Olivia O’Leary: There’s an air of autocracy about some of Sinn Féin’s recent pronouncements

Gerry Adams, in his funeral oration in 2019 for former chief of staff of the IRA Kevin McKenna, said: “We will not let the past be written in a way which demonises patriots.” That declaration is chilling, coming from the former head of an organisation that has never said that republican violence was wrong. Equally chilling was the declaration by his successor, Mary Lou McDonald, that it was not rational or fair to raise Provisional IRA actions with party members who were children or not alive when the actions took place. In a recent interview on the Joe Brolly podcast, she said the “Free State establishment” needs to move on from holding her party accountable for the actions of the Provisional IRA during the Troubles.
Last time I checked, the official name of this State was “Ireland”. As for moving on, that is difficult to do when a political party has not apologised for the republican movement’s part in the terrible death toll of the Troubles. Of the 3,720 who died, 1,768 were killed by the IRA. Seven of those were either gardaí or Irish soldiers. These are the figures given by the acclaimed Lost Lives book, edited by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea. It’s a volume that feels heavier every time I open it.
“I have no issues as the leader of Sinn Féin and as a republican expressing deep sorrow and apology for pain that was suffered, none at all,” McDonald said two years ago. But she never said the IRA’s campaign of violence was wrong. She pointed to an apology issued by the IRA in 2002 on the 30th anniversary of Bloody Friday, July 21st, 1972, when the IRA planted more than 20 bombs around Belfast. Twenty of them exploded, killing nine people and injuring more than 100 others. The IRA apologised for the deaths of non-combatants on this and other occasions and sent condolences to their families. It’s not clear whether these non-combatants included Jean McConville, Columba McVeigh (whose body has still not been recovered) or the gardaí and Irish soldiers who died.
If McDonald wants people to forget about what the Provisional IRA did, and to stop linking it to present-day Sinn Féin, why does she attend so pointedly the funerals of IRA figures? She was at the funeral of Kevin McKenna. With thousands of other republicans, she attended the funeral in 2020 of Bobby Storey during the Covid pandemic when many others were observing caution. Storey was the man thought to be the IRA’s head of intelligence. When Adams was arrested and questioned about the McConville abduction, and before he was released without charge, Storey addressed a protest meeting in west Belfast and echoed a phrase of Adams the year after the IRA ceasefire: “we ain’t gone away, you know.”
Obviously, McDonald thinks it is important by her presence to associate herself and her party publicly with these leading figures of the armed struggle. So why does she think nobody else should make that association? If paying her respects to these figures is the price she has to pay for being leader of Sinn Féin, is it not important we should know that?
The bizarre inclusion in the Sinn Féin manifesto of plans for an investigation into RTE’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza “and other international conflicts” may be simply that: bizarre. I don’t see why an investigation should worry RTÉ. But, if an investigation is needed, shouldn’t that be a matter for Coimisiún na Meán? Republicans will point to the fact that censorship operated for decades in RTÉ, in the shape of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act which banned specific organisations, including Provisional Sinn Féin, from the airwaves. This persisted until lifted by then-minister Michael D Higgins in the 1990s and my union, the National Union of Journalists, always objected to it.
But collectively, all these developments – the suggestion that Sinn Féin shouldn’t have to answer any questions about the Provisional IRA’s campaign of violence; that republicans will control the historical narrative about the Troubles; that, suddenly out of the blue, RTÉ should be investigated for its foreign coverage; together with Sinn Féin’s readiness to take legal actions that bear the hallmark of strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps), against newspapers and individual journalists – all of this has an air of autocracy about it.
We have seen in the United States what happens when statements aren’t challenged, when falsehood is stated as fact, when the sort of media organisations who check out their news are dismissed and even cowed.
If you don’t have a healthy media that is able to ask questions and point out what’s not true, then you can have no shared reality and your democracy is in danger.
Shutting down debate also makes it more difficult to confront the past and learn from it. In a perceptive essay that was one of the prize winners in the Hubert Butler Essay competition this year, Maurice Fitzpatrick picked up on Adams’s statement that republicans would “not let the past be written in a way which demonises patriots”. Fitzpatrick went on to say: “The degree to which this narrative paralyses its adherents from as much as assessing the organisation’s past acts – still less taking responsibility for them – cannot be overstated. The refusal to do so augments the pain inflicted and makes reconciliation much more difficult. Paranoia about the free use of language to describe the Troubles reflects a constraint about confronting the past.” Yet, he said, unless the past was acknowledged and confronted, the possibility of a genuinely shared future is greatly undermined.
I agree.
Olivia O’Leary is a journalist, writer and current affairs presenter