Léargas

The Ard Fheis was our biggest ever. The enthusiastic and very positive mood among delegates and the level of debate on policy issues was extraordinary and impressive. As someone else said to me the hall was buzzing. And that was especially evident at the end of the Saturday evening when the two and a half thousand people packed into the RDS raised their voices to the rafters and sang "Óró, sé do bheatha abhaile". The Ard Fheis took lots of important decisions relating to the party’s constitution; to the issue of Sinn Féin going into coalition government in the south; on housing and health and abortion and many other matters. It was also a night of remembrance. Martin McGuinness’s wife Bernie and his family were present for a celebration of his life and times that was hugely emotional. Elisha McCallion’s reflective words on Martin, the video of young people reciting his poem – Fullerton’s Dam – and the music was evocative and moving. Republicans  miss Martin. We also...

This blog was due to be posted at the weekend but because of the Ard Fheis it was held back until today. My next blog in two days will deal with my decision, which I announced at the Ard Fheis,  to stand down as Uachtarán Shinn Féin. It was a refusal by the DUP to agree on the implementation of past agreements, including the introduction of an Irish Language Act, a Bill of Rights and the funding of legacy inquests, which blocked efforts last week to restore the political institutions. All of these matters, and others, including marriage equality, are part of the jig-saw of connecting issues which have been fundamental to the different phases of negotiations since last January. When you strip away the complexities surrounding each separate issue in the current impasse you will find at their heart a deep desire by nationalists to be treated as equal to their unionist neighbours. It’s about equality. While the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, and the DUPs inadequate response t...

I went to my first Sinn Féin Ard Fheis about fifty years ago. I say about fifty years ago because I don’t recall if it was in 1967 or 1968 and I haven’t the time to check out the dates. Suffice to say it was a long time ago. I was the youngest in a small delegation of Belfast comrades including the late Seán McCormack. We stayed in The Castle Hotel in Gardiner Street. Local legend has it that Micheál Collins used to stay there. The Castle certainly has a chequered republican history from 1916 through the Tan and Civil War onwards. That Ard Fheis weekend was also the first time I stayed in a hotel. Sinn Féin Ard Fheiseanna have frequently been the scene for the most important decisions affecting the direction of republican politics on this island. It is the Ard Fheis, not the Party President or Ard Chomhairle (National Executive), which is the supreme authority of Sinn Féin and this year’s Ard Fheis which takes place at the weekend in the RDS in Dublin promises to be another of t...

Our ability as human beings to dramatically and adversely impact on our environment, and consequently on the lives of millions of people, has grown enormously in recent decades. This is usually depicted as the reason for devastating floods, the threat to our eco system and other grave environmental issues. The knock-on effect of this in terms of the relationship between climate change, hunger, disease and conflict is not always appreciated. Last year the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by World Leaders at a special UN conference in 2015 officially came into force. Their objective is to end all forms of poverty, inequality and to tackle climate change. It also includes the objective of eradicating hunger and preventing malnutrition worldwide by 2030. While these goals are not legally binding governments are expected to establish policies to achieve them. Last month the United Nations produced its first report on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goa...

What have the DUP, the Fianna Fáil leadership and the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) got in common? At the start of this year the DUP described Sinn Féin, and those who vote for our party, as ‘ crocidiles’ . Last Friday evening one Fianna Fáil TD, who was arguing against any future coalition arrangement with Sinn Féin, tried to go one better by telling an enraptured FF audience  ‘you don’t deal with the serpent by inviting it into your bed.’   He obviously doesn't believe that Saint Patrick got rid of snakes from our wee island. Or else he speaks with a forked tongue. At any rate the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis almost unanimously backed this position.  And then to round matters off the leader of the TUV, Jim Allister, welcomed the Fianna Fáil vote and commended it to the DUP as the way forward. He said: ‘That’s sound advice for parties south of the border and all the more so for Unionist parties.’ In fairness to Wee Jim he did acknowledge 'there is hypocrisy i...

In my years as a political activist I have had the unique opportunity to travel to many far flung places around the world. I once flew in a tiny plane up the coast of Maine in the USA with its hundreds of off-shore islands. It was a bumpy, scary, white knuckle journey in a small two propeller machine. The scenery was reminiscent of the west of Ireland. I have watched the colours change on the lakes of upper New York State, in the deserts and hills of Texas and Arizona, on the Rockies of Canada, the mountains of the Basque country, and the veldt of South Africa. On one memorable visit to the outback of Australia I persuaded our hosts to let me walk alone some distance into the trees and scrub of the outback outside of Perth. The intensity of different smells from the flowers and trees and the sounds of birds and insects was truly amazing. And the snakes left me alone.   But if truth be told I love West Donegal. That’s not to say that I don’t love west Belfast. Or Lou...

Today Thursday, October 5 th , is the anniversary of the RUC attack on a Civil Rights March at Duke Street in Derry in 1968. The image of RUC officers batoning peaceful protestors, and of one senior officer using a blackthorn stick to viciously beat a protestor to the ground, are now part of the televisual history of that period. It was for many the moment in which the northern Unionist state decided that state violence was the appropriate response to the peaceful and non-violent protests for civil rights. In the years that followed rubber bullets, plastic bullets, CS and CR gas, along with batons, and then lead bullets, became part of the armoury of the British Army and RUC. Baton wielding riot clad RUC men beating citizens to the ground was a familiar image. Protest marches and funerals were regularly the target for such state assaults. R ubber and plastic bullets were used extensively. Up to 1981 almost 100,000 such bullets were fired. 17 people, 8 of whom were children, an...