Why it took a Dubliner to make SF a genuinely all-Ireland movement
She’ll never have the status of Gerry Adams. But can Mary Lou McDonald persuade voters in the south of Sinn Féin’s relevance?
JUST after one o’clock on Wednesday, members of the Sinn Féin delegation to the new round of talks walked into Stormont. The attention of the media scrum focused on Mary Lou McDonald TD in a smart black coat buttoned up against the strong sharp wind. Yes, it was a classic photo opportunity that Sinn Féin is adept at exploiting. Mary Lou, flanked by Michelle O’Neill and Elisha McCallion, the Foyle MP, are among the more photogenic politicians at Stormont but the image of three women leading the way – and McDonald’s appearance particularly – was much more than a photo-op.
The three women were there to show that they’re the new face of Sinn Féin. McDonald was there to demonstrate that she’s the leader-designate of an all-Ireland party, that she has as much right to be at the Stormont talks as any Northern MLA or MP. She went into the building with O’Neill and McCallion to meet the new Northern Secretary Karen Bradley, again making a point that elected representatives from the Republic have a right to play a full role in negotiations about power-sharing in the North, a point which rankles with unionists. They deeply resented Gerry Adams participating in the talks, objecting that he is a Louth TD. Clearly Mary Lou intends to play the same role.
WHILE her appearance may have seemed opportunistic and provocative to unionists, for Northern nationalists it was no surprise. Indeed, her absence would have been queried. McDonald regularly travels north, at times on a weekly basis as part of her duties as Sinn Féin vicepresident. Few people in the Republic would be aware of her profile among Northern nationalists.
Four months ago she was standing, again beside Michelle O’Neill, in a windswept cemetery outside Strabane making the main speech at the annual commemoration of the members of the IRA’s Tyrone brigade killed in the Troubles. It wasn’t a news item on RTÉ. It’s the sort of occasion Gerry Adams has spoken at all over Ireland in obscure, godforsaken venues hundreds of times over the years. It’s what the Sinn Féin president does.
And Mary Lou McDonald has been serving that kind of apprenticeship for years, making herself a national figure among republicans. In 2016 and 2017 she was driven from Dublin to attend selection conventions for Sinn Féin candidates for the Northern Assembly and Westminster elections and to make speeches. In north Belfast, for example, a key Sinn Féin target, she was the star attraction, her very presence ensuring a good turnout. She turns up at rural Sinn Féin functions to meet and greet. It’s what Charlie Haughey, in his wilderness years, called ‘the rubber chicken circuit’. She’s been doing it for some time. It’s thankless, but necessary, and ultimately rewarding.
Of course Mary Lou McDonald will never have the status or authority of Gerry Adams in the republican movement, but it’s a different republican movement now – a movement where being revered by the boys of the old brigade is the wrong qualification.
Northern nationalists, as well as republicans, were delighted when Adams won a seat in the Dáil. It connected them to Dublin. He straddled the border. They felt part of national politics even though they weren’t. Adams regularly raised matters in the North in the Dáil, only to be rebuffed every time by taoisigh, but he was there and making a point by his presence. However, Adams was fatally limited by his past.
Now McDonald is returning the compliment, a southerner straddling the border and regularly present in the North at nationalist venues, often humdrum, largely unpublicised, but also asserting the right of Dublin politicians to be involved in Northern politics, as her carefully staged arrival at Stormont on Wednesday demonstrated.
Having no military credentials are now the correct credentials. McDonald, like O’Neill, can, of course, take a hard line on the past – as they must to retain loyalty of the republican base – but no one can make a connection with any particular shooting or
bombing. Besides, the last IRA bombing was in 1997 and when middle-aged TDs now bring up Northern events from the Troubles, the southern audience simply switches off. They may as well be talking about Kilmichael during the War of Independence.
Northern nationalists and republicans alike are proud of Mary Lou McDonald. They love her feisty performances in the Dáil especially, standing up to snide abuse from the Fine Gael front bench and confronting Leo Varadkar. She’s educated, articulate, confident and sound on the national question, as well as being an impressive media performer. Mary O’Rourke, former deputy leader of Fianna Fáil, summed up women’s attitudes to Mary Lou best. She told the BBC: ‘I admire her for being in a male environment, which the Dáil is. She is gutsy and straightforward and up-front, and they are qualities which stand to help one in any environment, but in a male political environment she sure uses them and needs them.’
