Leadership across Ireland

There have been many milestones in the recent history of the northern state. Some have been incredibly difficult and tragic. The foundation of the state; the partition of our small island; the repression of the unionist regime at Stormont and the decades of conflict, have all left a sad and bitter legacy which will take a long time to completely deal with.

But more recently there have been different kinds of milestones. Moments of hope. The beginnings of new friendships and the possibility of a new and better future.

Four years ago, on Monday March 26th, Ian Paisley and this blog led respective party delegations into the member’s dining room in Parliament Buildings at Stormont. This event followed years of work and some very focussed months, weeks and days of negotiations. Ian Paisley and I sat at the centre of our parties delegations.

Beside and behind us set our colleagues. At 12 noon the television feed went live and the first thing viewers saw was Ian Paisley and this blog sitting together looking at the camera.

It was one of those moments when it was clear to everyone that something important was taking place. The scene was set for the formal opening of the Assembly on May 8th.

This visual presentation was an ingenious solution to a concern some within the DUP had expressed about Mr. Paisley and I sitting side by side at the same table.

Sinn Féin, and this blog in particular, were very focussed on the need to create a moment which could not be dismissed. There had been a number of false dawns and a few very important moments wasted by the silliness of some commentators. This time everyone needed to know something special had occurred. Something that couldn’t be trivialised or dismissed.

So Ian and I sitting side by side was an important image. It was resisted almost up to the last minute by the DUP negotiators. Sinn Féin refused to concede. Then someone had the bright idea of arranging the tables in an inverted V shape which allowed us to sit side by side but for sensitive DUP types not at the same table. And it worked.

Last Wednesday, four years later, the Assembly at Parliament Buildings concluded its first ever complete four year term.

In most other societies that would be the norm. In this it was a first. And, quite an achievement, marked in part by the friendly banter of former opponents.

Since the Good Friday Agreement was accomplished in April 1998 there have been three Assemblies elected. None of the previous Assemblies succeeded. All were the victim of an intransigence based on the old politics, a failure of leadership by the Ulster Unionist Party, and the usual machinations of the British government.

The last four years have had their difficulties. Disagreements within the DUP and a change of leadership created problems. Jim Allister sought and failed to provide a hardline unionist alternative to the DUP. The SDLP and UUP tried to play the game of being in government and out of government at the same time and only succeeded in making themselves seem increasingly irrelevant. And there has been the economic recession and the decision by the British government to cut a huge slice off the north’s financial budget.

And then there have been violent efforts to undermine the institutions. These too have failed.

The Assembly and local government elections will take place on May 5th – the 30th anniversary of the death on hunger strike of Bobby Sands.

There will be political disagreement between the parties during the campaign. That’s natural as each seeks to maximise their support. The SDLP and the UUP will again seek to present Sinn Fein and the DUP as the problem parties – a tactic they tried to use last time and which failed.

In recent days the UUP has looked like a party at war with itself and Michael McGimpsey’s disgraceful decision not to go ahead with the £40 million radiotherapy unit at Altnagelvin, which the Irish government was paying one third of, has drawn widespread criticism.

But the fact is that progress has been made. Decisions have been taken by locally accountable Ministers that are benefiting citizens, whether in education or agriculture or regional development or job creation. The peace process is entrenched and the institutions are functioning. In west Belfast Sinn Féin has succeeded in securing investment into significant projects like Conway Mill and An Culturlann, as well as creating jobs.

So, the focus for supporters of the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement is obvious. Build support for the institutions while electing those parties you believe can best articulate and advocate for you and your political goals.

It is also important that in the election campaign which has now begun, as witness the election posters appearing on lampposts, that citizens endorse those parties determined to secure the full implementation of the Agreement and which seek to defend it from any threats.

There are still a number of serious matters arising from the Good Friday and other agreements that have not implemented.

This blog raised these in Taoiseach’s questions in the Dáil last week. I reminded Enda Kenny that the various agreements call for the creation of a North-South Parliamentary Forum; an Independent Consultative Forum; a Bill of Rights; and the introduction of an Irish Language Act.

There was also a commitment by the Irish government in 1998 to legislate for northern representatives to be able to speak in the Dáil.

And there is the threat posed by a British Conservative government, allied to the UUP, which last week decided that from this Monday the critical policy of 50-50 recruitment to the PSNI is to end.

This is a grievous retrograde step which risks damaging the progress that has been made in recent years to build a policing service that has the support and confidence of the nationalist community. It must be challenged.

So, a lot of good work has been done. But the next term of the Assembly has to see even better delivery in the provision of employment; a reduction in poverty; a better health service, and much more, including greater co-operation north and south . See you on the election trail.

THE CONTINUUM.

Last Saturday morning was a cold sharp day in New York. This blog travelled to Calvary Cemetery in Woodside in the Borough of Queens to attend a commemoration in memory of the 1981 hunger strikers.

Over the years I have been in many such places. But Calvary is on a different scale to anything this blog has ever experienced before. It is huge. It is so big that it is divided into four parts and together they hold over three million souls.

