Mick Clifford: Sinn Féin is hampered by outdated mentality

Mary Lou McDonald would do well to remember her own party’s history before bringing up the past failures of others in the Dáil

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald told the Dáil that ‘transparency goes both ways’. Picture: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Donald Trump ally and far-right strategist Steve Bannon once memorably explained how to combat, as he would see it, political opponents.

“The way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit,” he said. On Tuesday in the Dáil, Mary Lou McDonald reached for her inner Bannon.

In response to a Government proposal for statements on child abuse connected to the controversy engulfing Sinn Féin right now, she said that “transparency goes both ways” — suggesting that “very senior members” of coalition parties have written character references for “convicted rapists and child abusers”.

This was arresting news. Her comments hinted that there may be individuals who engaged in that practice who have not been publicly identified.

Going back in time, up to 15 years ago, there were a couple of instances where Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil politicians gave character references to convicted child abusers.

If that is the sum of what she’s referring to, she might want to think again about applying yesterday’s standards to today — as her own party might not want to go there.

She did not suggest that she had the goods on other opposition parties who are also looking for further explanations from Sinn Féin. We have been here before when it comes to flooding the zone.

Around 10 years ago, details of the appalling treatment of Máiría Cahill — who had been raped by a senior IRA figure — were emerging. Another story in the same vein concerned abuser Liam Adams, Gerry’s brother, who had been moved around within the party even after allegations against him were known and verifiable.

At the same time, conspiracy theorist Gemma O’Doherty was pushing her theory that Fianna Fáil had engaged in a cover-up concerning the disappearance of Donegal girl Mary Boyle in 1977.

O’Doherty made a documentary to the effect that the chief suspect was a party member and the child’s murder was covered up to save him.

The cover-up persisted down through the intervening decades and all the way to the top, including the current leadership, O’Doherty’s narrative went. Apart from being highly defamatory and scurrilous, the theory was completely bananas. 

Nobody in politics pushed O’Doherty’s mad ramblings as much as Sinn Féin. Mary Lou McDonald brought it up in the Dáil. MEP Lynn Boylan introduced this massive “cover-up” in the European Parliament.

To some observers, it was quite obvious that the zeal to promote O’Doherty was informed by an attempt to portray Fianna Fáil as being just as suspect as Sinn Féin when it came to child protection.

So it goes now. McDonald’s attempt to flood the zone is an effort to deflect from how her party has handled the current controversy by inferring that, in politics, “we’re all as bad as one another”.

There is a case that the other two parties are making political capital on what is and should be a highly sensitive area.

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However, the current controversy is not indicative of some innate inability by Sinn Féin to grasp the seriousness of child protection. Instead, it is down to an old failing which was actually a strength back in the days when Sinn Féin was a political front for the Provisional IRA.

What is at issue is a failure to fully transition from a party dedicated to overthrowing governments on this island to one committed to the fully democratic standards and mores that all other parties adhere to.

Central to the current matter is the figure of Seán Mag Uidhir, who headed up Sinn Féin’s media operation in the North and spent time in prison in the 1980s for IRA activity. He was a central figure in the party’s political operation

He, along with a very junior colleague in Caolan McGinley, gave the reference to Michael McMonagle — who had been suspended as a party press officer in August 2021 after he was questioned over child abuse allegations.

Two years later, McMonagle was identified in the media. He was fired from the British Heart Foundation (BHF), where he had got a job on foot of the references.

The foundation contacted a HR manager in Sinn Féin looking for an explanation for the references given to a suspected child abuser. This is where things get really Shinner-heavy.

Both Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill claim they were not informed about this at the time, that the information was lost between cracks, changing jobs, and maternity leave.

The information was dynamite and concerned one of the main party strategists, who had the kudos of being a former IRA man to boot, yet nobody told the boss.

“That piece of information did not get transmitted onwards,” McDonald told RTÉ on Tuesday, as if what was at issue was a titbit of gossip rather than political dynamite.

Would it have happened in any other party? If O’Neill and McDonald were informed, they would have been forced to move against their close political ally, Mag Uidhir. How would that have gone down with the die-hard, faithful element of the party?

The controversies around Liam Adams as an abuser and Máiría Cahill as a victim in recent years would surely have prompted swift and decisive action in a normal political party.

Yet here, nobody was told. Just as nobody saw McMonagle in Stormont when he was working for the charity.

Nobody outside those who can be nailed down as having actually been contacted knew anything.

What emerges, not for the first time, is an organisation where loyalty to members — “the family” as some would have it — supersedes all else.

Seán Mag Uidhir headed up Sinn Féin’s media operation in the North and spent time in prison in the 1980s for IRA activity. He was a central figure in the party’s political operation. Picture: PA

The only reason Mag Uidhir was chased out the door in the last two weeks is that there was no longer any way of avoiding it.

None of that is normal. Just as the interview conducted with Jonathan Dowdall in 2011 to vet him as an election candidate wasn’t normal.

Either the interviewers or Dowdall brought up the story that Dowdall had shot up his uncle’s house as part of a dispute.

Can you imagine such a conversation in an interview setting involving Social Democrats, Fine Gael, or Labour?

Just as it wasn’t normal for a garda investigating the murder of Garda Adrian Donohue to have to approach a Sinn Féin TD in 2017 to ask that a party member be given the OK to provide a witness statement.

Would this ever happen if the gardaí wanted to talk to a member of the Green Party or Fianna Fáil?

It’s long past the time that Sinn Féin’s culture moved on completely from the days when it was supporting the violent overthrow of the State.

They aspire to govern in an established democracy yet, in some aspects, remain removed from democratic norms.

Every now and again residual elements of the old culture are exposed to the glare of the public square.

No doubt there are many, newer members and representatives inside the party frustrated when such matters are not dealt with properly.

However, all the indications are that — in this respect — the past remains in the shadows, slipping out into the public square now and again.