Republican News · Thursday 22 November 2001

Holy cows facing the axe

BY MICHAEL PIERSE

As warning shots go, this was as clear a signal as anyone could get that Sinn Féin will be a serious force in the election. On the ground, no doubt, Sinn Féin will work harder, and more passionately, than any other political party. Any TDs with a prospective Sinn Féin candidate in their constituencies should be sweating a little more profusely after Friday night, because Mr Quinn has jump-started their election campaign. - Alan Ruddock, Sunday Independent columnist

I often wondered why so many people vote for the likes of Ruairí Quinn, or elect to read the outpourings of Eoghan Harris and his ilk. It was especially difficult to come up with a good reason to justify their pay packets last week, after seeing both Quinn and Harris levelled by Sinn Féin leaders.

Coiste na nIarchimí, an organisation set up for republican ex-prisoners, following the Good Friday Agreement, was responsible for organising the first onslaught on the Dublin 4 set. There he was, Eoghan Harris, that man who joined the Official Republican Movement, the Workers' Party and then went on to advise Fine Gael and the UUP, the man who makes your blood boil whenever you read his anti-republican rantings in the Sunday Independent.

Mitchel McLaughlin gave a fine, considered speech on the given topic 'Empire and Republicanism' and then, following a brief introduction from the chair, solicitor Michael Finucane, Harris took to the podium. What followed was anarchy, although strangely compelling.

Sinn Féiners were, he asserted (take a deep breath)... anti-Semites, Trotskyites, left-wing Trinity College-types who never read a book in their lives, supporters of the Taliban, enemies of America and all 'free societies' throughout the globe. Then there were the lectures on Aristotelian and Platonic politics (don't ask), followed by a dissertation on how Karl Marx actually wanted us all to sit back and allow capitalism to prosper - and this was in the Communist Manifesto, he said. After having insulted the entire audience without exception, he left them split - some infuriated, some in shock, some splitting their sides laughing.

It didn't take Mitchel McLaughlin to deconstruct Eoghan Harris' pillar of society status, the man did it all by himself. He was eccentric, excitable and thoroughly entertaining and, if anything, he reinforced our confidence. Most chillingly, however, he warned that he "might die a republican".

While tribute has to go to Eoghan Harris, even if it's on entertainment value alone, very little good can be said for Labour Party leader Ruairí Quinn's performance against Gerry Adams, broadcast on Friday's Late Late Show.

From start to finish, Quinn looked uncomfortable, while Adams beamed, magnetically, skillfully drawing the audience onside. Quinn made several petty mistakes - most notably when he tried to claim that Adams was not one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement. That made Quinn look "very small", voiced one contributor from the audience, to loud applause.

While the same contributor challenged Adams on Sinn Féin's support for the release of the Castlerea prisoners who were jailed for the killing of Garda Gerry McCabe, Adams showed himself in his answer to be honest and forthright. That is Sinn Féin's position, that is the Good Friday Agreement, and it applies to all IRA prisoners.

Quinn, however, dithered and cringed on many issues. "I'm not naïve, Ruairí," said Adams, questioning the Labour leader on his awareness of political corruption throughout the Labour Party's years in government. When a question came from the audience about social inequality in Ireland, Quinn thought his chance had come - the Labour Party has a magic policy that will eliminate social exclusion in three years' time - "It can be viewed on our website". What use is that to the socially excluded, Adams responded. "They don't have the money to buy a computer to look up the Labour Party website". More applause.

As another D4 holy cow was unceremoniously failing his political BSE test, it occurred to this writer that these people, in their arrogance, have been the architects of their own demise.

The Labour Party has lost touch, and so too has what Quinn termed its "sister party", the SDLP. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the comments on Tuesday of Jimmy Spratt, chair of the 'Police Federation for Northern Ireland'.

Welcoming the SDLP's "somewhat overdue" joining of the Policing Board, he said he would "look forward to teaching them the realities" of policing. Continuing to subtly deflate the SDLP's self-serving hype about an entirely new, fair, accountable policing service now being a reality, Spratt caught the salmon when he said: "We are still the same police officers today who took the oath as RUC officers."

On accountable policing, he reassured "we have not the resources to deliver community policing". Who's he kidding?

Maybe Spratt could balance the books if £300,000 was not being spent on plastic bullets to keep the RUC/PSNI equipped for human rights violations for the next 30 years, or if those violators, after a long working-life subjugating taigs and colluding with loyalists weren't being handsomely pensioned off.