Calvary Cemetery was established in 1847 and opened the following year. It is said that there were 50 burials a day and that half were Irish. Mostly victims of An Gorta Mór – the great hunger. They were some of the hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women and children, who had fled starvation and poverty in Ireland for the new world, only to catch cholera or some other illness. They died in fever camps and ports the length of Canada and the USA.



Saturdays’ commemoration was fittingly at the Patriots Plot. A large Celtic Cross marks the spot where the Irish Republican Brotherhood decided to open a republican plot in 1907. It is dedicated to the memory of those who rose in rebellion against the British during the Fenian campaign in 1867.

Although that rising failed the IRB stayed true. For decades it planned and organised. Nine years after the Patriots Plot was opened the IRB was at the heart of the Easter Rising of 1916, the proclamation of The Republic and the formation of the IRA.

Larry Downes, who is the President of Friends of Sinn Féin in the USA, gave me an old report from the New York Times of the burial of John Neary. He was the first to be buried the Patriots Plot.

But Neary’s connections with republican struggle predate even the Fenian Rising. He was involved also in the abortive rising of the Young Irelanders in 1848 and after that, like many hundreds of thousands of others of his generation after the great hunger, he was forced to leave Ireland.

Many went to the USA. Others scattered around the globe and many moved to England. John Neary was one of those. But he was soon a committed and active Fenian.
He was one of those involved in 1867 in planning the escape of Thomas Kelly and Timothy Deary, two leading Fenian activists as they were being taken to prison in Manchester. Kelly and Deary escaped but three of those involved in helping them - William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien - the Manchester Martyrs, were executed.

Many of those involved in that escape later made their way to the USA and were present here in Calvary Cemetery when John Neary was finally laid to rest forty years later.

The Patriots Plot, and those who lie there, are a reminder of the long continuum of struggle for freedom in Ireland. They also symbolise the hugely significant role that the Irish in America has played down through the centuries in assisting that struggle.

The 1916 Proclamation makes this connection explicit:
‘having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America ..’.

Others, like Joe McGarrity and Clann na Gael played a crucial role in funding the Rising and then providing arms and political support during the Tan War. After partition and the counter revolution and the disastrous civil war many republicans were forced to leave Ireland and they went to the USA. But they never forgot their homeland.

In 1969 when the most recent phase of conflict erupted Irish America stepped forward and again provided invaluable support for the oppressed people in the north and for the struggle.

The Clann and Noraid and a host of other organisations came forward to help prisoners and their families, bring children to the USA for holidays away from the conflict, and lobbied US leaders to oppose British policy in Ireland.

A very effective information campaign, often spontaneous, ensured that British propaganda was challenged. And there were some also who, as in previous generations, gave direct support and assistance to those engaged in armed actions – the IRA.

One consequence of the conflict was the attempt in the 1970’s by the British to criminalise the prisoners and through them the struggle for freedom. In 1980 the men in the H Blocks and women in Armagh embarked on the first hunger strike. On March 1st 1981 the second hunger strike commenced. Bobby Sands was the first hunger striker.

On Saturday morning as this blog reminded a large crowd of Irish Americans that on that day 30 years previously Bobby was on the 19th day of his hunger strike. Two days earlier on St. Patrick’s Day 1981 Bobby concluded the secret prison diary that he had been keeping.

His last words in that diary on March 17th are a reminder of the spirit and resolve of the Irish people over many centuries to achieve freedom: “If they aren’t able to destroy the desire for freedom, they won’t break you. They won’t break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show.
It is then we’ll see the rising of the moon.”

Bobby died on hunger strike along with his nine comrades: Francie; Raymond; Patsy; Joe; Martin; Kevin; Kieran: Tom and Mickey.

Their courage and self sacrifice caught the imagination of Irish American activists who rallied in their tens of thousands in support of the prisoners. The extraordinary courage of the prisoners gave strength to the struggle. The hunger strike was a watershed moment in Irish history. And Irish America played a key role in that and subsequently in the efforts to build the peace process.

So, those buried in the Patriots Plot in Calvary Cemetery, 3,000 miles from home, played their part. It is right that as republicans in Ireland remember the hunger strikers and all those to gave their lives in pursuit of freedom that we also remember those who went before them and who died in the far flung corners of the world.

Connections with west Belfast

Frederick Douglass mural on the Falls Road

However far this blog travels there are connections to west Belfast to be found everywhere, usually in the people I meet.

Like the man from Lenadoon, who left Belfast when he was five for Canada. He used to come back each year to visit family in Beechmount where he met me at the age of 14 as I was campaigning in an election. Today I met him again in a hotel in New York. He was here for a hockey game.

Sometimes the connections are through former political prisoners from west Belfast who are to be found in all parts of the globe or former residents who emigrated but have never forgotten their home and are proud of where they came from.
And occasionally the connection is surprising and the coincidence startling. For example.

