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Power Play. Deaglán de Bréadún
Читать онлайн.Название Power Play
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isbn 9781785370434
Автор произведения Deaglán de Bréadún
Издательство Ingram
The people of Dublin and Ireland should know the kind of company Mary Lou McDonald keeps. And what of the person McDonald and Keenan gathered together to ‘pay respect’ to – Seán Russell, a self-proclaimed ally of Hitler, Nazi Germany and former leader of the IRA.
A Sinn Féin spokesman responded: ‘I think Eoin Ryan should look at his own party’s history before starting to throw around accusations... considering Eamon de Valera signed a book of condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler.’41 Myers returned to the subject twice more in his ‘Irishman’s Diary’ column, most notably on 1 February 2005, the year after the election, when he wrote: ‘Not merely has Mary Lou McDonald increased in size since her election to the European Parliament, but she is the only MEP who has publicly honoured a Nazi quisling... When Big Mac gave the keynote [sic] oration for Russell, she was truly speaking the language of Sinn Féin-IRA and its weird, demented ethos... Big Mac is just junk.’
McDonald told this writer she had no regrets over her participation in the Russell ceremony:
No, I mean, for God’s sake, if you could criticise anything, you would criticise factions within the IRA at different stages that had such a militarist view on things that they didn’t see broader politics.I don’t think for one minute that Russell was an arch-Nazi or a Nazi supporter. The facts actually, if viewed rationally don’t support that case, but that’s what Myers is trying to do. But at that time if I recall, Kevin Myers had taken a good number of side-swipes and hard runs at me. That is his prerogative but – pretty nasty stuff!
Asked if it hurt to be attacked in that way, she replied:
Not hurt I was more taken aback by it, because I suppose I hadn’t been through, like others, the school of hard knocks. Bear this in mind: one day I was going about minding my own business, then, when I ran in that European election in 2004, literally within a matter of months, anywhere you would go people knew your name and recognised you.That’s quite a transition for a person, in a very quick period of time. And then you get the criticism and you have to take it, but it throws you a little bit off balance. Nowadays, it wouldn’t have that effect on me at all, but that’s just experience and the value of growing older.
(The Russell statue was vandalised in December 2004 by an unnamed group who said in a statement he was a Nazi collaborator; it was later repaired.)
Regarding the response to her European candidacy, she told Banotti (a grand-niece of rebel leader and founder of the Free State, Michael Collins): ‘The only thing that irked me, as a woman, was the suggestion, sometimes said up-front and sometimes just implied, that I was maybe cute but not that bright. They were saying that this woman was being run because she was being groomed as the new face of Sinn Féin and she was respectable. And never a thought that maybe this is a capable person, someone who has the confidence of those she works with to go out and do this job. This irritated me, but I suppose it was par for the course.’
It would have been interesting to see the reaction of former neighbours in the leafy suburbs to her election campaign, but the party wasn’t having any of that. Alison O’Connor wrote in the Sunday Business Post: ‘A request to see McDonald, who grew up in the south Dublin suburb of Rathgar, canvassing in her heartland of middle-class Dublin was ignored. Instead, an initial offer came to accompany her on a canvass of an inner-city flats complex, and eventually an old local authority estate in Crumlin.’42
Journalist Michael O’Regan wrote with foresight, six months in advance of the June 2004 European contest: ‘Dublin could provide Sinn Féin with its first Euro MEP in Ms Mary Lou McDonald, who polled 2,404 first preference votes in Dublin West in the 2002 general election. The party has since grown in strength in the capital, with Ms McDonald’s profile increasing. Political observers notice that she was given a very high profile by the party during the Northern elections, posing for photographs and television cameras with the leader, Mr Gerry Adams.’43 It was an indication of the effort being put into the campaign and the reception it was getting that the pseudonymous Drapier column in the Irish Times reported hearing that a rally in the middle-class suburb of Dundrum in south Dublin on 30 March, where Adams and McDonald were speaking, drew ‘a huge overflow attendance with the crowd in the hall spilled outside’.44
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin’s apparent reluctance at the time to dispense with the legacy of the ‘Long War’ in the North was becoming a political weapon in the hands of the party’s opponents. Progressive Democrat TD for Dun Laoghaire, Fiona O’Malley highlighted the sale of paramilitary souvenirs in Sinn Féin shops. She said the sale of T-shirts bearing the logo ‘IRA – UndefeatedArmy’ and lapel pins with the slogan ‘Sniper at Work’ were helping to fund Sinn Féin election candidates. (This issue has been raised in more recent times by Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin.)When asked at the time if she approved of the ‘Sniper at Work’ badges, McDonald turned the question around and replied: ‘Look, what I don’t approve of is the endless gimmickry that the PDs are indulging in.’ Asked if she would wear an ‘IRA – UndefeatedArmy’ T-shirt, she deftly responded that she did not wear T-shirts at press conferences.45
An Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll published on 21 March surprised many when it showed McDonald ahead of outgoing Green Party MEP Patricia McKenna in a battle for the last seat in Dublin. The election team of Fianna Fáil’s Eoin Ryan were watching McDonald like hawks. When they discovered that she had described herself as a ‘peace negotiator’ and ‘full-time public representative’ on the ballot-paper, they complained to the Returning Officer’s staff. Ryan said:
I am not aware of any position to which Ms McDonald has been elected by the public. Her claim to be ‘a peace negotiator’ requires clarification. What peace has she negotiated and with whom? If she can describe herself as a peace negotiator, then so is every member ofOireachtas Éireann. The Sinn Féin candidate’s claim to have been elected by the people to any office is utterly bogus.46
However, the Returning Officer said there were no formal rules as to what titles could be used by candidates, other than people claiming to represent parties which did not exist. Mark Hennessy observed in the Irish Times on 2 June 2004 that Sinn Féin’s policy on the European Union had developed from outright opposition to ‘critical engagement’. Noting that the party’s best hope for success in the election was Bairbre de Brún in the North, he added: ‘One seat in the Republic would be a tremendous result.’
The European and local government elections took place on 11 June, and McDonald won the fourth and final seat in the Dublin Euro-constituency to become the party’s first MEP in the 26 counties. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour all held their Dublin seats but McDonald beat the Green Party’s Patricia McKenna into fifth place, with 60,395 first preferences compared to the latter’s 40,445. McDonald’s share of the vote at 14.32 per cent was more than double the 6.64 per cent that Seán Crowe scored for Sinn Féin in the same constituency at the previous European election in 1999.47 It was the small hours of the morning when her election was announced, and Frank McNally captured the atmosphere of the occasion in his report:
Mary Lou McDonald was carried shoulder-high from the RDS count-centre early yesterday. Outside, right on cue, a ghetto-blaster struck up the old Country and Western favourite: Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart). But, the habitual noisy part of the Sinn Féin celebrations over, the new MEP then called her campaign workers into the sort of huddle favoured by football teams. It was a larger huddle than any football team’s, because Sinn Féin have a lot of workers, and McDonald happily acknowledged her debt to them. Among other things, she assured the huddle that this was not Mary Lou McDonald’s seat – it belonged to Sinn Féin. Even at 3.30 am, the message was unblurred and the campaign zeal unrelenting.48
Transfers are of major importance in the Irish electoral process. It has always been a major challenge for Sinn Féin candidates to attract second or other preferences in the system of Proportional Representation. But McDonald broke through the barrier on that occasion. And as well as winning two seats in the Strasbourg parliament,