Funerals row suits SF’s ‘edgy’ playbook
SINN Féin thrives on the ‘slightly constitutional’. That’s why all this fuss about whether Mary Lou McDonald, Pearse Doherty and leader of the party in the North Michelle O’Neill should have attended the funeral of Sinn Féin/IRA man Bobby Storey in Belfast on Wednesday in the context of Covid-19 regulations, won’t knock a feather out of them.
Quite the contrary in fact – it’s all part of the playbook to remain edgy, anti-establishment, ‘in’ but still ‘out’, still thumbing noses at suits, officials and conformists.
It appeals to the mad yokes in the glens, valleys and crowded, neglected streets in towns and cities who harbour resentment for six county and 26-county knobs who think they can boss them around.
In the South a few weeks ago, Sinn Féin’s new Kerry TD Pa Daly made a 120-kilometre round trip to shoulder the coffin of a party activist at a funeral in west Kerry.
Notably, the common denominator at both funerals was former IRA gunrunner and TD Martin Ferris.
But the most interesting thing to emerge from all this is the stark difference in approach between the PSNI and the Garda.
In the North the PSNI have decided to review people’s conduct at the Storey funeral to see if there were any breaches of health regulations – despite repeated denials from many who were there that nothing wrong was done. However, in the South the gardaí say they are not investigating Mr Daly’s attendance at the Ballydavid funeral despite his own admission that he breached the regulations and the publication in a newspaper of a photograph of Mr Daly and Mr Ferris carrying the coffin.
The Garda’s absurd, selfharming explanation for sitting on their hands is that they haven’t received a complaint – an entirely groundless excuse that suggests they’re still taking us all for fools.
People have suffered marginal pain and trauma by being denied the right, because of the Covid-19 regulations, to give their loved ones a proper send-off.
And then they see this carry-on by the Garda Siochána who, by their inaction, suggest there’s one law for some people and another for the rest of us.