Twitter attack on women was vile and will worsen as Repeal the 8th battle rages
THE strange nature of Irish politics was brought centre stage this week when Fine Gael finally took action against the vice-chairman of its Executive Council, Barry Walsh, over inappropriate use of social media.
Up until his resignation from Fine Gael’s executive council on Friday, Walsh was one of Fine Gael’s bright young backroom things. A former president of young Fine Gael, he was the party’s director of elections in Dublin Bay North at last year’s general election where Minister for Education Richard Bruton took a seat for the party in the brutally tough five-seat constituency.
Walsh is one of those weird Twitter users who seems to be of the view that what one says on that particular social media platform somehow doesn’t count and is consequence-free. In his particular case it was, until this week when the formidable firsttime TD for Dublin Bay South Kate O’Connell called him out.
Over two years, Walsh has used vile and derogatory language against women on Twitter. He is rather indiscriminate in his targets who have included the president’s wife, Sabina Higgins, the comedian and actress Tara Flynn, the senior US Democratic politician, Nancy Pelosi, and a range of opposition politicians foremost among them Mary Lou McDonald and Róisín Shortall. In his plaintive resignation statement, Walsh, while regretting his tone and language, dismissed his tweets as political jousting gone a step too far.
Walsh appears to hold particular rage for those politicians who have the temerity to be pro-choice and repeal the Eighth Amendment advocates. None of this, however, mattered to Fine Gael who were blissfully happy to use Walsh’s organisational talents, notwithstanding his online habit of engaging in personal attacks.
IT WAS only O’Connell’s intervention at this week’s parliamentary party meeting that spurred Fine Gael to do anything about Walsh. Armed with a lengthy dossier of Walsh’s online antics, O’Connell put it up to Fine Gael to do something about his behaviour. The response of senior figures in the party was meek, to put it mildly. The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, while lamenting Walsh’s behaviour, at first failed to call on him to resign before finally doing so on Friday. Education Minister Richard Bruton refused to comment.
Far more robust was the reaction of Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty and Health Minister Simon Harris, with Doherty stating that Walsh was not fit to remain on the party’s executive, while Harris praised O’Connell’s refusal to tolerate low standards. One wonders, though, why Walsh was fit to serve Fine Gael up to the time he was finally held to account by O’Connell.
O’Connell took a second seat for Fine Gael in Dublin Bay South at last year’s general election. The fact that she took out Lucinda Creighton was an added bonus for the Fine Gaelers. A successful pharmacist she has made a big impression in the Dáil and on Fine Gael since her election.
She is unapologetically liberal on social issues, has been vocal on repealing the Eighth Amendment and is quite happy to engage in robust debate herself. She was particularly vocal in supporting Simon Coveney during the Fine Gael leadership campaign earlier this year and described followers of Leo Varadkar as ‘choirboys’ who were singing for their supper.
One of Walsh’s last tweets was to lambast O’Connell after a debate on abortion at the Fine Gael conference last weekend claiming in ironic tones that she was typically mature, articulate and demure after she supposedly yodelled ‘look at those men discussing our uteruses!’ For a man who routinely used the word bitch as a derogatory term of abuse on Twitter, selfawareness clearly is not Walsh’s strong point and he has ultimately come off second best in this particular political joust.
HE STATED that he was resigning in the hope that, among other things, like his respect for the Fine Gael party and the Taoiseach, it would bring to an end the ‘trial by media’ that he, his friends and family had endured for the previous 48 hours.
One can only wonder as to what trial he is referring to given that he brought all this grief on himself. If there were no angry and abusive tweets, then Walsh would still enjoy his position in Fine Gael. It takes some political neck to complain about ‘trial by media’ while having routinely used the online world to give your own vitriolic and abusive verdict on people’s political viewpoints.
But that’s the thing about Twitter; some people tend to think it gives them the platform to sound off on all sorts of things and to engage in abuse without there being any consequences. Twitter itself, and Facebook, also needs to clean up its own act and should be more far more answerable for publishing vitriol dressed up as political debate. It is clear that selfregulation doesn’t work. Free speech has its limits both on and offline and that is why Kate O’Connell’s actions this week were so important but Fine Gael should hang its collective head in shame for doing nothing about this until they were forced to.
The story of Kate O’Connell and Barry Walsh is one that won’t simply go away now that Walsh the backroom Svengali has fallen on his own sword. O’Connell is likely to be front and centre when the abortion referendum eventually takes place next year. She will certainly be an effective advocate for the liberal position.
The abortion issue has the potential to split Fine Gael down the middle and the party will have to be very careful with the wording of the referendum. All the evidence suggests that no matter how sophisticated that wording is, the referendum campaign when it comes will be nasty, full of vitriol, particularly online, and is likely to come from both sides.
Notwithstanding the view of the Citizens’ Assembly and indeed most of those who tweet about the Eighth Amendment demanding its repeal, the suspicion must remain that the Walsh position on abortion; conservative and proud of it, still dominates within Fine Gael and, for that matter, Fianna Fáil. The question of who most reflects Irish society, Dáil Éireann or the Citizens’ Assembly will face its greatest test when the abortion referendum takes place next year.
Simon Coveney, for one, has had no qualms about saying he is against any liberal position on abortion. Given that he convincingly won the grassroots party membership in the Fine Gael leadership campaign his position most probably reflects that constituency.
Ultimately Fine Gael has two faces: liberal and conservative; urban and rural. We will soon find out which one holds most sway in the Ireland of 2018. Gary Murphy is Professor of Politics at Dublin City University