On St. Patrick’s night I attended the traditional St. Patrick’s Day White House event hosted by President Obama. The place was packed. There were a few of us from Ireland, including the Taoiseach. But this was a night for the hundreds of Irish Americans from all parts of the USA who had been invited to be the President’s guest for the evening. There were State Governors, business people, politicians, lawyers, community activists and many others. They were having a great time.

And then President Obama made his speech in the course of which he too spoke about connections; the connections between Ireland and the USA. And he cited the example of Frederick Douglass, a black writer and speaker and political activist, who escaped the brutality of slavery and wrote a best-selling book about his experience.

The book was called a ‘Narrative of a life of an American Slave’ and it was published in 1845. Fearing for his safety Douglass’ friends persuaded him to travel to Ireland and Britain. He spent four months in Ireland where he addressed packed meetings and told of his experience as a slave. He was befriended by Daniel O’Connell who was then at the height of his power as the ‘great liberator’.

In his speech President Obama said: “O’Connell was a fierce opponent of slavery, and he began calling Douglass “the black O’Connell of the United States.”

The President also described how Douglass “quickly found common ground with the people locked in their struggle against oppression”.

What’s the connection with west Belfast? For a very long time one of the most evocative images on the international wall of murals on the Falls Road was one of Frederick Douglass!

But the coincidences didn’t stop there. Todd Allen, a good friend from Jersey, was in Washington with our group. He told me afterward that his friend Don Mullan, who many readers will know wrote a definitive book on Bloody Sunday which was subsequently turned into a very successful film, is currently involved in a project to have a statue of Frederick Douglass erected in Cork.

Don joined us after the White House event and told us of his hopes and efforts to erect the Douglass statue and his intention to republish Douglass’s book. For that he would like to use a photo of the west Belfast mural on the front cover but when he went recently to photograph the mural it had been replaced temporarily by one to mark the hunger strike anniversary.

This morning this blog rang my good friend Danny D who painted the mural. Danny has a photo but likes the idea of repainting the Douglass mural to mark the visit to Ireland in May of President Obama.

And for those of you who are interested in Frederick Douglass it would be worthwhile going onto the internet and reading about the extraordinary life of former slave who contributed significantly to the campaign to end slavery in the USA but who also spoke out against discrimination against women and native Americans and who understood the importance of education and equality in any society. Better still when Don republishes it to get a copy.

In a speech in 1867, Douglass said "Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex".

His is an astonishing story of how determination and courage and conviction can overcome great obstacles and brutality and how one person can make a difference to the wellbeing of citizens.

So when you watch President Obama on his visit to our country have a look at Danny D’s new mural of Frederick Douglass and of how Douglass made a connection and “found common ground with the (Irish) people locked in their struggle against oppression.”

Celebrating Seachtain na Gaeilge

Getting our pic taken in City Hall

On Thursday evening this blog called into the Dundalk Institute of Technology where gaeilgeóirí where holding an event to mark Seachtain na Gaeilge – the week of Irish – which this year began on March 5th and concludes, as it does each year, on St. Patrick’s Day next week.

The following morning I was in Belfast City Hall where a series of events had been organised to also mark this unique celebration of the Irish language. The choir from Bunscoil Phobal Feirste on the Shaws Road in West Belfast where there and treated us to some beautifully sung songs in Irish and young people from the Meanscoil joined us later.

At one point a group of tourists who were being show around the City Hall were invited in to listen to the children. They thoroughly enjoyed it.

Seachtain na Gaeilge is a non-profit organization which was set up in 1902 by Conradh na Gaeilge. Its objective is to promote the use of the Irish language in Ireland and overseas. It does this by organizing a festival each year, ending on St. Patrick’s Day.

This year events began on March 5th. They take place all over the island and in Britain, the USA and elsewhere. The events themselves vary enormously and include music, cultural events, street céilís, sporting events, and much more.

This blog is very enthusiastic about the language. I enjoy being able to speak Irish and to read it and have even written some poems in Irish. I am not as fluent as I would like but now that I will be spending several days each week in the Dáil this blog will be signing up for the Irish language classes that are run there.

Like every language or sport or skill the key is sticking at it. I use Irish on every occasion I can. And as those I rely on to keep me right with my pronunciation and understanding keep tell me, it can be difficult but the hard work is worth it when it all comes right.

There are several Irish medium schools in Louth and West Belfast, which has a thriving Gaeltacht quarter, has witnessed enormous progress in recent years.
But there is still a lot of work to do.

There are new censuses taking place north and south in the time ahead. The figures for the south published in 2004 record that there are 1.5 million Irish-speakers there, an increase on the 1.43 million Irish-speakers identified in 1996. The last census in the Six Counties recorded Irish-language-speakers at 23 per cent in West Belfast and 16 per cent in Derry – and it has grown since then.

So, make sure you make best use of the census when the opportunity arises to fill it in. Plans by government departments, particularly in respect of education will be shaped by the census results.

And, if you see any Seachtain na Gaeilge events on and are interested in the Irish language, even if you don’t’ have any words or just a cuplá focal, drop in and participate. You won’t regret it.

Brian Moore

This blog has learned with great sadness of the death at the weekend of Brian Moore.

