EXPLOSIVE JOY OVER A LANDSLIDE
For the crowd at Dublin Castle, the hero was Simon, not Leo
AS HE battled his way through the ecstatic melee at Dublin Castle, his white shirt making him easy to spot in the crowd, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar beamed like a child. Surrounded by his trusty lieutenants from the Repeal Campaign – Catherine Noone, Simon Harris and Josepha Madigan – he weaved his way slowly towards the podium, the people cheering them every step of the way.
But the frenzied chants that rose in his slipstream were not for the Taoiseach but for the Minister for Health. ‘Simon, Simon, Simon!’ the crowd roared incessantly, just as later in the evening, they poignantly chanted ‘Savita, Savita’ during the declaration of the official tally.
Through the din it was impossible to know the thrust of Mr Harris’s short address. Presumably he delivered some platitudes about the momentousness of the occasion or reiterated his new bon mot about how Irish women with crisis pregnancies will no longer be told to take a boat but to ‘take our hand’. Someone waved a solitary bouquet in the air and placards bearing messages of thanks were held aloft.
On the podium Simon, the hero of the hour, was flanked by Frances Fitzgerald the former minister for justice and veteran of many women’s rights campaigns. Katherine
They played guitars and sang revolutionary songs
Zappone was also in attendance, as were Catherine Noone, Regina Doherty and Josepha Madigan.
But the most thunderous welcome in Dublin Castle yesterday afternoon was lavished on Ailbhe Smyth, leader of the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth and passionately committed feminist. A handpainted sign bearing love hearts and the words Thank You, crystallised the sentiments of women activists of all generations, who stomped their feet and bellowed in appreciation as their leader came among them.
It was one of those rare moments in public life where behind-thescenes and unsung figures are deservedly honoured rather than the predictable household names. Like Mary Banotti and Catherine McGuinness, both of whom turned up at the RDS, naturally cutting far frailer figures today than the robust good health they radiated in the Eighties when the campaign against the Eighth Amendment began in earnest. Ailbhe Smyth has had a ringside seat to every tumultuous chapter in the long-running, often bitterly fought campaign.
This generation of politicians like Fianna Fáil’s Billy Kelleher, Timmy Dooley and Stephen Donnelly, who were present at Dublin Castle, helped bring Repeal into the mainstream, while the top tier of the Government provided vital leadership. The depth of younger women’s determination to control their fertility was also significant. But for all these influences, the truth remains that the debt for this historic change in Irish life is mostly owed to the 1980s women activists.
The landslide vote does not at all fit the bill as a champagne-popping occasion, given the sensitivity of the issue of abortion. There was thankfully no gloating and little triumphalism in Dublin Castle, but for all that there was at times an atmosphere of unalloyed joy.
Upon the cobblestoned courtyard, a clutch of the Yes campaigners chanted slogans, played guitars and lustily sang revolutionary songs adapted specially for the occasion. At intervals during the long and humid afternoon as the results poured in from all over the country, confirming the exit polls, choruses of whoops and cheers would erupt, lending the castle’s sedate environs the atmosphere of a folk festival.
The ecstatic reception for Simon Harris at the RDS count centre early in the morning was replicated on each of his visits to the castle. His habitually woebegone demeanour was temporarily uplifted by the atmosphere and at times he almost seemed in danger of being crushed in a deluge of selfies, hugs and fervent handshakes.
At the RDS, Harris, Mary Lou McDonald, Peter Boylan and other figureheads from the Yes campaign had their entrances stage managed into by the organisers. They all stood patiently in line, like celebrities on the red carpet, waiting for the signal to present themselves after the riotous welcome for the person before them had subsided.
Over the course of the morning as the surprise of the landslide vote sank in, the party mood in the RDS dissipated and an atmosphere of quiet satisfaction descended.
At Dublin Castle the throngs of tourists looking for guides were gradually replaced as the afternoon rolled in and the normal castle business was given over to the referendum, with activists and campaigners cramming through the gates.
At the top of the courtyard, Miriam O’Callaghan worked the crowds like a maestro, signalling for loud applause as she wrapped up each interview. Dublin Castle, once the nerve centre of British colonial power, is becoming a space for mass public celebration.
The euphoric reception for the marriage equality referendum saw it bedecked in rainbow flags and giant TV screens. Yesterday’s
emblems were low key and more in keeping with the life-and-death issues raised by the referendum. Campaigners wore the familiar Yes badges or sported Repeal T-shirts bearing red love hearts or black sweatshirts emblazoned with Repeal.
In the Eighties, the pro-life movement was synonymous with the Catholic Church, but opposition to abortion is no longer just based on the tenets of faith but also on a certain moral intuition about abortion. Few people would welcome a culture of ‘abortion on demand’ to our shores; but most agree about the availability of medical attention and care at home to women with difficult pregnancies. But for all those deep reservations, the referendum on the Eighth was endorsed, on a level that seemed to startle almost everybody. The massive poll on Friday shows a country no longer prepared to turn the other way when confronted with harsh reality.
While the mood yesterday was often muted, there was also tangible relief that the era of abortion prohibition is over and that future generation of Irish women will be spared the need to suffer in silence.
From now on, heartbreaking cases from the landmark Ms X case to all the other women who suffered at the hands of an absolute law that allowed no mercy for high-risk pregnancies, underlying medical conditions, for victims of crime, let alone for human frailty or fallibility, will become the stock of painful collective memory.
There will be no more need for candlelit vigils, marches or rallies, demonstrating resistance to a constitutional prohibition that underpinned the strictest controls on abortion in a western democracy and placed the ‘right to life of the unborn’ on a par with the life of the mother.
There will be no more burning questions about the rights of the unborn and women’s biological destiny. The days for arguing are over, the people have spoken.