Irish Examiner view: Shackled to indefensible atrocities

Sinn Féin consistently celebrates scarring events despite a growing understanding that the wrongs of the past must be challenged

Sinn Féin’s Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire  He endorsed a party tribute to Thomas McElweewho died on hunger strike  40 years ago after being sent to prison for manslaughter.

Democracy is empowering, cherished, and envied because it allows us to choose our governments and, in theory, the policies that shape society. 

That dividend is the positive side of the coin, but there is a challenge too. Democracy, especially through referendums, can bring change that alienates those who oppose it. 

A sense of loss, of rejection, can be palpable at those moments. Recognising and ultimately accepting change you do not welcome can be difficult but that concession, that trust in the process rather than personalities or policies, is the mortar holding democracies’ edifices together.

Such a moment, if consistent polling is reflected when the country eventually faces a general election, looms for a significant number of people.

Though in political terms that reckoning is aeons away — as distant as February, 2025 — the prospect of Sinn Féin in government abhors a significant proportion of the electorate. 

That proportion may be higher than the ratio of Northern Ireland voters who will always vote against a reunited Ireland. South of the border, that cohort is older and affluent — no housing worries — and cannot forget the savagery of the Troubles. 

Neither does it nor should it, accept that violence can ever be used for political ends. And that is the square past Sinn Féin must try to fit into a round future.

The party consistently celebrates scarring events despite a growing understanding that the wrongs of the past must be challenged, whether they are present as Confederate flags in America, as names of Oxbridge colleges, or as monuments to dictators. Those interventions are not denials but assertions that what was wrong is wrong and should not be celebrated.

Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin and Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire are the latest members of the party to defend the indefensible. They endorsed a party tribute to Thomas McElwee who died 40 years ago after 62 days on hunger strike. McElwee had been convicted of the manslaughter of Yvonne Dunlop, burned alive when her shop was firebombed. 

Ó Laoghaire is just 32; these events took place long before he was born but he, like his colleagues, works in the shadows of that past. That Ó Broin and Ó Laoghaire are among the prominent, ‘modern,’ and more savvy faces of Sinn Féin but still seek to defend celebrating individuals behind historic, horrific acts confirms that their options and instincts spring from those shadows.

Maybe this is just an unavoidable part of a long evolution. Maybe that will accelerate as the Adams generation fades away. However, for the moment it is a real question. 

How it might be answered by, or in, an organisation as ruthless and secretive as Sinn Féin can only be speculated. What need not be speculated on any longer is that this immersion in a violent past is a barrier to the progress this country so badly needs and must present on a world stage, with world leaders primed in diplomacy, in front of the cameras at least. 

That Sinn Féin is unwilling, or unable, to move beyond celebrating car bombers will re-energise doubt. Just as the Troubles defined a generation this inability to move on may mean that another generation, shackled to that bloody past, will never realise its potential or lead the change so badly needed. Unless attitudes change those doubts will linger.