Brian will be best known to most republicans as the irrepressible and politically perceptive cartoonist Cormac who for many years was a regular feature in Republican News and then in An Phoblacht/Republican News after the papers merged.

His weekly contribution to the paper touched on the big issues of the time; the war, repression, sectarianism, collusion and much more. His cartoons lampooned the British Army and RUC; the British government and media. If he witnessed injustice he turned his satirist’s pen loose.

His cartoons were incisive and funny. And for many readers the back page was the first they read to see what gem ‘Notes by Cormac’ held for them.
Brian was a republican and a socialist. He supported the struggle for freedom and the peace process.

In the 70’s he published political comics and he contributed to other publications, including the British weekly Socialist Challenge and Fortnight magazine.

Brian was also a song writer and performer. He founded ‘The People of No Property’ with whom he sang.

His death is a huge loss for his family but also to the wider republican community.

On behalf of Sinn Féin and of republicans everywhere I want to extend my sincerest condolences to Brian’s partner Máire and their son Cormac, to Máire’s son Conor and Brian’s brothers Gerry and Danny and his sister Maura, and his family circle and friends. Go ndeanfaidh Dia trocaire air.

Here are just a few of his cartoons.

First Day in the Dáil

Yesterday was an important day. The first formal day of the new Dáil. The enhanced Sinn Féin team of 14 TDs arrived to play our part. We gathered under a blue sky at the Mansion House in Dawson Street around 10.30am, the site of the meeting of the historic First Dáil in January 1919.

Earlier I had attended a ecumenical service in Saint Anne’s, the church where Wolfe Tone was married. We walked the short distance along Molesworth Street to Leinster House. The Sinn Féin TDs were accompanied by scores of smiling family members and constituency party activists who were there for the occasion. Everyone was in good form. There was a very real sense that Sinn Féin had achieved a remarkable success and that we are now going into the Dáil stronger and more experienced than at any time since partition.

The Dáil chamber was packed. It’s smaller than it looks on television or in photos. But it is much bigger than the chamber at Stormont. It was interesting watching Fianna Fáil trying to poke holes in the government’s programme while at the same time claiming all the work as theirs.

The Sinn Féin team robustly set out our stall.

Behind the excitement and good humour of the day there was also a real sense that the election is now well and truly over and it’s down to business.

The battle lines for the 31st Dáil have been drawn.

In all the day was a bit surreal. It is easy to see how parties and TDs can and do become divorced from the impact of their decisions on citizens.

The Dáil is in its own little bubble in which peoples lives are reduced by some to bald statistics and where some politicians talk in terms of billions of euro without, it appears to this blog, really understanding the human or financial cost to the state of the decisions they are taking.

I took the opportunity to remind them of previous republican TDs Kieran Doherty who died on hunger strike in 1981 and Paddy Agnew and others, like Martin Hurson and Kevin Lynch and Mairead Farrell who stood in that famous election of June 81.

And this blog made it plain that Sinn Féin is about Irish unity and we will use the opportunity now available to us to advance this goal in the time ahead.

For those readers interested I am including my remarks to the Dáil.

A Cheann Comhairle,

Tá mé fíor bródúil as bheith anseo inniu mar Theachta Dála don Lú agus oirthear na Mí agus mar cheannaire ar Shinn Féin.
Is mór an onóir dom guth a thabhairt dóibh siúd nach bhfuil ionadaíocht acu ins an Dáil.

Ar feadh 30 bliana rinne mé ionadaíocht ar son pobal Iarthar Bhéal Feirste.

Ach go dtí seo ní féidir le daoine as an taobh sin tire bheith tofa anseo.

So, I am very proud to stand here as an Ulsterman and an Irish republican from County Antrim.
It is a great honour to represent Sinn Féin in any capacity but it is especially gratifying to receive a mandate from your peers.
Ba mhaith liom ár mbuíochas a thabhairt do achan duine a thug a vóta do Sinn Féin agus achan duine a d’oibrigh ar son Sinn Féin.

I especially want to commend our candidates, including the republican TDs here today, and our families,
For almost 30 years I represented the people of west Belfast.
I am humbled and appreciative of the heroism, the generosity and courage of that community.

I am equally honoured to represent the citizens of Louth and East Meath and alongside our councillors there I will continue the pioneering work of my predecessor Arthur Morgan in that Dáil Ceanntair.
It is also a great honour to be part of the Sinn Féin team in the Oireachtas and we will build upon the project started here by Caoimhghín in 1997.
Sinn Féin is an Irish republican party. Our primary political goal is a United Ireland.
Our focus in the new Dáil will be to advance this goal and to deliver on our manifesto to the very best of our ability and to hold the government to account.
Ní mé an chéad duine ó Bhéal Feirste a toghadh mar Theachta Dála.

