Conor Kenny
Staff Writer
Alex Salmond is not a man with many political allies at the moment. Something about that supercilious simper is slightly unnerving, and one wishes there was a more appropriate phrase to apply to him than Simon Amstell’s memorable description of Tess Daly as being “dead behind the eyes”. At any rate, he is in the news on a daily basis at the moment, and one would have thought Martin McGuinness of all people might have weighed in with an opinion on an issue pertaining to national independence. But when asked by Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan last week if he’d like to see a similar referendum to the one currently being held in Scotland be introduced in this country, the deputy First Minister gave a rather diplomatic response that he has become somewhat prone to of late. Perhaps that’s just the result of over-exposure to the slippery Sean Gallagher back in October, but it nonetheless promulgated the reality that McGuinness has become much more of a politician in the last ten years (in a positive sense), and that Sinn Fein might be becoming a serious political party to voters in the South.
An emphasis may have been placed on party neutrality in the Presidential election a few months back, but the affiliation of McGuinness with Sinn Fein (and all the implications that go with that), were never far from the lips of any RTE newcaster, or indeed, any other candidate. Despite this undignified smear campaign, McGuinness still managed to achieve a respectable third placed finish with 13.7% of the vote, somewhat showing up those digs at him as insults to a significant proportion of the Irish public too. He was, of course, a senior IRA commander, but should that have stopped him running for public office? The first democratically elected President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, was the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, and served an amount of years in prison that make McGuinness look like a borstal delinquent.
The competent performance of the MP for Mid Ulster in the election is a sure sign that the party’s appeal is growing, and the unfair slanders being hurled at Sinn Fein are also beginning to look increasingly archaic. Try telling the families of the victims of IRA bombings that these slanders are “unfair” you say? The loss of life in any act of violent radicalism is insupportable, as McGuinness knows all too well on a personal level, but the hidebound view of Sinn Fein as a front for that particular terrorist organisation is as outdated as it is derisory. This is now nothing more than a historic association.
Such hoopla should be beneath the Irish public, but it still seems there are few depths to which the media aren’t prepared to sink. The right-wing obscurantist Gay Byrne once staged the television equivalent of a guerilla ambush on Gerry Adams on The Late Late Show, bringing out an endless stream of hostile politicians from backstage to confront the bearded giant. Adams dispatched all of their arguments with ease through his consummate eloquence, and appeared the perfect gentleman in stark contrast to his aggressive and intimidating host. At one point the irritable Byrne actually tried to silence his own audience, who were clapping a bit too loudly at Adams’ remarks for his own liking. And then there was the disgraceful attempt by The Daily Mail to make a connection between Adams and a sordid paedophile ring, simply because of the horrific actions of his brother. Adams carried this family burden on his back for many years, all the while trying to focus on countless national and international problems. He should have received sympathy and praise for his courage in facing up to this issue and telling his side of the story, for no other reason than that he hoped more victims of child abuse might come forward.
So what does the future hold for Sinn Fein? The Trinity College report, How Ireland Voted 2011, found that the only party to offer a distinctly left-wing ideology in the last election was Sinn Fein, and with cuts being made snappier than in a Turkish barbers at the moment, that reality will be meaningful to every working-class family in the country. However, it seems as though the old stigma surrounding the party will only be fully lifted when Adams and McGuinness, people with real and genuine links to the violent actions of the past, have stepped aside. Their hard work should never be forgotten, but if these affiliations were what cost McGuinness the Presidential election, they will almost certainly cost Adams the chance of ever being Taoiseach. Mary Lou McDonald, an erudite bastion of womanhood with a rather fetching posterior, is sure to be the next leader of the party, and make no mistake about it, there is a definite chance that she will be on the precipice of power in Ireland in nine years time. Until that day comes, Sinn Fein should avoid sinking to the level of their slanderers, because if you wrestle with chimney sweeps, you’ll only come out looking and smelling as bad as them.
