Many of us still recall a time when interviews with Sinn Féin figures could not be broadcast on radio or television. Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act was applied very strictly down south whereas the UK at least allowed the substitution of actors' voices.
All that has changed of course and the party’s representatives take part regularly in news and discussion programmes. A new stage was reached, however, last Sunday night with the appearance of Mary Lou McDonald on RTE’s The Meaning of Life, which seeks to go behind the headlines to get a better understanding of the interviewee’s personality and fundamental beliefs.
It’s true that her predecessor as party leader, Gerry Adams, was on the show back in April 2009 but that was after a general election where SF won only four seats in Dáil Éireann, compared with 37 at present. Interviewed by Joe Duffy, who has taken over from the late Gay Byrne, a very-relaxed Ms McDonald spoke initially of her regular Mass-going, how her parents became separated when she was ten and her successful battle with the coronavirus disease. Then Duffy really got down to business by asking how she came to join Sinn Féin (no mention of her previous Fianna Fáil membership) and whether this amounted to an endorsement of the past activities of the Provisional IRA. She replied that all sides suffered in the conflict and her present role involved “working for the things that make sure that we never, ever go back to that place again”.
In the course of what became a fairly rigorous interview, Joe Duffy told the Sinn Féin leader “you’ve every chance of becoming Taoiseach of Ireland”. One certainly felt that her appearance on such a prestigious TV programme brought that prospect closer.
On the subject of history and past conflicts, the present writer had a nice distinction bestowed on him lately. It wasn’t the Légion d’honneur or an all-Ireland medal, but gratifying nonetheless, to be asked to write the foreword to a book called Yours Till Hell Freezes: A Memoir of Kevin Barry, written by Síofra O’Donovan and published by Currach Books of Dublin. The subject is possibly the most famous Irish martyr of the last hundred years, although I’m sure there would be a strong lobby to give that title to hunger-striker Bobby Sands.
Regular readers of this column will know I am not an advocate of the gun and bullet as a means of achieving independence and unity for this green (and orange) island. But that doesn’t stop me from paying due attention to those who gave their lives for the cause. As the popular ballad says, Barry was “just a lad of eighteen summers” when the hangman’s rope was placed around his neck on that first day of November, just 100 years ago. The young medical student was one of ten republicans executed in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison in 1920-21 and all the hangings were carried out by the same man, named John Ellis, who had previously seen off Roger Casement and indeed took his own life in 1932.
Síofra O’Donovan is a grand-niece of Kevin Barry and this newspaper recently reported on her planned visit to Mountjoy to mark the centenary of his arrest in September 1920. Earlier that day, he had been involved in an attack on British troops in downtown Dublin where Private Harold Washington, aged 15 years, was shot dead and two other soldiers, aged 19 and 20 respectively, were fatally wounded. Barry was arrested and, in due course, hanged in Mountjoy.
Another Irish rebel who was dispatched in an even more brutal fashion was Robert Emmet, who was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1803 at the age of 25. Memories are coming back to me of taking part in a musical play about his life which was staged in Dublin to mark the centenary of the Christian Brothers School in Synge Street (location for the 2016 movie Sing Street – note the change in spelling.)
Revered though Kevin Barry and Robert Emmet were and indeed still are, a statement by one of the Christian Brothers in my Synge Street days nevertheless made a big impression. He said: “Enough people have died for Ireland, now it’s time to start living for Ireland.” He was right.
Email: Ddebre1@aol.com; Twitter: @DdeBreadun