30 years ago this June my friend Kieran Doherty, a political prisoner on hunger strike in the H Blocks of Long Kesh, was elected as TD for Cavan/Monaghan.
Paddy Agnew was elected for Louth.
And others, including Kevin Lynch, Martin Hurson and Joe McDonnell received very sizeable votes in other constituencies.
Agus mo chara Mairead Farrell, whose anniversary is this week, stood in Cork north central.
Bobby Sands was returned as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone.
So, a Ceann Comhairle, Sinn Féin is part of a proud continuum of struggle for a real republic, for freedom and equality, and against oppression which goes back to 1916 and beyond.
The oppression visited upon our people by a foreign government in past times was unacceptable.
The economic oppression suffered by citizens under a native government in these times is just as unacceptable.
Caithfear stad a chur leis.

Níl mórán difir idir polasaithe Fhine Gael agus polasaithe Fhianna Fáil.

An bhliain seo chaite tugadh cibé cuid a bhí fagtha de sobharnacht an stát seo don EU agus don IMF.

In the election for the 31st Dáil the people voted against corruption, sellout and economic oppression. They voted for change.
The Fine Gael party in particular benefited from that desire for change.
But the reality is that Fine Gael and Labour’s Programme for Government implements Fianna Fáil’s policy.
Despite their promise of ‘new ways, new approaches and new thinking’, this government offers little of this.
The Fine Gael and Labour programme is a far cry from the Democratic Programme of the 1st Dáil.

That document declares that sovereignty extends, ‘not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation's soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation.’

Our natural resources, especially our oil and gas which are worth billions, have been given away.
As Luke Kelly put it ….

“For what died the sons and daughters of Róisín?
Was it greed
Was it greed that drove Wolfe Tone to a paupers death in a cell of cold wet stone?
Will German, French or Dutch inscribe the epitaph of Emmet?
When we have sold enough of Ireland to be but strangers in it”

To whom do we owe our allegiance today
To those brave men and women who fought and died that Róisín live again with pride?
Or the faceless men who for Mark and Dollar,
Betray her to the highest bidder”

That is the big question facing this 31st Dáil.
The First Dáil was committed to a Programme to improve ‘the conditions under which the working classes live and labour.’
There is no whisper of this in the 2011 Programme for Government.
The reality today is that more than 100,000 children in this state live in poverty.
450,000 people are unemployed.
Braitheann teacht ar sheirbhísi poiblí atá riachtanach ar nós seirbhísí cúraim leanaí, seirbhísí sláinte agus oideachas ar chumais íocaíochta seachas ar riachtanais shóisialta.

1000 citizens a week are forced to emigrate.
Families who cannot afford their mortgage repayments, fear eviction.
Sinn Féin will oppose any eviction of any family from their home!
Social protections have been slashed to satisfy the diktats of our new international masters.
The Universal Social Charge, welfare cuts and stealth taxes mean people can’t pay their weekly bills.
The ghost estates that litter our countryside stand as monuments to corruption and greed.
The Programme for Government produced by Fine Gael and Labour does not tackle any of this.
It is a right wing Programme driven by a resurgent, right wing Fine Gael.
It commits the government to implementing Fianna Fail’s austerity programme and to the madness of pouring public money into toxic banks.
Access to vital public services such as healthcare, childcare and education is determined by ability to pay rather than social need.

There is no meaningful jobs stimulus to push the economy out of recession.
There are increased charges on low and middle income families in the form of water and property taxes.
There will also be a sell-off of strategic state assets to multinational companies whose sole interest will be profit.
And Irish citizens will pay the price !
This government will cut 25,000 public sector jobs and further undermine our public services and our small and medium native businesses.
In short this is a Fine Gael Programme for Government supported by the Labour Party.
Voters were told ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’. Sinn Féin said if you vote Labour you will get Fine Gael. This is what happened.
Mar shampla tchifidh teaghlaigh atá ar mheán ioncaim agus ar ioncaim íseal íocaíochtaí i bhfoirm uisce.
Ach, tá bealach eile ann. Sé sin seasamh suas ar son muintir na hÉireann agus ar son Éire.
Caithfear saoirse eacnamaíochta a bhaint amach don tír seo !
Tá saoránaigh ag lorg polaitíocht nua.
There is an alternative.
Citizens are looking for a new kind of politics.
A politics that empowers and includes them.
A politics that doesn’t pander to the elites and the greedy and seeks to build a new kind of Ireland.
It means making a stand for Ireland, standing up for our country and our people.
If politics is reduced to this chamber then it will be the old politics.
Sinn Féin will campaign on all these issues in and out of this Parliament and across this island.
I am calling on citizens to make a stand for themselves, for their neighbours, for their communities, for the vulnerable, for the disadvantaged.
This is a time for active citizenship, for democratically and peacefully asserting our rights as citizens.
It cannot be left only to this parliament.
There is no more important time; no more relevant time for republican politics and core republican values.
The people of this island are no mean people.
We live in a great country.
There is a genius, a brilliance, a wisdom and culture, there is history and tradition in our communities.
Caithfear tógáil ar na buanna iontacha seo.

Agus déanfaidh muid teaghlaigh tuaithe agus cathrach a chosaint.

Sinn Féin will oppose Fine Gael efforts to downgrade the Irish language.

