We were having a discussion about ethics in our history class in my old school when the whole subject of morals and deceit in politics came up.
It was sparked by the story of the Trojan horse – how Greek soldiers were able to take the city of Troy by conning the locals that after a fruitless 10-year siege, they were giving up and leaving. But first they wanted to give them a parting gift as recognition of their valour: a huge wooden horse.
Thinking the enemy had buggered off, the Trojans started partying and were unprepared for Greek soldiers emerging from the gift horse in the middle of the night and opening up the city’s gates to let their comrades in.
Most of our lads, being good Catholic types, were not happy about what happened to the folks in Troy. The Greeks were the bad guys. Keep in mind we were only about 14.
Our teacher, clearly wanting us to get real, suggested we should look at it from a more topical standpoint.
“Say you meet a girl you really fancy up the town on Saturday and you get talking and she tells you the outfit she’s wearing is her favourite. You think it awful, so what do you tell her?”
He went around the class asking everyone for their opinion.
Wee Seamie O’Donnell (not his real name) said he would tell her the truth, that it was the right thing to do even if it cost him, that he would be doing her a favour in the long run.
Paddy Doherty (not his real name either) said that was rubbish – if the girl liked what she was wearing, he would tell her she looked great and she would go away happy. And, with a big grin lighting up his face, he added that it would do him no harm with her either.
In one of the great lines of all time, our teacher remarked: “O’Donnell, you go for the priesthood. Doherty, you go into politics. You’ll probably make taoiseach.”
In November last year, there were riots on the streets of Dublin. Anti-immigrant elements had gathered and crowds started burning vehicles, looting shops and attacking gardaí.
In the wake of this, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald condemned the rioters unequivocally but also blasted the actions, or lack thereof, of the Garda authorities. She pointed out there had been no co-ordinated plan, and that individual gardaí had been left to contact colleagues asking them to come to their aid.
What she said was true but it was bad politics.
Criticising gardaí in the same breath as the rioters struck a seriously discordant note with middle Ireland.
It seems to me Sinn Féin’s popularity in the south has been on the wane ever since.
Last week, the latest poll indicated that it has fallen behind Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. At one stage last year it was running at 37%; now it is 18%. And in the recent local government and European elections, the party performed well below expectations.
I have this theory there are two Sinn Féins: Southern Sinn Féin and Northern Sinn Féin.
The latter is sure-footed and realistic. It has a great backroom team. Like my wee friend Paddy Doherty, it knows what its people need to say, when to say and get the right result.
The folks there counted seven MPs into the general election and seven MPs out, and with increased majorities in every constituency.
In the Republic, it’s more Seamie O’Donnell. It seems, on occasions, to be naïve in the extreme.
I have this theory there are two Sinn Féins: southern Sinn Féin and northern Sinn Féin. The latter is sure-footed and realistic. In the Republic, it seems, on occasions, to be naive in the extreme
Ray Bassett, a former senior official at the Department of Foreign Affairs, made this very point. In a recent newspaper article, he wrote: “The more Sinn Féin tried to appear non-threatening to the established order, the more they lost votes in areas which in the past supported them. Voters flocked to Sinn Féin when they were perceived as different from the other parties. They had no desire to vote for a Fianna Fáil-lite version.”
So, with an October election down south a real possibility, if Mary Lou wants to repeat the six-county success story she had better get back to basics and come up asap with a winning strategy.
Not only does the party need to get housing and health policies right, it also needs to get it right on immigration which is now a major issue in the south.
If she doesn’t, that big Sinn Féin objective – a border poll by 2030 – might need considerable readjustment.