The Price of my Soul was the first political book I remember reading. For those of another age, it was about the then Bernadette Devlin, civil rights heroine and former MP.
Devlin caught the attention of the world’s media as an articulate, firebrand activist. To say that she shot from the hip would be an understatement. I was still at primary school when she was already an ex MP. Her book certainly caught my imagination and whilst she probably would not want the credit, that book awoke my political consciousness and made me aware of John Hume and his role in the civil rights movement.
Devlin’s politics took a more meandering route than most political careers before she settled down into the role of community activist. I eventually got to meet my political muse in the early 1990s when she was working with a women’s group in Coalisland. Back then I could still see glimpses of devilment that once sparkled when her star was in the ascendant.
Three things struck me when I met her. The first was her absolute commitment to empowering the women she was working with; the second was her doggedness to get what she wanted and the third was her charisma. I’d say she’s a stubborn woman too but she’s needed stickability to survive.
I was delighted when she, along with Eamonn McCann and Bríd Rodgers of the SDLP, popped up recently to reject out of hand the ludicrous claims of Declan Kearney that the civil rights movement was influenced by a decision of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership to campaign under their umbrella.
The only political group other than Sinn Féin who would believe this claim by Kearney are the hardline loyalists who have always wrongly believed that the civil rights movement was a flag of convenience for the IRA. However, the IRA were about as central to the direction of the civil rights movement as Mussolini was to Italian democracy.
The facts speak volumes. IRA violence wrecked the civil rights movement and the cackhandedness of successive British governments pushed the achievements of the movement into the background. Given that the demands of the civil rights movement were by and large granted by 1974, if Kearney’s claims had a scintilla of truth then he would be better minded to ask the question of the republican movement why they continued to wage a war that left over 3,000 people dead and 47,000 injured after 1973? Why too did Sinn Féin not support the efforts of the first power sharing Executive in 1974 which was actually stronger on the all Ireland dimension than their much revered Good Friday Agreement of 1998?
Truth is that Sinn Féin were pursuing their own agenda as usual and it was the poor suffering people of Ireland, north and south, who would have to wait for the penny of political maturity to drop.
Veteran civil rights campaigner Eamonn McCann has accused Sinn Féin of trying to colonise history and he is right. Truth is we should have embedded the civil rights era into our education system and it may not be too late to do just that.
Some republicans have conflated their unpopular and unwarranted armed struggle with the historically popular and much needed civil rights movement. They want to blur the lines. Whilst Mary Lou might still skip along to commemorate murderous acts, Sinn Féin Nua would rather promote a modern narrative that talks about a rights agenda which started with the civil rights movement. It’s also true (and the various bullying claims seem to verify it) - that Sinn Féin’s commitments to tolerance and rights is as thin as filo pastry as the party quashes internal voices of dissent in its policy of ‘Uno Duce, una Voce!
None of the civil rights advancements gained since 1968 to 2018 were won at the point of a gun. That’s a fact. The equality agenda is something which benefits everyone. If there are inequalities still to be overcome today they are induced by poverty and poor education.
The decision to mark the birth of the civil rights movement this year was a good one. Those who featured prominently in its leadership were from many political outlooks.
The Sinn Féin claims about their role in the birth and leadership of the civil rights movement is as fanciful as claiming that the late Ian Paisley was an ecumenist.