We will defend the interests of working families, both urban and rural.

We will demand that this new Government hold a referendum on the banking bailout.

We will campaign for the abolition of the Universal Social Charge and we will hold Fine Gael and Labour to their promise to reverse the cut to the minimum wage.
And Sinn Féin will oppose, tooth and nail, the introduction of household water charges and property tax on family homes.
We will oppose attempts to sell off or privatise state assets or public services, including the health service.
Cuirfidh muid in aghaidh aon phríobháidiú ar an seirbhís sláinte.

Sinn Féin will continue to put forward constructive proposals to create jobs.

Politicians should lead by example.
Sinn Féin will introduce legislation within 100 days to cut Ministers salaries by 40% and TDs salaries by 20%.

Sinn Féin will also raise issues of importance to people in the north and we will expose the economic and political damage being done by partition to both states on this island.
Partition makes no economic sense and is a barrier to the creation of jobs.
A United Ireland makes sense.
A single island economy makes sense.
It makes economic sense.
It makes political sense.
Déanann sé ciall Éire a h-aontú!
Above this chamber flies our national flag. The flag of this nation – all 32 counties of it.
Green, White and Orange.
The future unity of the people of this island is represented in those colours.
Sinn Féin is proud of the leadership work of Martin McGuinness and our team in the Assembly.
This government must actively support the peace process and the historic mission to make friends with our unionist neighbours on the basis of equality.
Sinn Féin’s commitment, as we seek to repair the damage done by a bad Fianna Fáil and Green Party government, and confront the bad policies that this new government will seek to implement, is to make progress on all of these fronts.
The Taoiseach talks about recreating our proud republic!
That means giving expression to the words of the Proclamation – Forógra na Cásca and the Democratic Programme of an Chéad Dáil which demand freedom, and equality and sovereignty and the empowerment of citizens across all 32 counties of this island.
It means moving beyond rhetoric.
Taoiseach change never comes easily.
Like politics and life it is a matter of choices.
Those of us who stand by the Republic, the real Republic, a new truly National Republic, will have our work cut out in this institution.
But, out there, despite the distress, there is a vitality which cannot be extinguished.
The Irish people may be bruised but we are not beaten. We are not broken.
We are unbowed. So there is hope. And because of that everything is possible.

Changing Times

It’s just over a week since this blog was elected by the people of Louth and East Meath to be their Teachta Dála.

As Fine Gael and Labour negotiated their way into government Sinn Féin’s new 14 strong Dáil team met in Leinster House to begin the work of becoming the real opposition. Everyone was in great form.

We are very mindful that this is the year which marks the 30th anniversary of the hunger strike and of the sacrifice of the men and women in all of the prisons who contributed enormously to the growth and development of Sinn Féin.



So, there was a real sense of change and of progress being made. A recognition that we are part of an all-Ireland team. A determined mood to advance our republican objectives and of confronting the bad policy decisions that will be the inevitable outworking of a Fine Gael led government. Sinn Féin is in Leinster House to do business. We are there to put backbone into the Dáil.

The reality is that the problems of unemployment and emigration, of negative equity and of cuts to welfare payments and wages, and of taxpayers money being used to pay for private bankers greed, that were all part of the backdrop to the election campaign, are still there. The universal social charge is a millstone around the neck of citizens. This charge introduced by the last government takes money out of the pockets of over one million citizens, including people on minimum wage, carers, and blind pensions.

And Fine Gael and Labour now claim that the briefings they have received from the department of Finance and others have shown them that the financial situation is worse than they were led to believe by Fianna Fáil.

They should publish any new details they have. Citizens have a right to know.
As well as the new Sinn Féin team of TDs getting together this blog spent several days last week at internal party meetings discussing organisational as well as policy issues as we prepare for the opening of the 31st Dáil. Thus far I don’t have an office. Until these matters are sorted out Aengus has very kindly let me squat in his.

This week also saw the British Queen accept an invitation from President McAleese to visit the south of Ireland. Sections of the Irish media have embraced this development in a fawning and servile fashion.

This blog is a republican and is against monarchies and elites of any kind, political or religious, secular or industrial. This blog is for power for the masses and rights for the individual. People have to be sovereign. People are citizens, not subjects.

I am also very aware of the symbolism of a state visit by Queen Elizabeth of England. She and her family have been regular visits to the north over the decades. Unionists have a different attitude to the British monarchy than their nationalist and republican neighbours. For many unionists she represents their sense of who they are as British subjects. They will welcome the visit.

There will be those who will not. It will give offence to many Irish citizens, particularly victims of British rule and those with legacy issues in this state and in the North.

This blog believes President McAleese and her husband Martin have done good work. They have been especially diligent in connecting to Irish citizens living in the north and in reaching out to unionists. Unionist visitors to Áras an Uachtaráin are now commonplace.

It is evidence that we are living in changed and changing times.
Sinn Féin is in the leadership of this process of change. We are for the normalisation of relationships between the people of these islands, based upon mutual respect and equality.

