Activists

SISTERHOOD can be POWERFUL

the mccartney clan gave up personal plans and ignored threats to take on the i.r.a. their aim: justice for slain family member robert

Standing up to the I.R.A. just isn’t done in Northern Ireland. But don’t tell that to the five sisters and fiancé of murdered Belfast forklift driver Robert McCartney, who challenged the armed group with their dignified campaign to bring his killers to justice. The women spent much of 2005 imploring witnesses to come forward so that police can arrest all 15 people they believe were involved in killing Robert, 33, in a Belfast pub in January, sanitizing the crime scene and ordering everyone there to stay silent. “What they did to Robert that night was wrong and we wanted to make them account for it,” Catherine, 37, told Time.

Theirs has been a long road with few personal rewards and a high price. Four sisters have dropped their jobs or studies, while Robert’s fiancé Bridgeen raises their two small boys alone. A sister of one i.r.a. man whom the McCartneys allege was involved in the murder appeared at Paula’s front door in a small Catholic enclave of Belfast to warn: Back off or you will be “put out of the district,” republican code for being driven from your house. “We were right and we were just telling the truth, so what is there to be afraid of?” asks Paula, 40, sitting in her living room.

The McCartney women have taken on the i.r.a. as no Catholic family in Northern Ireland has done in a generation. They spurned the paramilitary group’s offer to shoot those responsible for Robert’s murder, saying they preferred the rule of law. “What we were asking republicans to do was to live up to their ideals, which they have failed to do,” says Catherine. The police, who have little forensic evidence and witness testimony with which to build a case, arrested and charged one suspect in Robert’s murder and another in the attempted murder of his friend in June. But the McCartneys are frustrated that others remain free. They hardly feel heroic. “We’ve exhausted every avenue against them and still don’t get these people held to account,” says Claire, 27.

But for all that, the women have been incredibly powerful worldwide advocates. They gave hundreds of interviews to international news organizations, visited the White House, and castigated the i.r.a. and its political ally Sinn Fein for protecting killers. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that their courage contributed mightily to the i.r.a.’s historic July announcement to disarm. But they say they won’t quit until everyone involved in their brother’s death is tried in open court.

Says Catherine: “What Robert’s case was about is that there was something very rotten at the heart of the i.r.a. and that its own members were now engaging in criminal activities, and communities are not going to tolerate that.” —By Andrea Gerlin

email this article   print-safe version

From TIME's Archive