For Sinn Féin supporters in the North, having Mary Lou McDonald, a Dublin TD, as leader of Sinn Féin, a party which now polls 70% of Northern nationalist votes, is a vital connection with national politics. Her regular appearances in the North and her constant references to Irish unity constitute a physical symbol of Irishness, of being part of the Irish political scene. Whereas with Adams in the Dáil it still felt like a Northern incursion into southern politics, McDonald is a Dub, so when she raises a Northern issue it really makes it part of national politics. Mary Lou is the real thing.
A bit of Dáil Éireann rubs off her. Naturally both Leo Varadkar and particularly Micheál Martin are fully aware of Mary Lou’s potential. If her apprenticeship in Northern politics has largely been unnoticed in the south, she has also spent a long time in southern politics, being first elected as an MEP in 2004. Years before then, she was always present to be photographed in Sinn Féin delegations to Downing Street, being carefully groomed for the top.
Varadkar and Martin know exactly what is going on, and if they didn’t, Mary Lou has told them. After being declared uachtarán Shinn Féin designate – in Belfast, significantly – McDonald made her obligatory statement about aiming for Irish unity and embracing ‘unionist brothers and sisters’. She then said the party’s aim is to get into government North and south. In the North that position is guaranteed if a deal can be struck with the DUP. With the SDLP moribund and directionless, polling just under 30% of nationalists, there is now no rival for nationalist supremacy.
In the south it’s a different matter. Sinn Féin has tacitly acknowledged that the only way to government is by a deal with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. It will throw the kitchen sink at the next Dáil election to try to get 30 TDs, which is where polls place the party. Everything is subordinated to the drive to power in the Republic. That’s the real significance of McDonald’s coronation as president. It’s not only a necessary generational change – it’s a reversal of the balance of power in the party since the 1980s when the Northerners, under Adams and McGuinness, ousted the ageing dogmatic southern leadership. What has now happened is a necessary power shift south. The leader is now Dublinbased and her deputy, Michelle O’Neill, who will be vice-president, is Northern-based. That must be the case for a party aiming at being in government in the Dáil. Adams began that shift when he moved to Louth in 2011. It’s now complete.
What’s happening in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as a result is fascinating. Micheál Martin hammers away relentlessly at Sinn Féin, because he knows that if he doesn’t, Fine Gael will say he’s cosying up to Sinn Féin and ready to do a deal after the next election. It can say that because no one would anticipate Fine Gael and Sinn Féin making a deal, so Martin can’t reciprocate the accusation. Martin will attack McDonald remorselessly from now on, but he’s in a difficult position. She will concentrate on health, housing, education. Is Martin really going to bang on about the defunct IRA when it’s not an election issue?
ON the other hand Leo Varadkar has adopted a much more subtle approach. He has tried to steal Sinn Féin’s green clothes. Notice his very popular stance on Brexit, which saw him stand up to the British. Varadkar, as recently as Tuesday, reiterated his support for Sinn Féin’s position on an Irish language Act and same-sex marriage in the North. Surprisingly, the Taoiseach also said he did not believe the disgraced ex-West Tyrone MP Barry McElduff intended to cause hurt with his stupid Kingsmills video.
Could Varadkar be angling for Sinn Féin transfers? Paradoxically, coming in from the right gives Varadkar an advantage in relations with Sinn Féin. Famously, it was Richard Nixon’s unquestioned right-wing credentials which enabled him to visit China. No one would believe Fine Gael would make a deal with Sinn Féin. Then again, people forget that Fine Gael went into government with Democratic Left. On the other hand, Micheál Martin is running a highrisk, all-or-nothing strategy.
There’s only about a year to go before those decisions have to be made. McDonald has her work cut out in that short time. Can she broaden Sinn Féin’s appeal among women and social classes in the Republic, who Gerry Adams as leader could never attract? Can she make Sinn Féin more transfer-friendly to maximise its seat tally to accord with the party’s poll figures, currently at 19%? Can she do it in the face of overwhelmingly hostile media and merciless attacks from both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael? Or will the constant attacks actually help her?
Crucially, will she be able to convince the electorate that the balance of power in Sinn Féin really has shifted south and that the party, in power in the Republic, would not be run by an unelected coterie in the North – but by her and her team of TDs? In relation to that particular question, the omens are good. She may not make it into government at the next election, but few doubt Mary Lou McDonald will be tánaiste before too long. For Sinn Féin is now a permanent part of Irish politics – North and south.