However this blog believes that the invitation to the English Queen and the visit are premature. There are many issues of concern which remain unresolved, including the partition of Ireland and those legacy matters which I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. Yes, the Good Friday Agreement provides a means for resolving all of these but much progress still needs to be made.

Memories of the H Blocks

The legacy and memories of the H Blocks of Long Kesh were very present this week for this blog. On Monday, in my first official role as a TD for Louth and East Meath I spoke at the removal from Dundalk of my good friend and comrade and H-Block escapee Peter ‘Skeet’ Hamilton.
The next day was the 30th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike and along with other ex-prisoners and family members I was present in the Linen Hall Library in Belfast for the opening of an exhibition marking the hunger strike.
Martin McGuinness and Mary Lou McDonald formally launched the exhibition.
It is a remarkable collection of photos and memorabilia of that time. It sets the prison struggle in the context of the wider freedom struggle, the British criminalisation policy and events inside and outside of the prison.
It includes original comms written by Bobby Sands, Ciaran Doherty and Mairead Farrell and others, on tiny pieces of paper which were smuggled out of the H-Blocks and Armagh women’s prison.
H-Block and Armagh prisoners were denied reading material, newspapers, radios, television, books and any mental stimulation. The object was to break their spirit. It was also an effort to impose an extreme form of isolation to break the prisoners and to convince them that they were alone, that no one cared.
But republican prisoners found innovative ways around the brutal and harsh regime of the prisons.
This blog remembers once upon a time in the cages that an elaborate system of coded semaphore signals was developed. This involved a prisoner standing precariously on a chair, on top of a table, on top of a hut, ands using small flags to send messages to another prisoner similarly precariously balanced in another part of the jail.
In the H Blocks the favoured method for sending messages was comms. Tiny pieces of paper, usually cigarette roll-up paper or bits of the bible were the favoured material, covered in cling film and swung on lines outside windows between cells or under doors. Comms were also smuggled in and out of the prison despite harsh searches for prisoners and their visitors.
Prisoners endured beatings and degrading mirror searches as the prison system tried to cut communication as well as break the prisoner’s morale.
One unique method adopted by the prisoners was the use of small crystal radios that were made on the outside and smuggled into the Blocks so that the prisoners could listen to the news and keep up to date with developments.
Their existence was a closely guarded secret. But on display in the new exhibition is the ‘Maggie Taggert’ a small crystal radio that was used by the prisoners. It was so-named after a BBC reporter who was frequently on the radio at that time.
Mrs Dale was another code-name – Mrs Dale’s Diary being a long time BBC radio programme.



Maggie Taggert Radio

The exhibition is the work of the National Hunger Strike Committee and is available for display. It will be travelling across the island in the course of this year but anyone interested in displaying it in their local area should contact the committee through its email hungerstrike@sinn-fein.ie



Francie Hughes sisters Vera and Dolores



Joe McDonnell's sisters Maura and Eilish


Peter Hamilton

Peter Hamilton was in the cages during the hunger strike. His dedication, loyalty, and activism over 40 years of struggle is the stuff of legend. Hundreds gathered in bright sunshine in Dundalk on Monday afternoon to pay their respects. And many more attended his funeral in Belfast on Thursday.
Peter came at his republicanism and life in the same way that he tackled his illness. He refused to allow it to depress or get him down.
Two weeks ago his friends organised an event for him in the Star in Ardoyne.
Friends and comrades from far and wide came to demonstrate their solidarity with Peter and to enjoy the craic.
In the Star he joked that he was the only one he ever knew who went into Drogheda hospital with a hernia and came out with cancer.
Peter was from Ardoyne and hugely proud of his local area. Like many others he had been influenced by the pogroms of 1969 in which unionists mobs had burned out whole streets in Ardoyne. Peter joined the IRA.
He was a fearless and determined republican activist. Later he was arrested and spent several years in Crumlin Road prison and then in the cages of Long Kesh before his release in early 1975.
Peter returned to the struggle and in the summer of 76, along with Bik McFarlane and Seamus Clark he was back in the cages. That’s where I met him for the first time. I had been sentenced for trying to escape from internment and Skeet was arriving in for his second time in the cages.
Peter ended up in the middle hut along with Cleaky, Big Deuce and Moke – all of them have now died from cancer, a cause for concern for many former political prisoners and sourced by some to the use of CR gas by the British Army in October 1974 when Long Kesh was burned down.
Peter was full of energy, was hilarious company and helped make the hard time go easier. He was always looking for ways to escape. He was involved in the digging of more than one tunnel.
And in 1982 himself and Gerry Kelly, Francis McIlvenna and Ned Maguire succeeded in getting outside of their cage but they were caught before they could exit stage left. Or right.
They were transferred to the H Blocks where a year later Peter played a key role in the great escape of 1983. He was one of those who had the job of securing the Block. He was recaptured along with Big Bobby, Sean McGlinchey and Joe Simpson hiding in the river and all three were among those who were viciously beaten afterward.
Peter was eventually released. Between his two periods of incarceration he spent almost 20 years in prison.
He was totally behind the peace strategy. And when I visited him in Drogheda hospital during the election campaign he told me not to worry that I would be elected. And he was determined to play his part in that. On polling day he went to the polling station when it opened and cast his vote. Then he went home and died.
Peter was a solid republican activist who demonstrated time and time again, and not least when he was ill, great strength of character.
On behalf of all those who had the honour to know him and the many republicans who didn’t this blog extends sincerest sympathies to his brother Denny and sisters Mary and Eileen and especially his sister Kathleen who looked out for him through all his years in prison and from whose home he was waked and buried.
I also want to thank all of Peter’s friends in Dundalk who were with him through his long illness and who looked after him. Especially Mackers.

