Threats To Kill Martin McGuinness.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) have announced that Republican dissidents have threatened to kill Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's Deputy First Minister. This is hardly noteworthy because Mr McGuiness has been living under threat of assassination since the 1970's, first by the British Army, then by loyalist paramilitaries and most recently by dissident Republicans. The real reason for the announcement seems to be a bit of political gamesmanship by the PSNI with two main objectives.

The first seems to be to discourage people from attending the upcoming Mayday protests by giving the impression that there is some sort of split between those groups who are preparing to attend. I haven't seen any evidence of such a spilt but what I do know is that the Police nationally are very worried about this years so called Mayday weekender. In light of Ian Tomlinson's death at the G20 protests the police are expecting one of the largest turnouts ever seen at the Mayday protests both in London on May 1st and in Brighton on May 4th. If the police's predictions are accurate and the Mayday protests do successfully bring out a large number of people then it will further underscore the irrelevance of the UK security services so whatever happens don't expect to be able to watch the events on TV.

The PSNI's second objective seems to be to make it appear that Martin McGuinness' is assisting the UK security services. An accusation like that is only going to further undermine his Republican base and may even endanger the Northern Irish peace process. This seems bizarre given the vast amounts of money Britain has poured into Northern Ireland over the last decade so I'm struggling to imagine why Britain would be so keen to unbalance the province now.