an Irish businessman who was found with €2.6 million inside a wheelie bin in his garden. Nice.

And that’s where Republicanism has ended up. From demagoguery to thuggery. From protection from the British Army to protection rackets against their own people.

"Our day will come" indeed.

The best thing about it: Some good, strong investigative journalism

The worst thing about it: Sinn Fein replicants stonewalling their way through interviews

The verdict on Dispatches: The Big Heist: "It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s sale of the fucking century."

Marks out of 10: 7