A democratic revolution

Arriving at the Count in Dundalk

The election is now finally and positively and definitively over! The last counts in Wicklow and Laois Offaly and Galway West have been completed and the shape of the next Dáil is now known.

Acres of newsprint have been used to analyse the results and hours of television and radio, of tweets and blogs have reported on every twist and turn of what was a hugely important election.

Fianna Fáil and the Green Party have been punished for the bad decisions they took in government. Fine Gael and Labour benefited from the public anger. They did so despite having said they will implement Fianna Fail’s policy of adding private banking debt to the sovereign debt, and of implementing a succession of punitive austerity budgets over the next three years at least.

There are a plethora of independents from the left to the right and many in between.
And there are 14 Sinn Fein Teachtaí Dála! The largest number of Sinn Féin TDs in Leinster House since partition.

As a result of this election 220,660 or 10% of the electorate in the south voted Sinn Féin.

Together with the votes Sinn Féin secured in the north it means that in the last 12 months 392,633 people have voted across the 32 counties for Sinn Féin. That makes this party the third largest on the island.

The final count which saw Brian Stanley take that final 14th seat fittingly concluded on March 1st the 30th anniversary of the commencement by Bobby Sands of the 1981 hunger strike.

The hunger strike shaped the course of Irish politics in the subsequent decades.

The success of Bobby’s election in Fermanagh South Tyrone in the Westminster election of April 81, and of Ciaran Doherty in Cavan Monaghan and Paddy Agnew in Louth in the June 81 general election in the south, were watershed moments.

None of us knew that at the time. Some of us felt it instinctively but it has needed the intervening decades to understand the extent to which the courage and sacrifice of the ten men who died on hunger strike changed modern Irish history.

For Sinn Féin it was the acceleration of a process of internal debate which saw the party embrace electoralism. And it was the commencement of a conversation which ultimately led to the party’s peace strategy and the peace process.

In the south it was the end of majority government by a single party. From 1981 coalition government was the order of the day with a succession of parties, including Labour, the PDs and the Greens stepping forward to put Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael into government. And all paid an electoral price.

It was also the beginning of the slow decline of Fianna Fáil as the dominant political force in that part of the island.

Aside from the 14 who were elected this weekend there were others who did well have laid a good foundation for the future. Some candidates missed by handfuls. John Brady, Katherine and Eoin.

The political strategy to achieve our republican goals is not an easy one. The process is inevitably slow and incremental, it has its up and downs, but it is working.

Our task in the time ahead is to build on the gains that have been made.
It means building on the all-Ireland dimension, the institutions, agencies and structures created by the Good Friday Agreement.
Sinn Féin will be a constructive opposition.

That means campaigning on issues that oppress working families from the universal social charge to cuts in health and education, to defending jobs.

It means knowing who we are and what we represent. Opposing a bad government in Dublin while governing effectively in the north.

Sinn Féin is an Irish republican party. We are in the business of achieving a United Ireland. A new republic, based on the principles and values contained in the 1916 Proclamation and the Programme of the First Dáil.

Republicans are about building a new Ireland which embraces men and women, those of every religion and none, those who are orange and those who are green and those who have come to our shores in recent times.

We seek a new Ireland built on genuine republican values of equality and fairness.
We are not rhetorical republicans. We don’t just sing or dream or make fine speeches about a united Ireland – though all of these are important and have their place in that enterprise – we are the doers, the activists, the strategists and planners.

We are the people who believe in citizenship and citizens rights and who understand that a real republic must look after every member of society – not just elites and the rich and powerful.

To achieve these goals republicans have to build political strength and then use that strength wisely and appropriately.

In the north Sinn Féin is the largest party in terms of votes and the second largest in terms of seats in the Assembly.

In the south there is now a strong cadre of political activists about to enter Leinster House and a strong and growing Sinn Féin organisation across the state.

Everything these elected representatives do, at Stormont or Leinster House, in local councils or the European Parliament and in communities must be about advancing our united Ireland project while defending peoples rights and improving the quality of life for citizens.

In the last weeks of the election campaign hundreds of emails flooded our offices from people wanting to join Sinn Féin.

The republican strategy is taking shape. Republican politics are changing Ireland. Republican politics are working.

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising there is hope that this generation of republicans can bring about a democratic revolution and achieve the objectives set out for us almost 95 years ago on Easter Monday 1916. Join us in that historic endeavour.