The murder of Ronan Kerr is not a random event. It is unquestionably part of a continuing pattern
The booby-trap bomb killing of a young police officer in Northern Ireland at the weekend feels like a horror risen from the grave, a brutality erupting out of a dark and almost forgotten past. For people of the murdered 25-year-old Constable Ronan Kerr's own generation, who have grown up in the years during which Northern Ireland has been at peace, his killing will have been specially incomprehensible. Surely such violence – and in Omagh of all places – was now a thing of the past? Was it not just last week that first minister Peter Robinson was claiming that the 5 May Northern Ireland assembly elections will be the first in which the main issues will be everyday ones?
The answer to these questions remains yes. And yet the murder is not a random event. It is unquestionably part of a continuing pattern. The killing of Constable Kerr comes days after a large bomb was defused outside the courthouse in Derry and two men were shot in Dublin during what is said to have been a dispute among dissident republicans. The gun and the bomb – and the clandestine infrastructure and networks that go with them – have not disappeared. And a threat remains on the mainland too. It is less than six months since the home secretary said an attack in Britain by Irish terrorists is now a "strong possibility".
The killing of a Catholic police officer was a political act as well as a criminal one. It was clearly designed to frighten Constable Kerr's co-religionists out of a police career. But the days when Northern Ireland's police could plausibly be depicted as sectarian enforcers against oppressed Catholics are long past. Policing has been reformed. The 50:50 recruitment drive has meant that 30% of officers are Catholics now. This line must be defended. It was good, therefore, to see all sides rising instinctively to that responsibility this weekend. The murderers must be caught. But their attempt to wreck police reform must be defeated too.
As always, however, there is a deeper story. Northern Ireland remains culturally divided in spite of the heroic transformations of the recent past. On the margins – quite big margins, judging by a 2010 survey that gave them an estimated 14% support – some republicans remain wedded to ancestral agendas and to the rewards of outlaw ways of life. Some of the old republican dogs refuse to learn new peaceful tricks. Meanwhile a new generation has grown up which embraces the criminal glamour of the past – especially in grim economic times both sides of the border – that their elders have forsworn. They may not be many. But there are enough of them, and enough fellow travellers, to matter. Their threat will remain real for far longer than most of us would like to admit.