LOSS MOVES PARTY IN NEW DIRECTION
THE old Latin proverb ‘de mortuis nil nisi bonum’ was scrupulously observed yesterday as nothing but good was said of the dead – with the exception of some scathing comments from over the water by Lord Tebbit, a former IRA target.
The media pack offered no probing questions when Mary Lou McDonald fronted a party phalanx on the Leinster House plinth. Indeed, condolences were offered in the Irish tradition, for which she was grateful.
Nonetheless, questions arise as to the future direction for Sinn Féin, now that one of its master strategists has departed the stage after a brief illness.
It is a mark of the political power of Mr McGuinness that his last act was to engineer the collapse of the Northern Executive and Assembly over the cash-for-ash affair, and the subsequent election that significantly improved Sinn Féin’s position while ending unionism’s overall majority at Stormont for the first time since partition.
But with Mr McGuinness now gone, the focus will inevitably turn to the party’s other long-serving colossus, Gerry Adams, and how long he will continue to serve. It is all of 45 years ago, after all, when in July 1972, both men were part of an IRA delegation that secretly met Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw in Chelsea.
Mr Adams was then 23, having been released from prison to facilitate the meeting, while Mr McGuinness was 21. But time marches on, and Gerry Adams is now the longest-serving political leader in Europe – having even outlasted Fidel Castro, whose funeral he attended last year.
If Mr McGuinness and Dr Ian Paisley were the latter-day ‘chuckle brothers’, then he and Mr Adams were the original ‘tiochfaidh’ brothers, and in arms from virtually the dawn of the Troubles. Yet no-one lasts forever.
Mr Adams was once shot five times in an assassination attempt, and he has availed of the finest medical attention in the US in recent years. Probably the loss of his great friend will now prompt an earlier end to his political career.
He could even step down as TD for Louth at the next election, the better to mentor Michelle O’Neill in Northern Ireland, now that she has lost the steady hand on the tiller that was Mr McGuinness.
The North remains the cornerstone of Sinn Féin’s project towards a united Ireland, and Ms O’Neill is inexperienced to say the least. She faces Arlene Foster in what will be a fraught few days as the North drifts towards another election while Sinn Féin mourns its lost Bismarck.
Mary Lou McDonald is the obvious successor in the South, with the party leadership having clearly decided on a ‘clean hands’ doublewoman strategy on the island.
The signs are that the Sinn Féin Assembly election success has already ramped its popularity in the Republic, with a recent Behaviour & Attitudes survey for The Sunday Times showing the party has now exceeded support for Fine Gael. The loss of McGuinness, and the respect shown to him, is likely to sustain that popularity for the short term at least.
There is also the emigrant vote move that could install a Sinn Féin candidate in Áras an Uachtaráin in 2025, while its activists will draw new zeal from McGuinness’s death, as he would indeed have wished.
All in all, the movement looks to have much mileage ahead, even as its pathfinders drop away as inevitably as the present moves into the past. Brexit, ironically, is a British setting sun that could yet herald a new morning on the island of Ireland. And then, after many days, the long game will finally be over and their day will truly have arrived.